Book picks similar to
Calculated Extortion by K.T. Lee


mystery
contemporary
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Speak No Evil


Allison Brennan - 2007
    . . . Just scream.The murder of eighteen-year-old Angie Vance was exceptionally vile–her mouth was sealed with glue, an obscenity was scrawled across her skin, and she was suffocated in a garbage bag. The killing seems personal, so police detective Carina Kincaid focuses her efforts on the victim’s much older ex-boyfriend, Steve Thomas. But without physical evidence, Carina can’t make a collar or a case. She also can’t stop Sheriff Nick Thomas, the prime suspect’s brother, from conducting his own unwelcome investigation. Though Nick is still scarred and unsteady from a recent confrontation with a serial killer, he’s determined to prove his brother’s innocence. But his confidence is shaken when he learns of Steve’s dark side, and when a friend of the murdered girl meets a similarly gruesome fate. With no time to lose, Carina and Nick work together to trap a psychopath, before another unlucky woman faces an unspeakable end.

Don't Call Me Baby


Betty Byers - 2013
    Life had to get better surely? When Derek Lewis, rich Australian playboy, is found dead after falling from the roof of his office in salacious circumstances, Lola's opportunity to flex her investigative muscles had begun. But it wasn't only Lola's professional career that was about to take off. Little did she know it, her love life was too. Between her new boss, Julian, who was an uptight Adonis, and Joe the office Romeo, Lola was having a hard time to keep her professional integrity intact and her sassy comments to herself. Still, a job was a job, and if it involved working with two handsome men then who else would be up for the challenge?

Too Quiet In Brooklyn


Susan Russo Anderson - 2013
    It's too quiet, at least for Brooklyn, so twenty-two-year-old Fina Fitzgibbons is not surprised when she stumbles upon a throttled woman in the heart of Brooklyn Heights and discovers that the dead woman's four-year-old grandson is also missing. She begins a wild hunt for the strangler-kidnapper, Ralph. During the chase, she resists falling in love with her boyfriend, Denny, an NYPD patrol officer, steps on the toes of Detective First Grade Jane Templeton, and uncovers secrets about her own past. In the end, Ralph has a deadly surprise for Fina.

Dirty Little Secrets


Liliana Hart - 2011
    Graves has seen a lot of dead bodies in her line of work...She's not only in the mortuary business, but she's also the coroner for King George County, Virginia. When a grisly murder is discovered in the small town of Bloody Mary, it's up to J.J. and her best friend, Detective Jack Lawson, to bring the victim justice.The murders are piling up...The residents of Bloody Mary are dropping like flies, and when a popular mystery writer shows up on J.J.'s doorstep with plans of writing his new book about the Bloody Mary Serial Killer, J.J. has to decide if he might be going above and beyond the call of duty to create the spine tinglers he's so well known for. It only clouds the issue and puts her reputation on the line when the attraction between them spirals out of control.And passions are rising...J.J and Jack are in a race against time. They discover each victim had a shocking secret, and the very foundation of J.J.'s life is in danger of crumbling when it turns out she’s harboring secrets of her own—secrets that make her the perfect victim in a deadly game.

A Case of Murder by Monte Carlo


Becki Willis - 2019
    She may be petite, but she’ll take on anyone who threatens her patients’ safety and well-being. That feisty protectiveness creates problems when a hit and run victim lands in the ER and Police Detective Cade Resnick arrives to investigate. There’s no denying the sparks between these two, but their professions put them at odds. As Cade zeroes in on his suspect, Laurel won’t make it easy for him, not while the suspect is under her care. More than once, these two clash when Cade’s quest for justice collides with Laurel’s concern for her patients. Come along on the start of a new series and meet the staff and professionals who give Texas General Hospital its heart. There’s never a dull moment in the ER, or in the lively college town of College Station, Texas! From the best-selling author of The Sisters, Texas Mystery Series, Mirrors Don't Lie Series, and The Spirits of Texas Cozy Mysteries, enjoy a fresh approach to quick cozy reads, some dedicated to mystery, some to romance. Welcome to Texas General Cozy Cases!

