Book picks similar to
The Case of the Bygone Brother by Diane Burton


adult-fiction
author-review
cosy-mysteries
mystery

Limited Damages (Boston Law #1)


John W. Dennehy - 2020
    An aggressive courtroom brawler on the rise, he makes his living in the trenches of personal injury and criminal defense matters. Supported by a diverse team of lawyers, the small law firm desperately seeks to pin liability on a new defendant with deep pockets. Dwyer takes on a criminal case to help pay the bills. His investigation into both matters leads him into the dealings of a Balkan criminal syndicate. Will he uncover the cause of the wrongful death or become another casualty of street crime?"A refreshing legal thriller packed with courtroom drama, scrappy litigation, and a whodunit that will surprise even the most perceptive readers." -- BestThrillers.com

Yetis in Whistler (Peyton Brooks, FBI #10)


M.L. Hamilton - 2021
    

Gateway Investigations: 5-Books Private Security Series


Clara Kendrick - 2017
    Lots of suspense, mystery, and romance. No cliffhangers! Altering the Ego My boss told me to hire a psychiatrist to do an evaluation on a client. It should have been a simple thing. We were an investigative firm. Our client is most definitely not a serial killer. My task? Hire a shrink. Get her to agree that the client isn’t a psychopath. Boom. Except the boom wasn’t my task getting checked off my list. It was more like my life exploding into a million pieces because nothing is simple when it comes to Dr. Harley Seward. The woman is mental health dynamite and when I’m around her there is no shrinking going on. Cat’s Claw The world is full of a whole lot of sickos. That’s no real surprise. Since I’m a private investigator by trade, I might be biased. But right now I’m looking at a whole string of bodies and a justice system that wants to put the wrong man in jail. So pardon me if I’m not real impressed with the local detectives right now. And double pardon me if I have orders from my boss to get in their way and make myself a regular nuisance while I try to get these guys to do their job. Not that it’s a hardship since the guy I’m following around happens to be the best looking guy in the department. Of course he’s also a big of an odd duck. He seems to be immune to my charm and that is what I call a challenge. Judge Not Someone is threatening to kill my mother. Of course it’s not that I’ve never felt like the woman needed a few good threats, but I’m her daughter. That’s sort of my right. See my mother is a judge and someone really wants to sway her opinion on a case she’s currently presiding over. So what better way to do that than to threaten her family? Of course if the idiots knew her at all they’d focus on my sister. She’s the favorite. But me? I’m the tough one. My mother might be willing to turn down a little help from an outside private investigations company, but I’m not. If a super hot investigator named Zeke wants to help me find out who’s threatening my family. I’m all in. No matter what it takes. Bending the Rules I am sick to death of my job as a private investigator and ready for a change. Is there a man out there who doesn’t cheat, lie, or completely wimp out when the chips are down? If there is, I can’t find him, and that absolutely includes the parade of MMA fighters I’ve been dating recently. Of course my search for Mr. Nonexistent will have to wait until after I deal with the joker that my boss has ordered me to work with on his current pet project. Not only does he live upstairs, but he’s also a lawyer. The fact that he sort of fascinates me is irrelevant. Really. If my boss’s daughter wasn’t such a good friend, I think I would have walked away. When it All Falls Down Letting my wife divorce me was probably the stupidest thing I ever did. I would never say that out loud though and I’ll deny it if anyone asks. Colleen is an amazing woman. I just wish she would stay out of the way and let me use every resource at my fingertips to find our daughter. Does the woman not understand that the city is a powder keg and we’re running around out there with matches? I know what to do. I know where to look. I’ve got a crack team of investigators and I’ve assembled all of the specialists I could ever want. In the end though, it’s going to take both of us to find our little girl.

A Thin Sharp Blade: An Edwardian Mystery


Fran Smith - 2020
    

Federal Agent Under Fire


Julie Anne Lindsey - 2018
    Now the madman has attacked Marissa Lane. She escaped with her life…and some clues that could help Blake. Yet she is still the object of the killer’s obsession. And Blake is torn between the unquenching need to catch his prey and a deep desire to protect the woman he can’t possibly keep.

Chocolate Can Kill


Annie Acorn - 2011
    Returning home from a trip to New Orleans, she is pushed down the airport’s arrival escalator, and despite evidence to the contrary, she believes the push was deliberate. If this weren’t enough her lawyer husband begins to act strangely, her oldest son brings a tramp home as his girlfriend, and two friends are murdered. Simple sayings from her childhood thread their way through her thoughts as she struggles to identify the common denominator, even as she is confined to her home, munching on chocolates. Filled with the warm southern ambience and gentle humor that author, Annie Acorn, has made famous, you won’t want to miss this cliffhanger!

