Book picks similar to
Dangerous Undertaking by Mark de Castrique


mystery
north-carolina
mystery-suspense
mysteries

Force of Habit


James Scott Bell - 2012
    Sinners beware.Just who is Sister Justicia Marie? And what is she doing to some of the toughest thugs in L.A.? When a nun is viciously attacked, Sister Justicia takes it upon herself to find out what happened. The cops don't like that. Neither does her Mother Superior at St. Cecelia's. But when a couple of hoods try to stick up a liquor store and Sister J brings them down, something is unleashed inside her...something that will either confirm her calling . . . or destroy it. From "one of the best writers out there, bar none" (Library Review) comes the start of a new series featuring a heroine unlike any other in crime fiction--Sister Justicia Marie, rogue nun. If criminals are the knuckles, she is the ruler. So be good. An original novelette from national bestselling suspense author James Scott Bell.

Glazed Murder


Jessica Beck - 2010
    After her divorce from Max, an out-of-work actor she’s dubbed “The Great Impersonator,” Suzanne decided to pursue her one true passion in life: donuts. So she cashed in her settlement and opened up shop in the heart of her beloved hometown.But when a dead body is dumped on her doorstep like a sack of flour, Suzanne’s cozy little shop becomes an all-out crime scene. Now, everyone in town is dropping by for glazed donuts and gruesome details. The retired sheriff warns her to be careful—and they’re all suspects. Soon Suzanne—who finds snooping as irresistible as donuts—is poking holes in everyone’s alibis…

Artifacts


Mary Anna Evans - 2003
    No one knows how Faye's great-great-grandmother Cally, a newly freed slave barely out of her teens, came to own Joyeuse in the aftermath of the Civil War. No one knows how her descendants hung onto it through Reconstruction, world wars, the Depression, and Jim Crow, but Faye has inherited the island plantation--and the family tenacity. When the property taxes rise beyond her means, she sets out to save Joyeuse by digging for artifacts on her property and the surrounding National Wildlife Refuge and selling them on the black market. A tiny bit of that dead glory would pay a year's taxes. A big valuable chunk of the past would save her home forever.But instead of potsherds and arrowheads, she uncovers a woman's shattered skull, a Jackie Kennedy-style earring nestled against its bony cheek. Faye is torn. If she reports the forty-year-old murder, she'll reveal her illegal livelihood, thus risking jail and the loss of Joyeuse. She doesn't intend to let that happen, so she probes into the dead woman's history , unaware that the past is rushing up on her like a hurricane across deceptively calm Gulf waters. Because the killer is still close at hand, ready to kill again to keep his secrets dead and buried.

Front Page Fatality


LynDee Walker - 2013
    She assumes it will be routine, a scene like many other accidents she's covered.She's wrong.This was no ordinary accident.And as Nichelle digs deeper into the case, people and evidence begin to disappear. Someone is one step ahead of her, desperate to cover their tracks. A master criminal with a deadly secret, who will stop at nothing to keep the truth hidden...But as she draws closer to unraveling the mystery of two dead cops, Nichelle realizes she's become the next target. Can she survive this murderous game of cat and mouse long enough to solve the mystery? Or will Nichelle fall prey to a killer?

Bootlegger's Daughter


Margaret Maron - 1992
    Known for her knowledge of the region's past and popular with the locals, Deb is asked by 18-year-old Gayle Whitehead to investigate the unsolved murder of her mother Janie, who died when Gayle was an infant. While visiting the owner of the property where Janie's body was found, Deb learns of Janie's more-than-promiscuous past. Piecing together lost clues and buried secrets Deb is introduced to Janie's darker side, but it's not until another murder occurs that she uncovers the truth.

Las Vegas Girl


Leslie Wolfe - 2018
    In the middle of a city with two million residents and 43 million annual visitors, they’re hunting for a killer. The crime: audacious In a glamorous Las Vegas hotel, in front of hundreds of witnesses and under the lenses of countless video surveillance cameras, a young girl is brutally murdered. What promises to be a quick and easy investigation soon becomes a nightmare. The most recorded crime in Vegas is missing one key protagonist, the killer. The forensics: stupefyingA crime-scene fingerprint unleashes dozens of unsettling questions instead of providing answers. Was this a murder for hire? In the politically-charged case, the scenario seems plausible; the victim’s secret life could’ve been the obstacle in an ambitious politician’s path. As the investigation unspools the well-concealed secrets surrounding the girl’s life, Baxter and Holt attract the attention of someone desperate to keep history’s terrible secrets buried. The truth: shockingA testimony from beyond the grave turns into a death warrant for the two unrelenting detectives. While they expose a connection with the victim’s distant past that could hold the key to catching her killer, they must learn to rely on each other to survive. Two mavericks make an intriguing team. Baxter and Holt trust each other with their lives, only not with their darkest secrets.