Magic Mirror


Mickey Friedman - 1988
    Now she's a Paris correspondent, thank you very much—a dream come true for any journalist.There's just a slight down side—she arrives in freezing rain, gets caught in a traffic jam caused by a bomb scare, and hates her apartment; but the real Bonjour is finding herself face down on a museum floor during a robbery. "Killed for a boring story!" she thinks. But as it happens, she isn't the one who dies. Three terrifying masked gunmen shoot the unfortunate security guard.They could have stolen all the treasures of Monte Cristo's cave, so to speak, but it turns out they've made off with only a mirror. True, it once belonged to the French seer Nostradamus, but it may be the museum's least valuable item.Does it have some prophetic ability? Does someone know something the gendarmes don't? Here's what Georgia Lee knows: If she finds out first, she's a journalistic hero. If she doesn't, she's dead.

Ashes to Ashes


Tami Hoag - 1999
    He has already claimed three lives, and he won’t stop there. Only this time there is a witness. But she isn’t talking. Enter Kate Conlan, former FBI agent turned victim/witness advocate. Not even she can tell if the reluctant witness is a potential victim or something more troubling still. Her superiors are interested only because the latest victim may be the daughter of Peter Bondurant, an enigmatic billionaire. When Peter pulls strings, Special Agent John Quinn gets assigned to the case. But the FBI’s ace profiler of serial killers is the last person Kate wants to work with, not with their troubled history. Now she faces the most difficult role of her career—and her life. For she’s the only woman who has what it takes to stop the killer . . . and the one woman he wants next.

Circle of Influence


Annette Dashofy - 2014
    But secrets become explosive when a dead body is found in the Township Board President’s abandoned car. As a January blizzard rages, Zoe and Police Chief Pete Adams launch a desperate search for the killer, even if it means uncovering secrets that could not only destroy Zoe and Pete, but also those closest to them.

Blood Ties


J.D. Nixon - 2011
    The Bycraft women are uncontrollable, the men violently obsessive and their kids feral. And nobody in town has suffered at their hands as much as the Fuller family.Surviving a traumatic childhood and the continued focus of sustained aggression from the Bycrafts, Tess Fuller has grown up scarred and wary, highly skilled in self-defence and armed at all times. Although glad to escape to the city at the first opportunity, her dying father brings Tess back to her home town. To support him she abandons her promising city cop career to take up duties as the town’s junior officer. But with a lazy, retiring sergeant as her only colleague and working the state’s worst resourced station, Tess has become increasingly lawless herself trying to police the hostile Bycrafts.Out on parole, predatory Red Bycraft is a constant threatening presence, and Tess’ life is further complicated by her widely condemned relationship with his brother, Jake.Tess’ new sergeant, Finn Maguire, is unimpressed with her approach to the job. He’s from the city – obstinate, taciturn and by-the-books. She’s grown used to working solo and struggles to be subordinate again, especially when he proves patronising and unwilling to respect her abilities or local knowledge. But they must work together to solve the intersecting mysteries of possible land fraud, an abandoned suitcase of money and a peeping tom with a preference for older women. All the while, Tess is the target of a revengeful week of escalating violence that ends in a dangerous confrontation with a gang of Bycraft men. Can Tess and the Sarge put aside their differences, team up to save her life and finally bring some order to Little Town?

Chicago Blue


Stephanie Andrews - 2017
    You yourself admitted that I was never going to let you live. It’s time to move on.”Bombs are going off in downtown Chicago. Caught in the middle is Kay Riley, an unassuming police officer framed for the devastation.On the run with only her sense of humor and a few old friends to help her out, Kay faces an annoying hitman, a sexy thief, and a madman with a penchant for destruction. Unexpectedly, Riley finds that being an outlaw agrees with her. She’s not a karate expert, she can’t pick a lock, and she certainly isn’t a master of disguise, but Riley is stubborn, and this is her city. She’s not going down without a fight.

Poor Boy Road


James L. Weaver - 2016
    But each job sends him one step closer to turning into the man he swore he’d never become – his violent and abusive father. Leaving the mob is easier said than done. When his boss offers a bloody way out, Jake has no choice but to take it, even if it means confronting ghosts of old.Arriving in his Lake of the Ozarks hometown, Jake has two things on his mind: kill ruthless drug lord Shane Langston and bury his dying father. What he doesn’t expect is to fall in love all over again and team up with his best friend Bear, the Sheriff of Benton County, to take Langston down. Racing through the countryside searching for Langston, the web of murder, meth and kidnapping widens, all pointing toward a past Jake can’t escape and a place he never wanted to return – Poor Boy Road.

