Book picks similar to
E.Y.E. of the Scorpion by Cheryl Kaye Tardif


suspense
motorcycle-gangs
murder
private-investigator

Rancher Wolf's Obsession: (Rancher Wolves)


Serena Meadows - 2021
    

Her Last Day


T.R. Ragan - 2017
    Ragan, unlikely partners PI Jessie Cole and crime reporter Ben Morrison search for clues to a mystery buried in their own pasts—only to discover that sometimes the truth is better off buried.Ten years ago, PI Jessie Cole and reporter Ben Morrison each suffered a tragedy that changed their lives—and now these two strangers are about to share a nightmare.For Jessie, who makes her living finding missing persons, no case has consumed her more than the disappearance of her younger sister, Sophie. But left alone to raise Sophie’s daughter, she realizes that solving the case has become an unhealthy obsession.For Ben, a horrific car accident resulted in scars both physical and emotional—and amnesia that has made his life a mystery. But curiously, out of his shattered memories, there’s one person he recognizes without a doubt: Jessie’s sister. He just doesn’t know why. Yet.But Sophie isn’t the only phantom drawing Jessie and Ben together. An elusive serial murderer known as the Heartless Killer has reemerged from the shadows. His next move will cut even deeper into Jessie’s worst fears. And for Ben, what happens this time is going to be unforgettable.

City of Echoes


Robert Ellis - 2015
    Driven by the grisliness of the killing, Jones and his hot-tempered partner, Denny Cabrera, jump headfirst into the investigation. But as Jones uncovers evidence that links the crime to a brutal, ritualized murder that occurred eighteen months prior, he begins to suspect that there’s more going on beneath the surface. When Jones discovers shocking, deep-seated corruption; a high-level cover-up; and his own personal ties to the rising body count, he’s no longer sure he can trust anyone, even himself.

The River Is Dark


Joe Hart - 2013
    His career, the only thing he ever knew how to do well, is over. The single solace each day brings is the ever-growing contemplation of suicide. But when his estranged brother and sister-in-law are brutally murdered in their bucolic town set on the banks of the Mississippi River, he is drawn into an investigation surrounding a string of killings unlike anything he has ever seen before. The murderer is ruthless, cunning, and without conscience. Soon Liam learns that the river is dark. And so are its secrets.Contains explicit language and violence.

Brothers in Blood: The True Account of the Georgia Massacre


Clark Howard - 1983
    When Betty Isaacs walked out on her twelve kids, the youngest were packed off to foster-homes--divided up, Carl Isaacs recalls, ""like sticks of firewood."" He was ten then and from the time when, a few years ... More later, his mother told him he couldn't come back and live with her (""Don't let's rock the boat""), he didn't care about anything. Foster-homes, reform schools, escapes--it all led at 19 to a Maryland prison where, lo and behold, there was his half-brother Wayne Coleman, 26, a shiftless and somewhat dim character with a violent streak. Wayne's prison sidekick was a surprise: a black convict named George Dungee, Wayne's homosexual lover (to Carl, the ""nigger fuck-boy""), doing time for non-support(!). The trio escaped, picked up 15-year-old Billy isaacs (himself a reform school runaway, but trying to go straight), and headed south. Aimless travel eventually brought them to a rural road near Donalsonville, Ga., where they tried to burglarize a house trailer belonging to Jerry and Mary Alday. Various Alday family members showed up unexpectedly, but Wayne had a solution--""Let's blow 'em away."" It was a challenge and, insane as it seems, Carl couldn't back down:he was the leader, and his status with his brothers was all he had. Five male Aldays murdered; Mary Alday gang-raped and murdered. Once it started, Carl made certain the woman was his ticket to the electric chair--he wanted it, anything but being raped again himself by the black studs in the general prison population. Carl, Wayne, and George all drew death sentences but, ten years later, still languish on Death Row amid legal appeals, while at least one Alday relative regrets not having accepted an offer of a lynching. Howard (American Saturday, Zebra) tries hard to elevate this senseless tragedy into something more than a simple horror story--where-did-they-go-wrong flashbacks to Carl's and Billy's childhoods, interspersed with scenes of the hard-working, God-fearing Aldays--but everything other than the gore here seems manufactured. - Kirkus

Blood on the Tracks


Barbara Nickless - 2016
    But railroad police Special Agent Sydney Rose Parnell, brought in by the Denver Major Crimes unit to help investigate, can't shake the feeling that larger forces are behind this apparent crime of passion.In the depths of an icy winter, Parnell and her K9 partner, Clyde ― both haunted by their time in Iraq ― descend into the underground world of a savage gang of rail riders. There, they uncover a wide-reaching conspiracy and a series of shocking crimes. Crimes that threaten everything Parnell holds dear.As the search for the truth puts her directly in the path of the killer, Parnell must struggle with a deadly question: Can she fight monsters without becoming one herself?

