V is for Vengeance

The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line

Rob Thomas, Jennifer Graham · 324 pages

"The first book in an original mystery series featuring twenty-eight-year-old Veronica Mars, back in action after the events of Veronica Mars: The Movie. With the help of old friends -- Logan Echolls, Mac Mackenzie, Wallace Fennel, and even Dick Casablancas -- Veronica is ready to take on Neptune's darkest cases with her trademark sass and smarts." -- "Ten years after graduating from high school

The Monkey's Raincoat

Robert Crais · 245 pages

When Los Angeles private detective Elvis Cole investigates the disappearance of Ellen Lang's husband and young son, he stumbles into a bizarre nightmare of high-level intrigue, missing drugs, and murder in Hollywood's seamy underworld.

Hardball

Sara Paretsky · 560 pages

Chicago politics—past, present, and future—take center stage in New York Times–bestselling author Sara Paretsky’s brilliant new V. I. Warshawski novel.Chicago’s unique brand of ball is sixteen-inch slow pitch, played in leagues all over the city for more than a century. But in politics, in business, and in law enforcement, the game is hardball.When V. I. Warshawski is asked to find a man who’s bee

Star Struck

Val McDermid · 304 pages

'This is crime writing of the very highest order ... Kate Brannigan has turned into the most interesting sleuthess around' The TimesBodyguarding had never made it to Manchester PI Kate Brannigan's wish list. But somebody's got to pay the bills at Brannigan & Co, and if the only earner on offer is playing nursemaid to a paranoid soap star, the fast-talking computer-loving white collar crime expert

Darkness, Take My Hand

Dennis Lehane · 480 pages

The master of the new noir, Dennis Lehane magnificently evokes the dignity and savagery of working-class Boston in this terrifying tale of darkness and redemption. Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro's latest client is a prominent Boston psychiatrist running scared from a vengeful Irish mob. The private investigators know something about cold-blooded retribution. Born and bred on the mean streets of

The Last Place You Look

Kristen Lepionka · 336 pages

"Nobody knows what happened to Sarah Cook. The beautiful blonde teenager disappeared fifteen years ago, the same night her parents were brutally murdered in their suburban Ohio home. Her boyfriend Brad Stockton--black and from the wrong side of the tracks--was convicted of the murders and is now on death row. Though he's maintained his innocence all along, the clock is running out. His execution i

A Ticket to the Boneyard

Lawrence Block · 320 pages

The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler · 220 pages

Philip Marlowe, a private eye who operates in Los Angeles's seamy underside during the 1930s, takes on his first case, which involves a paralyzed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail, and murder

When the Thrill Is Gone

Walter Mosley · 365 pages

A beautiful young woman walks into PI Leonid McGill's office with a stack of cash. She's an artist, she tells Leonid, who's escaped poverty via marriage to a rich collector. A rich collector with two ex-wives whose deaths are shrouded in mystery. She says she fears for her life, and needs Leonid's help. Will sorting out the woman's crooked tale bring Leonid straight to death's door?

Case Histories

Kate Atkinson · 336 pages

"Case One: Olivia Land, youngest and most beloved of the Land girls, goes missing in the night and is never seen again. More than thirty years later, two of her surviving sisters, each achingly lonely in her own way, reunite when their cruel and distant father dies. There, among the clutter of their childhood home, they unearth a shocking clue to Olivia's disappearance." "Case Two: All of Theo's h

Innocent Monster

Reed Farrel Coleman · 291 pages

Seven years have passed since the brutal murder that tore Moe Prager's family apart, when his estranged daughter Sarah comes to him with a request he cannot refuse. Sashi Bluntstone, an eleven-year-old art prodigy and daughter of Sarah's dearest childhood friend, has been abducted. As Moe stumbles around the fringes of the New York art scene, he discovers that suspects abound beyond the usual pred

Sherlock Holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle · 230 pages

Find a Victim: A Lew Archer Novel

Ross Macdonald · 192 pages

The Lady from Zagreb

Philip Kerr · 421 pages

"From New York Times-bestselling author Philip Kerr, the much-anticipated return of Bernie Gunther in a series hailed by Malcolm Forbes as "the best crime novels around today." A beautiful actress, a rising star of the giant German film company UFA, now controlled by the Propaganda Ministry. The very clever, very dangerous Propaganda Minister-close confidant of Hitler, an ambitious schemer and fla

Stolen Away

Max Allan Collins · 561 pages

Time to Depart

Lindsey Davis · 416 pages

From Wikipedia: " Set in Rome during AD 72, the novel stars Marcus Didius Falco, an informer and imperial agent. The title refers to the law which stated that no Roman citizen who had been sentenced to death might be arrested, even after the verdict, until he has been given time to depart, the idea being that for a Roman citizen to choose exile outside the boundaries of the Empire would have been

Three to Get Deadly

Janet Evanovich · 353 pages

When a kind old candy store owner (Uncle Mo) goes FTA (failure to appear) after being arrested for carrying concealed, bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is sent out to haul him back to prison

School Days

Robert B. Parker · 295 pages

Lily Ellsworth the grand dame of Dowling, Massachusetts hires Spenser to investigate her grandson Jared Clark's alleged involvement in a school shooting. Though seven people were killed in cold blood, and despite Jared's being named as a co-conspirator by the other shooter, Mrs. Ellsworth is convinced of her grandson's innocence.

A Catskill Eagle

Robert B. Parker, Robin A.H. Waterfield · 320 pages

In the detective business, Spenser sometimes has to bend the law, sometimes break it. His best friend, Hawk, faces a life sentence, and Susan is in even bigger trouble. Now Spencer has to free them both.

Death on the Nile

Agatha Christie · 276 pages

The tranquillity of a cruise along the Nile was shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway ( Linnet Doyle) had been shot through the head. She was young, stylish, rich and beautiful. A girl who had everything... until she lost her life. Hercule Poirot recalled an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: 'I'd like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.' Yet

Robert B. Parker's Wonderland

Ace Atkins · 306 pages

Where the Bodies Are Buried

Christopher Brookmyre · 344 pages

"When small-time heroin dealer Jai McDiarmid turns up dead one fine Glasgow morning, no one is that surprised. A heroin dealer openly sleeping with a big-time drug trafficker's girlfriend, Jai had made a lot of enemies in a city with little patience for those stirring up trouble. As a result, Detective Superintendent Catherine McLeod has no shortage of early leads on the case when she is assigned

In Big Trouble

Laura Lippman · 342 pages

Tess receives a clipping featuring her musician ex-boyfriend, prompting her to investigate his disappearance and that of the woman who was with him, as well as the victims of a killer who dances to his own deadly tune.

In the Best Families

Rex Stout · 246 pages