The Cutting


James Hayman - 2009
    He sought to raise his young daughter away from the violence of the big city . . . so he’s unprepared for the horrific killer he discovers, whose bloody trail may lead to Portland’s social elite.Early on a September evening, the mutilated body of a pretty teenaged girl, a high school soccer star, is found dumped in a scrap-metal yard. She had been viciously assaulted, but her heart had been cut out of her chest with surgical precision. The very same day a young businesswoman, also a blonde and an athlete, was abducted as she jogged through the streets of the city’s west end. McCabe suspects both crimes are the work of the same man---a killer who’s targeting the young---who is clearly well-versed in complex surgical procedures, and who may have struck before. Just as the investigation is beginning, McCabe’s ex-wife reemerges, suddenly determined to reclaim the daughter she heedlessly abandoned years earlier.With the help of his straight-talking (and, at times, alluring) partner, Maggie Savage, McCabe begins a race against time to rescue the missing woman and unmask a sadistic killer---before more lives are lost.

Aim True, My Brothers


William F. Brown - 2013
    Most of the hundreds of thousands of people who pass through Dulles Airport in DC are tourists, government officials, or harried businessmen. Ibrahim Al-Bari is none of those. He is a killer on a blood hunt, and his target is nothing less than the President of the United States and the core of the US government in this political assassination novel. As a highly skilled Hamas terrorist with years of combat experience in the rocky deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, he has become a legend in Islamist circles. Smart, skilled with many weapons, and determined, it will take a massive security effort to stop him. Can Eddie Rankin, a maverick FBI agent, stop Ibrahim Al-Bari, a skilled Hamas commander who has battled Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. After losing two of his own brothers in a bloody attack on a civilian bus in Israel, Al-Bari takes his private war to the heart of America itself. Nothing as simple as a sniper in a book depository window; in this FBI assassination thriller, when Al-Bari strikes, he will unleash a firestorm that will take out the President, other international leaders, and half the US government, national television. Rankin has never met a rule he couldn’t break, but this time his only help comes from Moustapha Khalidi, Chief of Security at the Egyptian Embassy, and Rachel Ullman, a hard-edged, Israeli Mossad agent. From the White House to Brooklyn, Beirut, Tel-Aviv, and the grassy fields of an old Colonial Battlefield in Virginia, the question in this FBI terrorist thriller is whether this dysfunctional international counter terror alliance hold together long enough to catch Al-Bari before they kill each other — and the clock is ticking. When Al-Bari strikes, it will be with a diabolical new weapon on national television as his targets go up in flames.

The Woman


David Bishop - 2011
    This is a story of just one woman. As the story unfolds Linda gradually learns that some people do deserve to die, but that she is not one of those people. Linda Darby is a seven-year divorcee, living quietly in a small let-the-world-go-by beach town on the coast of Oregon, who day trades for a living. Her only close friend is a widowed elderly woman who manages a small consulting company, which, as is later discovered, never has visitors, sends and receives its business correspondence only by courier, and is not listed in any phone directory. No one in town knows what kind of consulting the company does, but the rumor is that whatever they do is done for the government. Linda doesn’t date local men. When her celibacy grows intolerable, she visits nearby towns to frequent the watering holes of successful men. Her motto: No relationships. No second dates. No use of her real name during one-night stands. Then one evening, Linda goes for a walk and nothing for her is ever the same. She is dragged into an alley by two men, but saved by a third, a stranger who disappears as suddenly as he appeared. The next day she finds out the two men in the alley had been killed, the town’s first murders ever. The following day she learns that hours before she had been dragged into the alley, her close friend was tortured and killed.

Dream of Danger


Maggie Shayne - 2013
    Their shared secrets drove them apart. But now they're together again in this riveting novella that begins where New York Times bestselling author Maggie Shayne's Sleep with the Lights On ended.She may have been blind for twenty years, but Rachel's always had an uncanny gift for seeing through people—and she distrusts her assistant's new boyfriend at first sight. Amy isn't interested in Rachel's misgivings, though. She's too eager to celebrate Thanksgiving by introducing her family to the new man in her life.Then Amy doesn't show up for the holiday….Desperate to find her missing friend, Rachel has no choice but to turn to Mason. Their investigation into Amy's disappearance takes them ever deeper into danger—and reignites the attraction that they've both sworn to resist. Now it's a race against time as these reluctant partners fight to stave off passion and save a life.