Book picks similar to
Bleeding in Black and White by Colin Cotterill
historical-fiction
thriller
mysteries
humor
Spying in High Heels
Gemma Halliday - 2006
shoe designer, Maddie Springer, lives her life by three rules: Fashion. Fashion. Fashion. But when she stumbles upon the work of a brutal killer, her life takes an unexpected turn from Manolos to murder. And things only get worse when her boyfriend disappears - along with $20 million in embezzled funds - and her every move is suddenly under scrutiny by the LAPD's sexiest cop. With the help of her post-menopausal bridezilla of a mother, a 300 pound psychic and one seriously oversexed best friend, Maddie finds herself stepping out of her stilettos and onto the trail of a murderer. But can she catch a killer before the killer catches up to her...
The Pericles Commission
Gary Corby - 2010
His mission is to find the assassin of the statesman Ephialtes, the man who brought democracy to Athens and whose murder has thrown the city into uproar. It's a job not made any easier by the depressingly increasing number of dead witnesses.But murder and mayhem don't bother Nico; what's really on his mind is how to get closer (much closer) to Diotima, the intelligent and annoyingly virgin priestess of Artemis, and how to shake off his irritating twelve year-old brother Socrates.The Pericles Commission is the first in an exciting new series by first-time novelist Gary Corby, who takes us to Ancient Greece at one of the most exciting times in history. In this wonderfully approachable, historically rich novel, Athens is brought vividly to life in a mystery engaging from the first page to last.
The Vintage Caper
Peter Mayle - 2009
It’s also a lot of fun.The story begins high above Los Angeles, at the extravagant home and equally impressive wine cellar of entertainment lawyer Danny Roth. Unfortunately, after inviting the Los Angeles Times to write an extensive profile extolling the liquid treasures of his collection, Roth finds himself the victim of a world-class wine heist.Enter Sam Levitt, former corporate lawyer, cultivated crime expert, and wine connoisseur. Called in by Roth’s insurance company, which is now saddled with a multimillion-dollar claim, Sam follows his leads—to Bordeaux and its magnificent vineyards, and to Provence to meet an eccentric billionaire collector who might possibly have an interest in the stolen wines. Along the way, bien sûr, he is joined by a beautiful and erudite French colleague, and together they navigate many a château, pausing frequently to enjoy the countryside’s abundant pleasures.The unraveling of the ingenious crime is threaded through with Mayle’s seductive rendering of France’s sensory delights—from a fine Lynch-Bages and Léoville Barton to the bouillabaisse of Marseille and the young lamb of Bordeaux. Even the most sophisticated of oenophiles will learn a thing or two from this vintage work by a beloved author.
Mama Does Time
Deborah Sharp - 2008
Mama's antics - especially her penchant for finding trouble - drive her daughters Mace, Maddie and Marty to distraction.One night, while settling in to look for ex-beaus on COPS, Mace gets a frantic call from her mother. This time, the trouble's for real: Mama found a body in the trunk of her vintage convertible, and the police think she's the killer. It doesn't help that the handsome detective assigned to the case seems determined to prove Mama's guilt, or that the cowboy who broke Mace's heart shows up at the local Booze 'n' Breeze in the midst of the investigation. Before their mama lands in prison - just like an embarrassing lyric from a country-western song - Mace and her sisters must find the real culprit.MAMA DOES TIME is a traditional mystery with a comedic edge: Agatha Christie meets "My Name is Earl.''Penned by a native Floridian, set in cattle-and-citrus country, the story reveals an authentic slice of the state. Everyone knows Disney World and sexy South Beach. But how many know Florida's ranches, rodeo, and Southern-fried flavor, just fifty miles from the coast?
Hiding in the Bayou
Riley Blake - 2015
Convinced Carter didn’t commit the crime, Fortune turns to Ida Belle for help. In the meantime, Gertie tries a dangerous stunt and lands in the hospital. While there, she takes time to piece together a murder clearly executed by amateurs but the motive isn’t what it seems.
The House of Secrets
Brad Meltzer - 2016
He should know. Hazel's father is Jack Nash, the host of America's favorite conspiracy TV show, The House of Secrets.Even as a child, she loved hearing her dad's tall tales, especially the one about a leather book belonging to Benedict Arnold that was hidden in a corpse.Now, years later, Hazel wakes up in the hospital and remembers nothing, not even her own name. She's told she's been in a car accident that killed her father and injured her brother. But she can't remember any of it because of her own traumatic brain injury. Then a man from the FBI shows up, asking questions about her dad - and about his connection to the corpse of a man found with an object stuffed into his chest: a priceless book that belonged to Benedict Arnold.Back at her house, Hazel finds guns that she doesn't remember owning. On her forehead she sees scars from fights she can't recall. Most important, the more Hazel digs, the less she likes the person she seems to have been.Trying to put together the puzzle pieces of her past and present, Hazel Nash needs to figure out who killed this man - and how the book wound up in his chest. The answer will tell her the truth about her father, what he was really doing for the government - and who Hazel really is.Mysteries need to be solved. Especially the ones about yourself.