Three Dogs in a Row


Neil S. Plakcy - 2017
    In IN DOG WE TRUST, Steve Levitan has returned to his hometown of Stewart's Crossing, in picturesque Bucks County, Pennsylvania, after a bad divorce and a brief prison term for computer hacking. While he’s getting his life back together, trying to start a new career in technical writing and reporting regularly to his parole officer, he becomes friendly with his next-door neighbor, Caroline Kelly, and her golden retriever, Rochester. When Caroline is killed, Steve’s high-school pal, the local police detective, asks him to become the dog’s temporary guardian. With canine charm and doggy love, Rochester begins to win Steve over, and these two unlikely sleuths work to uncover the mystery behind Caroline’s death. The second book in the series is THE KINGDOM OF DOG. When his mentor, Joe Dagorian, director of admissions at prestigious Eastern College, is murdered during a fund-raising event, Steve Levitan feels obliged to investigate. He and his golden retriever, Rochester, go nose to the ground to dig up clues, including a bloody knife and some curious photographs. But will Steve’s curiosity and Rochester’s savvy save them when the killer comes calling? It’s almost time for graduation in book three, DOG HELPS THOSE, and Eastern College is in trouble. A prominent alumna is dead, and a faulty computer program is jeopardizing student records and financial aid. It’s up to Steve and Rochester to dig into the situation and retrieve the culprits! Rita Gaines wasn’t a nice person—but she did love her dogs, and most of her clients respected her financial acumen and her talent in training dogs for agility trials. When she’s found dead, there’s a long line of potential suspects from Wall Street whiz kids to doting doggie daddies-- including one of Steve’s former students. Felae is an art prodigy now studying with Steve’s girlfriend, Lili, chair of Eastern’s Fine Arts department, and Rita hated his controversial senior project. When she tried to have his scholarship cancelled, he threatened to kill her. But is he the villain behind her death? In between helping Steve’s high school friend Rick track the killer, Rochester practices darting around weave poles and jumping over limbo poles while Steve helps shepherd the college toward the completion of another academic year. It’s spring in Stewart’s Crossing, and old friends – and their dogs—gather together to investigate and eventually, to celebrate.

Breaking Cover


J.D. Rhoades - 2008
    Did he go native, or was he discovered and killed? When Tony Wolf is finally driven out into the open, torn from deep cover during the rescue of two kidnapped children, he becomes the number one target of both the vicious biker gang he double-crossed and a massive Federal manhunt.But Tony’s tired of being the hunted, and as both the gang and a traitorous FBI agent converge on a small southern town, they’re all about to learn a hard lesson: When the Wolf breaks cover, he doesn’t always run away.Sometimes he comes straight at your throat.J.D. Rhoades has written his most compelling thriller to date--a pulse-pounding novel that leaps off the page and will leave readers begging for more.

Freezer Burn


Gayle Carline - 2009
    What she does like are clean houses, and dirty martinis. She recently traded in her housecleaning business for a P.I. license. Her timing seems perfect, when she cleans a former client's freezer and finds a severed hand inside, wearing an expensive ring. The client, Benny Needles, is a Dean Martin fanatic who swears he's innocent. But where there's a hand, there's a body, waiting to be found.It's a brand new world for Peri, and she has a lot to learn. Her boyfriend, Skip, a detective in the Placentia Police Department warns Peri that this case could be dangerous, but she can't stop sticking her nose into the middle of things. Her first lesson is that investigating murder can have bad consequences. In the middle of trying to solve the case, Peri takes on a surveillance job. The philandering husband is unhappy with her, and she discovers that even surveillance isn't always low risk. As the two cases collide, will Peri learn the truth behind both of them? And more important, will she ever get that dirty martini?

The Deep End


Julie Mulhern - 2015
    It’s 1974 and Ellison Russell’s life revolves around her daughter and her art. She’s long since stopped caring about her cheating husband, Henry, and the women with whom he entertains himself. That is, until she becomes a suspect in Madeline Harper’s death. The murder forces Ellison to confront her husband’s proclivities and his crimes—kinky sex, petty cruelties and blackmail. As the body count approaches par on the seventh hole, Ellison knows she has to catch a killer. But with an interfering mother, an adoring father, a teenage daughter, and a cadre of well-meaning friends demanding her attention, can Ellison find the killer before he finds her?

Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark


Tilly Bagshawe - 2012
    Written in the inimitable Sheldon style and based on extensive, never before published material from his private archives, Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark is a thrilling tale of murder, lies, and lust that the master storyteller--the bestselling author of Master of the Game, The Other Side of Midnight, and so many other beloved classics--would have been proud to have called his own. With Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark, a gripping, stylish, sexy and surprising story of a son's globe-hopping hunt for answers about his wealthy father's brutal death, confirmed Sheldon fans have good reason to rejoice. The legacy truly lives on.