Kill Me Twice


Joseph Flynn - 2015
    She tells Zeke that Jonas Dawson, a lawyer with mob connections, is going to kill her. She knows this because Dawson strangled her aunt, Pamela Keller. That’s ominous enough, but things get complicated when Paulette tells Zeke she was her aunt in a previous life. Zeke finds that hard to believe, but he sees that Paulette truly feels vulnerable. So he takes a look into things. When he does, a couple of bruisers try to make him back off. Big mistake. Zeke’s previous job was playing middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears. His best friends, George A. Black and Regina Green, are also no strangers to laying a hurt on people. Throw in shady big-city politics, any number of cops, some honest, some not, and a pair of hit men nicknamed Paganini and Chopin and Zeke’s first case is summed up by a time-honored expression. “Welcome to the game, rookie.”

Cold Fear


Suzanne Brandyn - 2013
    When she regains consciousness, her daughter is missing.As the police widen their futile search, Macy struggles to pick up the pieces of an unimaginable life. Urged to take a break she heads to an isolated cabin with a girlfriend to recuperate so she can continue searching, only to face her worse nightmare - times ten.Trapped by a man she believed dead, he demands she play a game. She runs, he hunts. There is no place to hide...

If Pigs Could Fly (West Kensington Paranormal Detective Agency #1)


Jonny Nexus - 2015
    Doctor Ravinder Shah speaking. No case too weird, no problem too bizarre. Strangeness a speciality. How can I help you?” London Social Worker Rav Shah moonlights as a paranormal detective, aided by one of his clients and a Border Collie he rents by the hour. It was supposed to be a bit of fun: a search for truths out there; a quest for a life more interesting than the one that fate, destiny, and personal apathy had granted him. But then a case involving a Yorkshire farmer and a herd of flying pigs leads him into a world darker and more dangerous than he’d ever dreamed. The truth is indeed out there. And it’s got Rav square in its sights.

The Delphi Chronicle, Bundle Book 2 & 3 - The Tortoise and the Hare, and Phoenix Rising


Russell Blake - 2011
    This bundle of book 2 & 3 continues the saga of NY private eye Michael Derrigan, as he comes into possession of a manuscript that will change the world order if its secrets are aired. Clandestine factions of the U.S. government will do anything to keep the story buried, & a trail of butchery follows Derrigan as he races for his life in a chase that takes him from New York, to Mexico, to Havana. A roller-coaster ride of a thriller, The Delphi Chronicle's unflinching & often disturbing twists and turns question the nature of reality & of the integrity of our governments in a post-modern world of lies, deceit & betrayal.+++Questions & Answers with bestselling author Russell Blake.Question: The Delphi Chronicle posits a troubling & plausible conspiracy. Where did you get the idea?Russell Blake: The idea stemmed from the title. I was originally going to call the trilogy The Pegasus File, & I'd conceptualized a cool cover, so I Googled it to confirm there weren't any other books with that name. The original conspiracy was much tamer than what I wound up with. I had the idea of a literary agent getting a manuscript detailing a shocking scheme, but I hadn't defined what it was, exactly. From that search came this conspiracy, & I have to admit I considered toning it down a lot, because it scared even me. So readers? This is fiction, OK? And U.S. government? No need to send a wet team after me. We all understand it's fictional. As in, an invention, not real. That's my official position. Readers can decide how plausible theinvention is for themselves. Some will hate it, as it portrays the U.S. government in a negative light. Can't please everyone.Q: Why write it as a trilogy?RB: It would have been a long single volume if I'd tried to squeeze it all into one book. Given the success I saw with the Zero Sum trilogy, I wanted to do another one, & this was just naturally written in three volumes, although I think most will get the first one, & then buy the specially-priced bundle of Books 2 & 3 if they're interested in following the story to its thrilling conclusion (wink wink).Q: How do your novels compare to the work of your peers?RB: I think they're faster paced than most. I try to catapult readers through a series of twists & turns at such aggressive velocity they're left gasping by the end. And I dislike books where I can see the ending coming a third of the way through. Just hate that. I try to write racing, intelligent thrillers that don't pander & aren't formulaic. All have gotten raves, so I'm fooling at least some of the people most of the time...Q: Part of Delphi unfolds in Mexico. Any particular reason?RB: I live in Mexico. Have for almost a decade. Modern Mexico is very different than as portrayed by the U.S. media. Many parts are indistinguishable from medium sized cities in the U.S. Strip malls, high rises, melting-pot racial integration, etc. It's not cactus & sombreros. One of the things I find fascinating is how different it is than what my expectations were when I moved here, & I try to impart that. Most novels set in modern Mexico I've read are caricatures of the truth. Mission bells, white-garbed peasants, stereotypical characters. I try to imbue my fiction with reality, not a Hollywood portrayal based on a snapshot from the 1950s. I think readers will find that distinction interesting.