The Eternal Chamber
Tom Hunter - 2018
Archaeologist Samuel McCarthy is on the verge of a groundbreaking discovery, deep in the Egyptian desert...The treasure map has led him this far, but the ancient defenses and advanced cloaking technology guarding the cave prove impossible for one man to penetrate. Unfortunately, the men who answer his call for help may be more dangerous than the powerful artifacts buried deep underground…Antiquities Ministry staffer Shafira Khouri longs to trade her desk job for the dig site.But when an office overhaul turns deadly, she knows she’s her colleagues’ only hope of survival. After the ministry falls into enemy hands, she fears her first field assignment could be her last…If Samuel and Shafira can’t stop a shadowy organization from grabbing hold of a terrifying relic, the entire world could become ancient history. The Eternal Chamber: An Archaeological Thriller is the gripping first book in The Relics of the Deathless Souls series. If you like daring archaeologists, ancient riddles, and non-stop action, then you’ll love Tom Hunter’s rollicking tale.
Buy The Eternal Chamber to dig up a fun, fast-paced adventure today!
Paris in the Present Tense
Mark Helprin - 2017
Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour—a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust—must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present.In the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life—days bright with music, family, rowing on the Seine—Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and find a way forward. He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist a third his age. Against the backdrop of an exquisite and knowing vision of Paris and the way it can uniquely shape a life, he forges a denouement that is staggering in its humanity, elegance, and truth.In the intoxicating beauty of its prose and emotional amplitude of its storytelling, Mark Helprin’s Paris in the Present Tense is a soaring achievement, a deep, dizzying look at a life through the purifying lenses of art and memory.
Murderers and Nerdy Girls Work Late (Nerdy Girls Murder Mysteries)
Lisa Boero - 2013
Louis law firm. But Liz soon discovers that she has a few small problems: the body in the stairwell; the embezzlement at her firm; and the fact that the man she wants is engaged to someone else. And just how is she supposed to chase a murder suspect in heels? Minor details. Liz’s real problem is much bigger. Neurological defects don’t tend to make you popular, and she has a doozy. She can’t recognize faces. Not even her own. Fortunately, this is exactly the thing to turn Liz into the likeliest of unlikely detectives. She pays attention to all of the other details that normal people miss. Need someone to guess an occupation by the movement of the hands? Need someone to recognize a person by smell? Need someone to figure out that those shoes were bought on clearance at Macy’s last summer? Liz is your detective. Now she just has to harness her unusual skills to solve the case, expose the embezzlement, bring the murderer to justice and get the guy. Nothing a nerdy girl can’t handle.
Jackson Brodie 4-Book Bundle
Kate Atkinson - 2012
A former soldier and policeman, he makes his money working from investigating infidelity and finding missing cats. But Jackson's tough-guy exterior belies a deeply empathetic heart. He's unable to resist coming to the rescue and increasingly he becomes a magnet for the bereaved, the lost and the dysfunctional. Surrounded by death, intrigue and misfortune, his own life haunted by a family tragedy, the Jackson Brodie series begins as the investigator attempts to unravel three disparate case histories. He soon realizes, however, that in spite of apparent diversity, everything is connected. . . Now, with this four-volume eBook bundle, you can discover the novels that the New York Times has called “deliciously underhanded . . . and well worth waiting for.” “Atkinson’s detective novels are masterworks of character-driven plots and leisurely observation. But they are primarily triumphs of tone: sardonic, faithless, and dark as the inside of a cow. As a reader, you might come for the mystery, but you’ll return for the prose.” —The Globe and MailThis bundle includes: CASE HISTORIESONE GOOD TURNWHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG
Deadeye
Sam Llewellyn - 1990
As a result he is drawn into a world ruled by greed and violence. The author's other books include Death Roll and Hell Bay.
