Book picks similar to
Dope Thief by Dennis Tafoya
crime
mystery
fiction
thriller
The Gun Seller
Hugh Laurie - 1996
Within hours Lang is butting heads with a Buddha statue, matching wits with evil billionaires, and putting his life (among other things) in the hands of a bevy of femmes fatales, whilst trying to save a beautiful lady ...and prevent an international bloodbath to boot.
Hunter's Moon
Don Hoesel - 2010
Facing a messy divorce and doubting his talent as a writer, CJ is forced to confront secrets that have tormented him since childhood. To complicate matters, his brother Graham is running for a Senate seat, and the family is intent on keeping their most damaging secret in the family, for fear the truth, were it found out, would ruin Graham's chances at winning. But with CJ airing their dirty laundry in his books, the family is forced to deal with him. They decide on a familiar method for handling the problem: a hunting trip, and just the setting for an accident to happen. CJ must find a way to avoid being killed while exposing their toxic family secret, regardless of Graham's lofty ambitions. More important, CJ must come to terms with the newfound faith that compelled him to return to Adelia in the first place.
Signal Red
Robert Ryan - 2010
The group lay low in a nearby farm but, panicked by the police closing in they clear out, leaving behind numerous fingerprints. Outraged by the gang's audacity and under political pressure for quick arrests, the police move into top gear. As huge quantities of money start to turn up in forests and phone boxes, dumped by nervous middlemen, Scotland Yard begin to track down the robbers, one by one...
The Godwulf Manuscript
Robert B. Parker - 1973
He is hardly surprised that his only clue is a radical student with four bullets in his chest.The cops are ready to throw the book at the pretty blond coed whose prints are all over the murder weapon but Spenser knows there are no easy answers. He tackles some very heavy homework and knows that if he doesn't finish his assignment soon, he could end up marked "D" -- for dead.
Fun & Games
Duane Swierczynski - 2011
His latest gig comes replete with an illegally squatting B-movie actress who rants about hit men who specialize in making deaths look like accidents. Unfortunately, it's the real deal. Hardie finds himself squared off against a small army of the most lethal men in the world: The Accident People.It's nothing personal-the girl just happens to be the next name on their list. For Hardie, though, it's intensely personal. He's not about to let more innocent people die. Not on his watch.
A Swollen Red Sun
Matthew McBride - 2014
And he takes it. Banks knows what he did was wrong, but he did it for all the right reasons. At least, he thinks so. But for every wrong, there is a consequence.Jerry Dean can’t afford to lose that $52,000—he owes it to his partners, a crooked cop, and the fearsome Reverend Butch Pogue, who controls the town’s meth production with an iron fist. With the looming threat of prison or death—depending on who catches him first—Jerry Dean makes a final attempt to save himself, setting into a motion a series events that shake even Gasconade Country’s most degenerate citizens.
The Moving Target
Ross Macdonald - 1949
Now one of Sampson's friends may have arranged his kidnapping.Lew Archer follows the clues from the canyon sanctuaries of the mega-rich to jazz joints where you get beaten up between sets.Welcome to the first Lew Archer, private investigator - a roving conscience who walks the treacherous frontier between criminal guilt and human sin. You are sure to find that Ross Macdonald's "The Moving Target" blends sex, greed, and family hatred into an explosively readable crime novel.
The Scarlatti Inheritance
Robert Ludlum - 1971
But his defection entails the release of the ultra-top-secret file on the Scarlatti Inheritance - a file whose contents will destroy many of the Western world's greatest and most illustrious reputations if they are made known...THE SCARLATTI INHERITANCE is a spellbinding story of international terror and intrigue, greed and cunning, suspense and murder.
Hot Money
Dick Francis - 1987
Nor did he expect his latest wife to be brutally murdered. All the clues suggest the killer comes from close to home - but after five marriages and nine children, that still leaves the field wide open. When he finds his own life in danger, Pembroke entrusts his safety to his estranged son, Ian, an amateur jockey; and through him discovers a compulsive new outlet for his financial expertise. Soon he's playing the international bloodstock market for incredible stakes. Not the safest bet for a man on the run from avaricious relatives. Particularly when one of them got a bomb...
