Book picks similar to
Dead Weight by Frank Kane


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The Chateau Hauntings: A Riveting Haunted House Mystery Boxset


James Hunt - 2021
    The estate is in disrepair, but one couple is determined to restore the estate to its former glory. But when strange accidents begin to become more dangerous, putting their crew’s lives at risk, the fixer-upper couple realize they might have bitten off more than they could chew.The Haunting of Calhoun MansionThree murders. One night. No convictions.Nicole Harper, a hospice nurse with a floundering marriage, is assigned a new patient in the remote Northwestern wilderness. But when Nic meets her new patient, she discovers the old woman's family history is as troubling as her medical condition.The Haunting of the Holloway FamilyA job opportunity has brought the Holloway family to a small desert town on the Arizona/California border in the middle of nowhere. But what is thought as a godsend soon devolves into a parent’s worst nightmare.

In a Small Motel


John D. MacDonald - 2017
    She owns a small motor-inn motel on a major highway in South Georgia. The summer heat is still strong in the waning days of October, and she is tired from a long summer season. As the evening progresses, Ginny’s motel begins to fill-up. There is Johnny Benton, a strange motel guest who insists on parking his car behind the motel, a would-be suitor named Don Ferris, a guest that is the catalyst for a long and frightening night, and then there is the dead husband whose long shadow is cast across Ginny’s life like a long heavy rain...

Karma


Walter Mosley - 2010
    He was a private investigator who had "decided to go from crooked to slightly bent," turning down the shady but lucrative work that New York's thugs and mobsters had long brought to his door. In "Karma," Walter Mosley tells us the story of the moment McGill decided to change his ways, when a seemingly classic femme fatale forced him to confront the reality of his life of corruption and betrayal. It was the culmination of a dark and tragic case that reached back through McGill's entire career, plumbing the full, complex history of the soul-scarred figure now hailed as "a poignantly real character . . . [and] a more than worthy successor to Philip Marlowe." (The Boston Globe) Originally published in Otto Penzler's anthology Dangerous Women, "Karma" was included in Best American Mystery Stories 2006, edited by Scott Turow.

Saving Baby


Gregg Bell - 2016
    But something’s not right. Monroe’s baby is weak and cries constantly. When Annie confronts Monroe about it, he goes into a rage and tells her to mind her own business. She tells her father but he thinks she’s exaggerating. Annie knows something is suspicious, but what? The next day she discovers something that makes her skin crawl. She nabs the baby and flees.Now she’s on the run. Her only hope is exposing Monroe’s deadly evil before it’s too late—for her and the baby. Take advantage of this special low price for a limited time!

Something Wicked: A Violet Carlyle and Friends Mystery (A Smith Investigates Mystery Book 1)


Beth Byers - 2021
    

Say It With Bullets


Richard Powell - 1953
    Leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, Bill Wayne journeys across the West to discover which one of his former army buddies shot him in the back and left him for dead.

Sleeper agent


John Birmingham - 2021
    Since the car accident that wiped his memories, Cooper has been...a little foggy. Cooper doesn’t know how to do much, but one thing he instinctively seems to know about is strength training, and with his help, Gainesville High’s football team has just won the Mid-States final. With Cooper the hero of the hour, the whole town is getting ready to celebrate in style.When three strangers crash the party and decide to pick on the harmless-looking guy carrying a cooler full of sodas, they trigger something inside Cooper. Afterwards, the folks in Gainesville can never look at him in quite the same way. Is he really just a regular guy who suffered a brain injury in a car crash, or is he someone else? Or something else?As Cooper tries to come to terms with baffling new memories, he’s about to be plunged into a terrifying world of secret experiments and covert assassins that will test his new-found abilities to the limit.

Death Comes to Cornwall


Kate Johnson - 2020
    The perfect place for murder... Molly Higgins never expected to be caught up in a murder investigation. All she'd hoped for this year was to work hard, save enough money to open her very own café on the Cornish coast and avoid her ex, Conor Blackstone, who has just arrived back in the village. But when she and Conor discover a body on the cliffside in Port Trevan they are thrown once more together. Molly is keen to leave the mystery to the police, but when she finds herself their top suspect, Molly has no choice but to catch the killer herself - before it is too late.

Solomon's Vineyard


Jonathan Latimer - 1941
    In this classic noir novel, a private eye from St. Louis, who likes his steak rare, his liquor hard, and his women fallen, arrives at the small town of Paulton to protect his wealthy client's daughter from a suspicious religious cult. Throughout the span of the case, he confronts Paulton's mob boss, avenges his partner's death, and falls for a classic femme fatale named Princess.

Bury in Haste


Jean Rowden - 2007
    

East of A (Payton Sherwood #1)


Russell Atwood - 1999
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Black Jack Justice: Dead Men Run


Gregg Taylor - 2015
    When it comes to deeply unqualified guardians of the moral high ground, it would be tough to find many that equaled Black Jack Justice and his erstwhile partner, Trixie Dixon, girl detective. But they will learn the hard way just how serious the sender was, and that in the end, only Dead Men Run.The his and hers private detectives of Decoder Ring Theatre’s long-running radio mysteries return to two-fisted prose adventure, delighting long-time fans and new readers alike with the classic, hard-boiled feel of their exploits.

Bangkok Cowboy


Ron McMillan - 2013
     Two days after private eye Mason sees a drunken Australian kicked to death in Bangkok’s notorious Soi Cowboy, he is approached by one of the men involved. Mobster Raymond Long owns nightclubs on the seedy sex strip and wants Mason to find his American accountant, who has disappeared, taking with her a computer hard drive. Mason is about to turn him down, when he realises the missing accountant is his friend Nathalie West. A British Army veteran of the Afghan war, Mason has seen his share of conflict - but finding out why Nathalie was secretly working for scum like Raymond Long pushes him beyond even his combat-hardened limits. Mason and his Thai partner Dixie urgently need to discover why the missing hard drive is so important – and to get to Nathalie before Long’s murderous gang find her. The arrival from Vancouver of a psychotic hitman representing Raymond Long’s mob bosses only adds to tension that mounts all the way to a late night climax on the banks of the Chao Phraya River. By the author of the critically-praised Yin Yang Tattoo, (Sandstone Press, 2010), Bangkok Cowboy is the first in a series of action-packed Mason & Dixie crime thrillers set within the grimy folds of one of the world’s great cities.

The Ice Cream Shop Detective: An Art Mystery


Ronnie Levine - 2014
    Twenty miles up the Hudson River from Manhattan and the contemporary art scene Lissa wants to avoid, Tarrytown has a charming Main Street where she can set up her easel and paint, immersed in her subject, the way her beloved French Impressionists did. Charismatic cop Nick Bellini, whose family owns the ice cream shop she's painting, soon notices her expertise and asks her to be on the lookout for phony masterpieces he's heard are being made in town. She hesitates, afraid of being sued by unhappy art collectors, but takes the plunge after seeing a questionable Monet in the home of a local power couple. The danger goes from professional to personal when, responding to a vague request for help from another artist, she walks into his studio and finds him dead. Is there a link to the forgeries? Is someone in the arts community a murderer? Will Lissa be the next target?

The Shetland Sea Murders


Marsali Taylor - 2021
    A fishing vessel has become trapped on the rocks off the coast of one of the islands.In the days that follow, there's both a shocking murder and a baffling death. On the surface there's no link, but when Cass becomes involved it is soon clear that her life is also in danger.Convinced that someone sinister is at work in these Shetland waters, Cass is determined to find and stop them. But uncovering the truth could prove to be deadly . .