Piggy Monk Square
Grace M Jolliffe - 2005
Only two little girls know where he is but they’re too scared to tell. Time is running out for the policeman. Will the girls get help before it’s too late? Piggy Monk Square is a dark yet frequently very funny novel set in 1970's Liverpool. The action takes place in the volatile period before the Toxteth riots burned much of the inner city down. A BRITISH THRILLER This unusual yet very readable British thriller describes a world tainted with deep mistrust and hostility between the local people and the police force. This harsh world is viewed through the eyes of a nine-year-old girl, Rebecca. Rebecca’s world is changing. Her parents are fighting. Her teachers are cruel. She doesn’t know what to do and turns to her best friend Debbie more and more. But Debbie’s life is just as tough. With a father who is always dodging the police, and a mother who works her to the bone, Debbie is no Cinderella. The world these girls inhabit is no fairy tale, it is confusing and can be brutally violent. A TERRIFYING SECRET No wonder the girls mix reality with fantasy - it’s how they survive, especially when it comes to coping with what will soon become their terrifying secret. A secret that will infuse their childhood with fear and change their lives forever. The nightmare begins when Rebecca and Debbie are playing in the cellar of a derelict house. A policeman catches them there and warns them not to return to this dangerous old building. But they are both determined little girls with nowhere else to play, so they come back, again and again. Unfortunately for them so does the policeman. The policeman tries to chase the girls away, but he falls down a ladder and goes ‘asleep.’ The girls try to wake him but can’t. They want to get help but at the same time they know they shouldn’t have been playing in that cellar. They have learned not to trust the police and are so afraid of getting into trouble that they leave the injured policeman alone. NOWHERE TO TURN Wishful thinking makes the girls hope that he will get up and go of his own accord and that everything will be okay again. But when they return and find him still there, conscious but unable to move they find another way to help him. A way that doesn’t involve adults. But, their interpretation of ‘helping’ the dying policeman has terrible consequences for them all.
A Good Death
Christopher R. Cox - 2013
Linda Watts is a beautiful, talented Lao immigrant with a promising career—or she was, until she turns up dead in a cheap Bangkok guest house. Her death seems like a straightforward overdose to the Thai authorities, but her insurance company isn’t buying it. They hire Sebastian to travel halfway around the world to investigate, and so he finds himself completely out of place chasing faint leads through the broken streets of Bangkok.An award-winning journalist with decades of experience traveling in and reporting on Southeast Asia, Christopher Cox takes readers on a vibrant journey through a corrupt and labyrinthine police bureaucracy, a network of steamy Bangkok nightclubs, and grimy hostels to a place where you can you feel the humid air and smell the frying street food. Along the way, he sprinkles in elements of romance as Sebastian finds himself falling for the beautiful and captivatingly mysterious Linda, and camaraderie with his father’s wise-cracking old Army buddy, a source who proves invaluable in navigating the back streets. For Sebastian, it’s the assignment of a lifetime, a journey that will change him forever in this richly imagined, compelling debut perfect for fans of John Burdett and Colin Cotterill.
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher
Kate Summerscale - 2008
In June of 1860 three-year-old Saville Kent was found at the bottom of an outdoor privy with his throat slit. The crime horrified all England and led to a national obsession with detection, ironically destroying, in the process, the career of perhaps the greatest detective in the land.At the time, the detective was a relatively new invention; there were only eight detectives in all of England and rarely were they called out of London, but this crime was so shocking, as Kate Summerscale relates in her scintillating new book, that Scotland Yard sent its best man to investigate, Inspector Jonathan Whicher. Whicher quickly believed the unbelievable—that someone within the family was responsible for the murder of young Saville Kent. Without sufficient evidence or a confession, though, his case was circumstantial and he returned to London a broken man. Though he would be vindicated five years later, the real legacy of Jonathan Whicher lives on in fiction: the tough, quirky, knowing, and all-seeing detective that we know and love today…from the cryptic Sgt. Cuff in Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade. The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is a provocative work of nonfiction that reads like a Victorian thriller, and in it Kate Summerscale has fashioned a brilliant, multilayered narrative that is as cleverly constructed as it is beautifully written.
Death at La Fenice
Donna Leon - 1992
But the evil that does occasionally rear its head is the jurisdiction of Guido Brunetti, the suave, urbane vice-commissario of police and a genius at detection. Now all of his admirable abilities must come into play in the deadly affair of Maestro Helmut Wellauer, a world-renowned conductor who died painfully from cyanide poisoning during an intermission at La Fenice. But as the investigation unfolds, a chilling picture slowly begins to take shape--a detailed portrait of revenge painted with vivid strokes of hatred and shocking depravity. And the dilemma for Guido Brunetti will not be finding a murder suspect, but rather narrowing the choices down to one. . . .