Behind Closed Doors


Natalie R. Collins - 2007
    Melissa was the only one who knew what had really happened to Jannie beyond the sacred walls of the Mormon Temple the night that changed her life forever…. UNTIL HER BEST FRIEND VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE.Now Melissa has gone missing, just days after entrusting Jannie with a mysterious box that someone would kill to possess. And someone has--leaving in their murderous wake an innocent victim and a trail of blood that leads to the heart of Jannie's hidden burden. Desperate to protect her secret, and to find out what has happened to Melissa, Jannie trusts no one. Not the stranger whose piercing green eyes have already seen too much, nor the family and friends whose familiar fold may be shielding a cold-blooded killer who is lurking BEHIND CLOSED DOORS.

Feelers


Brian M. Wiprud - 2009
    Morty Martinez is known in the industry of estate liquidation as a "feeler."  If you were to look him up in the Brooklyn yellow pages, he would be listed under "home content removal," but his real job is looking for stashes of cash crammed into tin cans that have been left out of wills, kept out of banks, and hidden away for decades by the frugal elderly suspicious of ATMs and the IRS.  When Morty hits upon the biggest score of his life, over $800,000.00, he knows that news travels fast and he must operate quickly and carefully to safeguard his booty, his life and his destiny as patrician of a seaside Mexican village.  But what he doesn't know is that there are others after the same buried treasure, including the recently paroled prison assassin Danny Kessel.

Naughty Neighbor


Janet Evanovich - 1992
    Red-hot screwball comedies, each and every one of them. Nine of these stories were originally published by the Loveswept line between the years 1988 and 1992. All immediately went out of print and could be found only at used bookstores and yard sales.I'm excited to tell you that those nine stories are now being re-released by HarperCollins. Naughty Neighbor is the eighth in the lineup, and it's presented here in almost original form. Usually when I edit these books I do some modernizing. For instance, I change VHS to DVD, and roller skates to Rollerblades, and sticks of gum are now pieces of gum. I do this because the books were meant to be contemporary (as opposed to historical), and I don't want the reader to have a time disconnect. In the beginning of the original Naughty Neighbor, my heroine throws a handheld phone into the toilet, and the next morning she goes into the bathroom and sees the "slim silver antenna caught between the toilet lid and seat." Okay, so most phones don't have extended antennas anymore, but I just loved the image . . . so I left it in. And I don't know how many women wear front-closure bras anymore, but that got left in, too.Naughty Neighbor is probably the most romancey of all the Loveswepts I wrote, but there's still a small mystery to unravel. Louisa Brannigan is a no-nonsense, hardworking press secretary, fighting her way to the top of Capitol Hill, with no help from her annoying neighbor, Pete Streeter. He receives phone calls all night long, he steals her morning paper, he thinks jeans are formal wear, and worst of all he's involved Louisa in the disappearance of a pig. So this is the story of a pig in Witness Protection and love being found by a workaholic woman and a fun-loving man who makes terrible pots of coffee.Enjoy!Janet Evanovich

The Trouble With Dying


Maggie Le Page - 2014
    A very bad start. She has no idea who she is or how she got there or why, and the biggest mystery of all is why she married the schmuck who wants her ventilator switched off.As if that's not enough Faith has a dead gran haunting her, a young daughter missing her, and one devilishly delicious man making her wish she could have a second chance at life. And maybe she can, if she finds a way back into her body and wakes up by Friday. But if she doesn't, this will be her last bad week--ever.Nate Sutherland decided long ago he'd settle for friendship if he couldn't have Faith's heart. But now, as she nears death, he's going to have to listen to his feelings in a whole new way--and act. Because if he doesn't, this week will be the worst damn week of his life. He'll lose everything he's ever loved.(This book is intended for readers aged 18+.)

Happenstance: A Frank Sherman Novel (Frank Sherman Thrillers Book 1)


Joel Austin - 2021