For Nothing


Nicholas Denmon - 2011
    Motivated by justice and revenge, he seeks out the assassin that laid his friend Jack low.Professional killer Rafael Rontego traverses the deadly politics of Buffalo’s mafia underbelly. In a city whose winter can be just as deadly as those wielding power, Rontego tries to stay ahead of the game.Their two worlds collide in this epic thriller that takes the reader on a search for self, justice, and truth.

A Perry Mason Casebook: The Gilded Lily / The Daring Decoy / The Fiery Fingers / The Lucky Loser


Erle Stanley Gardner - 1993
    The case of the sulky girl -- The case of the careless kitten -- The case of the fiery fingers.

Death by Station Wagon


Jon Katz - 1993
    He’s got a wife and two kids, a mortgage and a station wagon, and an office in the American Way Mall tucked between a furniture store and a sneaker emporium. And he’s got a modest caseload of the kind a quiet suburban town generates: deadbeat dads, insurance malingerers...until now. Two popular high school students have been found dead on a deserted estate. The police call it murder-suicide, a case of love gone sour, but the dead boy’s friends think otherwise—and they’ve hired Kit to prove the cops wrong. Soon bizarre acts of violence and murder terrorize the town, and Kit begins to uncover corrosive secrets beneath suburbia’s placid surface. The closer Kit comes to answers, the more perilous the case becomes, till Kit stands in danger of losing his detective license... and his life.

In a Lonely Place


Dorothy B. Hughes - 1947
    The suggestively named Dix Steele, a cynical vet with a chip on his shoulder about the opposite sex, is the LAPD's top suspect. Dix knows enough to watch his step, especially since his best friend is on the force, but when he meets the luscious Laurel Gray—a femme fatale with brains—something begins to crack. The basis for extraordinary performances by Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame in the 1950 film version of the book, In a Lonely Place tightens the suspense with taut, hard-boiled prose and stunningly undoes the conventional noir plot.

Oakdale Confidential


Anonymous - 2006
    This is the scandal they can't ignore.It's a major event in Oakdale -- a black-tie gala honoring the Marron family's fifty years of support for Oakdale's Memorial Hospital. But high spirits are cut short when patron of honor Gregory Marron Jr. is delivered in his limo dead on arrival, from an apparent heart attack. Three women in the crowd have reasons of their own to suspect murder. . . .Event organizer Katie Peretti never understood her boyfriend Mike Kasnoff's reasons for not attending the party -- until now. Wrongly implicated in a crime against the Marrons, Mike served a stiff sentence, and has nursed a simmering rage ever since. Maddie Coleman, the teenaged sister of the limo's driver, Henry, knows that her brother owed Marron thirty-thousand dollars. She also knows he couldn't pay him back, and had only one recourse for permanently erasing the debt. Carly Snyder's suspicions are more personal. The wife of police detective Jack Snyder, Carly was one of Marron's mistresses. In a heated moment she wanted her shameful past dead and buried -- a wish her husband possibly honored.Now Katie, Maddie, and Carly, each of them desperate to protect the man they love, are crossing paths in an investigation that's uncovering more poisonous secrets in Oakdale than they ever imagined. The means, motives, and suspects are shifting with each new twist -- and one of these determined women may not live to see the killer revealed.

The Whites


Harry Brandt - 2015
    Branded as a loose cannon by his higher-ups, Billy spent years enduring one dead-end posting after another. Now in his early forties, he has somehow survived and become a sergeant in Manhattan Night Watch, a small team of detectives charged with responding to all post-midnight felonies from Wall Street to Harlem. Mostly, his unit acts as little more than a set-up crew for the incoming shift, but after years in police purgatory, Billy is content simply to do his job.Then comes a call that changes everything: Night Watch is summoned to the four a.m. fatal slashing of a man in Penn Station, and this time Billy's investigation moves beyond the usual handoff to the day tour. And when he discovers that the victim was once a suspect in the unsolved murder of a twelve-year-old boy-a savage case with connections to the former members of the Wild Geese-the bad old days are back in Billy's life with a vengeance, tearing apart enduring friendships forged in the urban trenches and even threatening the safety of his family.Razor-sharp and propulsively written, The Whites introduces Harry Brandt-a new master of American crime fiction.

Unknown Remains: A Novel


Peter Leonard - 2016
    Outside his office window, Jack hears a booming sound, and then the worst thing imaginable. He works in the World Trade Center, and it is September 11, 2001.His wife in Connecticut, Diane, is visited the next day by a grief counselor, and then the mob, where she learns her husband owes them $750,000. Their personal bank accounts have been emptied. She’s totally and utterly broke. Lost in grief and now shock, Diane soon learns her husband was not the loving spouse he appeared to be. But neither is she, owing to that Beretta she keeps tucked into her handbag.The perfect summer read, Unknown Remains boasts an exciting crime story, inventive plot twists, and a cast of rogues, who just might be using a national tragedy to cover up their own deep transgressions and greed.