Flirting with Forever (Flirting with the Finest, #1)


Kaye Kennedy - 2021
    And he definitely wasn’t supposed to fall for her. But it did. And he did. Now, he’ll do anything to protect her. Even if it costs him everything. Hunter When I’d caught the garter at a friend’s wedding, I hadn’t anticipated having sparks with the woman who’d caught the bouquet because that was a bad cliché, right? Things in Lauren’s life were...complicated. As for me, being a detective on the NYPD’s Special Investigations Task Force made having a relationship nearly impossible, so I’d decided we were better off as friends.Fast forward a year...Lauren stumbled into my undercover investigation of the Vosstaniye Bratva so, in an effort to keep my cover from being blown, I blurted out that she was my girlfriend.Huge.Epic.Mistake.Now, she’s been sucked into my investigation and I’ve fallen for her. Complicated or not, I have to convince Lauren that our fake relationship is anything but because we just might have a forever kind of love. But first, I have to keep her safe from the Russian mafia. No big deal, right? Wish me luck.Fall in love alongside Detective Hunter Albanese and Lauren Powers in this debut of a new series following members of the Special Investigations Task Force in New York City as they fight crime and fall in love.You'll recognize Lauren as Zoe's sister in Burning for Her, and Hunter plays a role in Burning for Love and Burning for Trouble. While this novel can certainly be read as a standalone, you'll get the most out of it having read the preceding series, Burning for the Bravest, which features NYC firefighters who love hard and make love harder.

You Should Have Known -- Free Preview (The First 4 Chapters)


Jean Hanff Korelitz - 2014
    Devoted to her husband, a pediatric oncologist at a major cancer hospital, their young son Henry, and the patients she sees in her therapy practice, her days are full of familiar things: she lives in the very New York apartment in which she was raised, and sends Henry to the school she herself once attended. Dismayed by the ways in which women delude themselves, Grace is also the author of a book You Should Have Known, in which she cautions women to really hear what men are trying to tell them. But weeks before the book is published a chasm opens in her own life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only an ongoing chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster, and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself. For readers of the best women's fiction. This is a free preview, not the full book.

A Wing and a Prayer


M.W. Arnold - 2020
    American Doris Winter, running from a personal tragedy, yearns for a new start. Naturally shy Mary Whitworth-Baines struggles to fit in. Together though, they are a force to be reckoned with as they face the mystery that confronts them.Against the backdrop of war, when ties of friendship are exceptionally strong, they strive to unravel the puzzle's complex threads, risking their lives as they seek justice for Betty's sister.

Warrior in the Shadows


Marcus Wynne - 2002
    The skills he learned in the Australian Special Air Service have carried over to his new life as an Aboriginal spiritual leader and contract killer for drug lord Jay Burrell. Alfie knows how to stalk and kill a victim, then disappear without a trace. But it's the ritualistic murders and the devouring of his victims during the Aboriginal ceremony that send a clear message to Burrell's enemies.Charley Payne was losing it. He had spent his life as a door kicker for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the world's hot spots. When his friend, Police Detective Sergeant Bobby Lee Martaine realized that Charley was becoming a danger to himself and his missions, Bobby Lee offered him a job. Trading in his guns for a camera, Charley finds his new life as a forensic photographer in the Twin Cities uneventful and peaceful—just what he needed, until Charley is called in to photograph a gruesome murder scene.There are no fingerprints and only one clue, a bizarre Aboriginal painting. Most in the police department begin to suspect a serial killer is on the loose. Bobby Lee is closing in on Alfie, but Alfie learned in the SAS that a mission is not complete if you've left a trail behind. When Bobby Lee and his family turn up dead, Charley returns to the way of the gun. But he will be fighting a war on the spiritual leader's turf in the Australian outback. A fight to the death that took place in the Aboriginal dream world five centuries before.