The Neon Rain
James Lee Burke - 1987
Lost without his wife's love, Robicheaux's haunted soul mirrors the intensity and dusky mystery of New Orleans' French Quarter -- the place he calls home, and the place that nearly destroys him when he becomes involved in the case of a young prostitute whose body is found in a bayou. Thrust into the world of drug lords and arms smugglers, Robicheaux must face down a subterranean criminal world and come to terms with his own bruised heart in order to survive.
Detective Inspector Huss
Helene Tursten - 1998
Irene Huss finds herself embroiled in a complex and high-stakes investigation. As Huss and her team begin to uncover the victim’s hidden past, they are dragged into Sweden’s seamy underworld of street gangs, struggling immigrants, and neo-Nazis in order to catch the killer.
The Monkey's Raincoat
Robert Crais - 1987
A quiet and seemingly submissive wife, Ellen can't even write a check without him. All she wants is to get him and her son back—no questions asked. The search for Ellen's errant husband leads Elvis into the seamier side of Hollywood. He soon learns that Mort Lang is a down-on-his-luck talent agent who associates with a schlocky movie producer, and the last place he was spotted was at a party thrown by a famous and very well-connected ex-Matador. But no one has seen him since—including his B-movie girlfriend.At the same time the police find Mort in his parked car with four gunshots in his chest —and no kid in sight—Ellen disappears. Now nothing is what it seems, and the heat is on. It's up to Elvis Cole and his partner Joe Pike to find the connection between sleazy Hollywood players and an ex-Matador.
The 7th Month
Lisa Gardner - 2012
should be taking it easy. Instead, she accepts a small consulting role on the set of a serial killer film shooting in Boston. D.D. figures she’ll be useful to someone for at least one night, serving as a police expert and making a little extra money in the bargain.It seems like a simple task—until the previous film consultant, a former Boston cop, is found beaten to death. Suddenly D.D.’s date with Hollywood gets serious. Extremely pregnant, on the trail of a killer, and surrounded by a hundred and four murder suspects in the middle of a graveyard, D.D. must quickly unravel a tangled web of lies. As another cast member is attacked, D.D. realizes that like it or not, her priorities have changed—and her last desperate hope is that she can catch a killer before she and her unborn baby face mortal danger.
The Big Clock
Kenneth Fearing - 1946
in the heyday of Henry Luce. One day, before heading home to his wife in the suburbs, Stroud has a drink with Pauline, the beautiful girlfriend of his boss, Earl Janoth. Things happen. The next day Stroud escorts Pauline home, leaving her off at the corner just as Janoth returns from a trip. The day after that, Pauline is found murdered in her apartment.Janoth knows there was one witness to his entry into Pauline’s apartment on the night of the murder; he knows that man must have been the man Pauline was with before he got back; but he doesn’t know who he was. Janoth badly wants to get his hands on that man, and he picks one of his most trusted employees to track him down: George Stroud, who else?How does a man escape from himself? No book has ever dramatized that question to more perfect effect than The Big Clock, a masterpiece of American noir.
Girl Missing
Tess Gerritsen - 1994
She's young. She's beautiful. And her corpse, laid out in the office of Boston medical examiner Kat Novak, betrays no secrets - except for a notebook clutched in one stiff hand, seven numbers scrawled inside. The next body is a warning. When a second victim is discovered, Kat begins to fear that a serial killer is stalking the city streets: a shadowy madman without mercy or apparent motive. The police are skeptical. The mayor won't listen. And Kat's chief suspect is one of the city's most prominent citizens. The final body . . . might be hers. With the death toll rising, Kat races to expose a deadly conspiracy and the brutal killer at its heart - a killer who will stalk her from the dangerous streets of the inner city to the corridors of power. Because he's closer than she ever dreamt. And every move she makes could be her very last.