The Second Girl


David Swinson - 2016
    A decorated former police detective, he retired early and now ekes a living as a private eye for a defense attorney. Frank Marr may be the best investigator the city has ever known, but the city doesn't know his dirty secret. A long-functioning drug addict, Frank has devoted his considerable skills to hiding his usage from others. But after accidentally discovering a kidnapped teenage girl in the home of an Adams Morgan drug gang, Frank becomes a hero and is thrust into the spotlight. He reluctantly agrees to investigate the disappearance of another girl--possibly connected to the first--and the heightened scrutiny may bring his own secrets to light, too. Frank is as slippery and charming an antihero as you've ever met, but he's also achingly vulnerable. The result is a mystery of startling intensity, a tightly coiled thriller where every scene may turn disastrous. The Second Girl is the crime novel of the season, and the start of a refreshing new series from an author who knows the criminal underworld inside and out.

Slip & Fall


Nick Santora - 2007
    He needs money. Fast.Desperate, he approaches his wiseguy cousin Jackie with an insurance scheme--a way for the Mob to collect from guys who owe but can't pay, and a chance for Robert to use his law degree to make a few quick bucks when he needs it most.Robert thinks it will be a one-time thing. It isn't. The scheme works well--too well. The money flows, the violence escalates, and Robert soon learns that getting out of a deal with the Mafia isn't exactly easy...especially when the FBI is onto you.

Gone Girl: by Gillian Flynn -- Review


Expert Book Reviews - 2013
    After losing their writing jobs in New York City, Nick and Amy Dunne discover that their perfect relationship is not as solid as it seems. Nick decides to move to Carthage, Missouri to care for his ill parents, and Amy figures out that her parents have been depleting her trust account to recover from their own financial hardships. Despite her resentment, Amy purchases a bar for her husband and his twin sister with the remaining money from her trust fund. The suspense in Gone Girl revolves around the disappearance of Amy Dunne and the accusations against her husband. This literary review of Flynn's novel Gone Girl covers the good and the bad to give you a comprehensive view of the story. Readers enjoy a suspenseful mystery while witnessing the complications of marriage from the two narratives of husband and wife. This review explains what you can gain from reading Gone Girl, and describes the type of reader who will enjoy this novel. Discover secrets kept by Amy Dunne as you encounter unexpected plot twists and surprising outcomes in Flynn's latest novel.

Gorky Park


Martin Cruz Smith - 1981
    Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and New York police as he performs the impossible--and tries to stay alive doing it.

Fell of Dark


Reginald Hill - 1971
    Then two girls are found murdered in the high fells, and suddenly there's no doubt about it. He's running. Set in his native Cumberland, this was Reginald Hill's very first novel and its cleverly interwoven strands of detective story, psychological thriller and Buchanesque adventure prefigure much that in the intervening decades has taken him into the topmost ranks of British crime fiction.

The Mordida Man


Ross Thomas - 1981
    In retaliation, the Libyans kidnap the U.S. President's brother. Enter the Mordida Man--an independent fixer and bribery expert who must find and free the President's brother . . . without causing an international incident.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Book Two


Catherine Edwards Sadler - 1981
    The sign of the four --The adventure of the blue carbuncle --The adventure of the speckled band.

The William Kent Krueger Collection #2: Blood Hollow, Mercy Falls, and Copper River


William Kent Krueger - 2013
    Despite Solemn's self-incriminating decision to go into hiding, Cork O'Connor, Aurora, Minnesota's former sheriff, isn't about to hang the crime on a kid he's convinced is innocent. In an uphill battle to clear Solemn's name, Cork encounters no shortage of adversity. Mercy Falls: Sheriff Cork O’Connor is called to investigate a mutilated body found perched above the raging waters of Mercy Falls. The victim is Eddie Jacoby, a Chicago businessman involved in negotiating an unpopular contract between his management firm and the local Indian casino. Sparks fly when the wealthy Jacoby family hires a beautiful investigator to consult on the case. But once Cork discovers ties between one of the Jacoby sons and his own wife, Jo, he begins to suspect that the events in Aurora have a darker, more personal motive than he could ever have imagined. Copper River: Sheriff Cork O’Connor is running for his life from professional hit men who have already put a bullet through his leg. Desperate, he finds sanctuary outside a small town called Bodine on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in an old resort owned by his cousin, a bitter widow whose husband may have been killed by cops. When the body of a young girl surfaces along the banks of the Copper River and another teenager vanishes, Cork must choose between helping to solve these deadly mysteries and thwarting the hit men who draw closer to him with every hour.