New Orleans Mourning


Julie Smith - 1992
    Amant has been crowned Rex, King of Carnival. But his day of glory comes to an abrupt and bloody end when a parade-goer dressed as Dolly Parton guns him down. Is the killer his aimless, promiscuous daughter Marcelle? Homosexual, mistreated son Henry? Helpless, alcoholic wife Bitty? Or some unknown player? Turns out the king had enemies...Enter resourceful heroine Skip Langdon, a rookie police officer and former debutante turned cynic of the Uptown crowd. Scouring the streets for clues, interviewing revelers and street people with names like Jo Jo, Hinky, and Cookie, and using her white glove contacts, the post-deb rebel cop encounters a tangled web of brooding clues and ancient secrets that could mean danger for her—and doom for the St. Amants.

The Girl Who Stole the Apple


Peter Tickler - 2016
     A little girl dressed in a Snow White costume walks into a store and steals an apple . . . then the store blows up. One of the staff, Maggie Rogers, is conveniently out of the store when all this happens. Maggie turns out to have a past full of secrets and betrayal, and attracts the attention of the police as well as more sinister forces. Maggie and the little girl end up on the run, not knowing who’s on their side or even what their pursuers really want. Then they seem to have reached the end of the line. Nowhere else to run, nowhere else to hide. Maggie and the little girl face a desperate struggle for survival. Find out the answers in this beautifully written novel which will take you on a darkly gripping journey to a surprising end. Great for fans of Gillian Flynn, Ian McEwan or Paula Hawkins who love fast-paced suspense thrillers Also by Peter Tickler: DEAD IN THE WATER.

The Concrete Vineyard


Cam Lang - 2020
    Thinking he might be out of his depth he is happy to enlist the aid of his friend, Kris Gage. But when Dee reads the deceased's last entry in his diary, 'time to take care of K. Gage', he becomes torn between investigation and friendship.As an urban planner, Gage understands real estate and the bureaucracy of planning. Following the money, he soon finds himself in the middle of corrupt developers who seek to take all the charm out of the area. Over two hundred years after the War of 1812, is Niagara-on-the-Lake, once again, on-the-Take?The Concrete Vineyard is an intriguing and unique whodunit. Packing an intellectual punch, this smart murder/mystery will have you guessing and gripped! If you like great characters, clever plots and intelligent storytelling, then you'll love this creative and thought-provoking novel.

The Bone House


Brian Freeman - 2011
    Last year, accusations of a torrid affair with a student cost Mark his teaching job and made the young couple into outcasts in their remote island town off the Lake Michigan coast. Now another teenage girl is found dead on a deserted beach. . . and once again, Mark faces a hostile town convinced of his guilt.Hilary Bradley is determined to prove that Mark is innocent, but she’s on a lonely, dangerous quest. Even when she discovers that the murdered girl was witness to a horrific crime years earlier, the police are certain she’s throwing up a smoke screen to protect her husband. Only a quirky detective named Cab Bolton seems willing to believe Hilary’s story.Hilary and Cab soon find that people in this community are willing to kill to keep their secrets hidden—and to make sure Mark doesn’t get away with murder. And with each shocking revelation, even Hilary begins to wonder whether her husband is truly innocent. Freeman’s first stand-alone thriller since his Stride novels is a knockout.

Love Kills


Dan Greenburg - 1978
    The man behind her in the dark overcoat memorizes the address on her check. When she leaves the A&P, he follows her home. In the next few weeks he tracks her every move . . . and when she rebuffs his advances, he stabs her.Five women, chosen at random, fall victim to a man the press dubs the Hyena. The NYPD has no leads until young Babette Watson walks into homicide detective Max Segal’s office. She tells him she’s had disturbing visions of all the crimes before they happened. Dubious, Max takes a chance in believing the pretty psychic, and it isn’t long before they’re on the Hyena’s trail. But the Hyena knows they’re tracking him, and it won’t be long before he strikes.Like Fear Itself and Exes, Dan Greenburg’s other bestselling thrillers, Love Kills is a terrifyingly realistic, darkly humorous, startlingly sexual, street-tough novel with a surprising climax.