Unleashed


Emily Kimelman - 2011
    This left him unconscious on the floor of my home. Amazingly, this bullet did not kill him. Ten years ago I adopted Blue as a present to myself after I broke up with my boyfriend one hot, early summer night with the windows open and the neighborhood listening. The next morning I went straight to the pound in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Articles on buying your first dog tell you never to buy a dog on impulse. They want you to be prepared for this new member of your family, to understand the responsibilities and challenges of owning a dog. Going to the pound because you need something in your life that's worth holding onto is rarely, if ever, mentioned. I asked the man at the pound to show me the biggest dogs they had. He showed me some seven-week-old Rottweiler-German shepherd puppies that he said would grow to be quite large. Then he showed me a six-month-old shepherd that would get pretty big. Then he showed me Blue, the largest dog they had. The man called him a Collie mix and he was stuffed into the biggest cage they had, but he didn't fit. He was as tall as a Great Dane but much skinnier, with the snout of a collie, the markings of a Siberian husky, the ears and tail of a shepherd and the body of a wolf, with one blue eye and one brown. Crouched in a sitting position, unable to lie down, unable to sit all the way up, he looked at me from between the bars, and I fell in love. "He's still underweight," the man in the blue scrubs told me as we looked at Blue. "I'll tell you, lady, he's pretty but he's skittish. He sheds, and I mean sheds. I don't think you want this dog." But I knew I wanted him. I knew I had to have him. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Blue cost me $108. I brought him home, and we lived together for years. He was, for most of our relationship, my only companion. But when I first met Blue, a lifetime ago now, I had family and friends. I worked at a crappy coffeehouse. I was young and lost; I was normal. Back then, at the beginning of this story, before I'd ever seen a corpse, before Blue saved my life, before I felt what it was like to kill someone in cold blood, I was still Joy Humbolt.I'd never even heard the name Sydney Rye.P.S. The dog does not die.**Beware: If you can’t handle a few f-bombs, you can’t handle this series.**

My Sister's Grave


Robert Dugoni - 2014
    She doesn’t believe that Edmund House — a convicted rapist and the man condemned for Sarah’s murder — is the guilty party. Motivated by the opportunity to obtain real justice, Tracy became a homicide detective with the Seattle PD and dedicated her life to tracking down killers.When Sarah’s remains are finally discovered near their hometown in the northern Cascade mountains of Washington State, Tracy is determined to get the answers she’s been seeking. As she searches for the real killer, she unearths dark, long-kept secrets that will forever change her relationship to her past — and open the door to deadly danger.

Stealing the Dragon


Tim Maleeny - 2007
    The Chinese Triads suspect one of their own, a female assassin named Sally known to have a complex relationship with a San Francisco detective named Cape Weathers. But when Sally goes missing, Cape becomes the focus of the Triads’ attention, and soon the police and FBI have him on their radar. Cape quickly realizes he’s screwed if he doesn’t find out what really happened on board the ship. He soon seeks the aid of two neurotic cops, a drug lord, an autistic computer genius, a mayoral candidate, and a reporter with sentient hair. From there, it all goes to Hell.

If Looks Could Kill


Kate White - 2002
    Smart and savvy, she's got a sixth sense when it comes to seeing the truth in a story-especially if it's murder. Bailey's in bed with her commitment-challenged lover K.C. when she gets a frantic call from her high-maintenance boss at Gloss magazine. Grabbing coffee and a cab outside her Greenwich Village apartment-the consolation prize in her divorce settlement-Bailey reluctantly heads uptown. At Cat Jones's Upper East Side town house, she finds something that seriously clashes with the chic décor: the dead body of the family's live-in nanny. As Bailey-unofficially-delves into the murdered girl's past, she finds no shortage of A-list suspects. But when a startling discovery suggests that Cat may have been the intended victim, Bailey is suddenly up to her bed head in high-profile investigation that's perfect fodder for a tabloid headline: Is someone trying to kill the editor's of women's magazines? With the spotlight on New York's glitzy media world, Bailey interviews back-stabbing editors, straying husbands, and one sexy, six-feet two psychologist who could make her decide to kick K.C. to the curb. Sporting her pair of red slingbacks and armed with the investigative skills she's honed as a true crime reporter, she sets out on a search that takes her from Manhattan's exclusive Carnegie-Hill area-the nanny heartland of America-to the ritzy weekend estates of Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Bailey will need all her street smarts and some lightning-fast detective work to catch a killer who could end up deleting her name from the masthead for good.