Showing results for "Desert" in Crime Fiction

A year has passed since LAPD detective Renée Ballard quit the force in the face of misogyny, demoralization and endless red tape. Yet, after the chief of police himself tells her she can write her ticket within the department, Ballard takes back her badge, leaving 'the Late Show' to rebuild the cold case unit at the elite Robbery-Homicide Division. For years, Harry Bosch has been working a case that haunts him but that he hasn't been able to crack—the murder of an entire family by a psychopath who still walks free. Ballard makes Bosch an offer.

Fourteen years ago, prosecutor Jessica Yardley's husband went to prison for a series of brutal murders. She's finally created a life with her daughter and is a well-respected attorney. She's moving on. But when a new rash of homicides has her ex-husband, Eddie, written all over them - the nightmares of her past come back to life.

Retiring prosecutor Jessica Yardley can’t turn down one last investigation. This time, it’s a set of murders inspired by a series of grisly paintings called The Night Things. She’s the only one who can catch the killer, who’s left a trail of bodies in a rural community outside of Las Vegas. But the more Jessica finds out, the less clear her case becomes. Out of options, she’s forced to consult her serial killer ex-husband - to gain additional insight into the crimes and the killer’s motivations.

From the bestselling author of A Killer’s Wife, Victor Methos’s acclaimed Desert Plains series continues with the saga of two brilliant defense attorneys and a client whose confession may not be what it seems.

For millions of years, a bounty of unimaginable riches lay hidden deep within the scorched wastelands of the Namib desert. Diamonds. Some men cracked the earth to own them. Some men died. For ex soldier Jason Green, the job was unexpected but the brief was simple. At the most remote diamond mine in the world, something was wrong. Badly wrong. The insurance firm was deeply concerned. The running costs were enormous, the claims, numerous. What were the dark secrets that had been so carefully concealed? Secrets buried as deep as the glittering stones themselves.

Newly-graduated Jake has a money problem, a job problem, and a girlfriend problem too. But his best friend has the perfect plan to fix all three. It draws upon all they’ve learnt in their Economics degree: International trade. Supply and Demand. The only potential issue? What they're trading isn't exactly legal. Which is why Jake's about to be arrested with enough dope to put him in prison for the next twenty years. But by now, this is only his second biggest worry. Can they somehow escape? How exactly did they get there? And what’s really on Jake’s mind..?

1946. Charlie Yates and his wife, Lizzie, have returned to Los Angeles. But when Yates, back in his old job at the Pacific Journal, becomes obsessed by the disappearance of two aspiring Hollywood starlets, he finds it leads him right back to legendary Mob boss Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel. With Charlie caught between the FBI and the mob, can he possibly see who is playing whom and find out what really happened to the two girls?

When rookie Agent Michaela Sanchez receives a tip from her sister that someone has gone missing in the Tucson desert, she thinks she’s searching for a lost immigrant. What she finds is the murdered defendant of a high-profile local trial. Lacy was a humanitarian aid worker, on trial for harboring felons after she sheltered illegal border crossers. When a conflict erupts with a local vigilante group, her murder ignites a political firestorm. Concerned about her sister’s involvement and taking heat at home from her activist daughter, Michaela takes it upon herself to investigate.

A shocking death launches Special Agent Victor Loshak on a new investigation with an ominous message: They know everything. He heads to Tucson, Arizona, where a recent murder spree seems to be linked to the human trafficking conspiracy he's been working in secret for months. Loshak still has dreams about the Kansas City case. Nightmares about the team of techs peeling up the floorboards in a suburban home. Finding the rotting bodies face down in the muddy earth of the crawlspace. A grisly discovery that ultimately led to more questions than answers.

When a teenage girl goes missing in Arizona, retired NYPD officer Jamie Butler is frantic to find her. Haunted by the brutal murder of her own daughter, Jamie is convinced that this girl has been abducted in the same way. There are inexplicable similarities to her own daughter’s abduction. Connections that seem impossible. Because her daughter’s killer is long-dead. But as her search for the missing teen intensifies, new evidence comes to light. Evidence that implicates Jamie herself.

A phone call made from a fifty-year-old phone booth is never simpleA phone call in the night finds its way to Nash. But when it's as simple as whispered messages around a campfire, the message isn't the words but the message itself. Terrorism takes on a larger threat when the words come in radioactive. When Nash and Muna land in San Francisco, the phone calls have already woken the other alphabets, and they have fueled and readied the bus. This time, they are going to the heart of the uranium territory.

Undercover FBI agent Josh Stuart has been tasked with targeting two Las Vegas mobsters who are expanding their criminal enterprise into drug trafficking. When Josh arrives in Tucson to have the mob-owned pickup modified for smuggling, he encounters terrorism and death...

Lester Van Carlton is a top executive at the Blissful Hotel and Casino Corporation, one of the major entertainment corporations in Las Vegas. He has an excellent reputation as a successful businessman and a dedicated community leader. One morning, he receives an anonymous email, which threatens to reveal his dark, personal secrets. It rocks his world and plunges him into a nightmare of panic and fear. Shortly thereafter, the brutal murder of a former Blissful employee presents Detective Sergeant Lucius Bunk with a homicide investigation fraught with unexpected and complex challenges.

How do you make a Deadly Desert? Take a sleepy, border town like Las Cruces, New Mexico. Add three parts each of Mystery, Murder, and Mayhem. Season with True Love and Mirth. Let Steve Hartshorn stir it all up to perfection. Dress it with an ample slice of Unbridled Greed and VOILA you have the perfect Deadly Desert.

While running surveillance in an industrial section of Scottsdale, P.I. Lena Jones discovers the body of a woman connected to Second Zion, an infamous polygamy cult based in northern Arizona. Lena joins forces with Rosella, a former polygamist "sister wife," to find the victim's killer and soon discovers a shocking secret: in a society where one man can have ten wives, nine men will have none. Second Zion makes certain these possible rivals don't stick around.

Desert Town is dark crime fiction for those who have a taste for the perverse and violent. It was made into a major film, Desert Fury, starring Burt Lancaster, Lizabeth Scott and Mary Astor. It’s the story of seventeen year old Paula Haller’s transition into womanhood as she defies her mother, Fritzi’s dominance. Fritzi runs the small town of Chuckawalla including the Purple Sage casino and saloon as well as a bordello or two.

Santa Ana winds and wildfires are plaguing Los Angeles, where Eddie Collins' acting career isn't exactly making him a household name. In fact it's in danger of becoming a virtual rumor. To make ends meet, he runs his own PI business in the heart of Hollywood. When his A-list friend, Mike Ford, has his Oscar stolen during a home invasion, Eddie dons his private-eye porkpie to find the source of cryptic, threatening letters that start showing up in Ford's mailbox.

Cole Hampton's military service and tough upbringing come in handy when solving dangerous problems for the less fortunate. But against his will, he's tasked with finding a missing woman. When the search leads down dark pathways, he must deal with an array of desperate crooks and killers.

When feisty redhead Alexandra Merritt inherits a Las Vegas casino, she finds she has her hands full. In addition to learning the ins and outs of running the Desert Flower, she must learn to deal with the famous and the infamous. Hot-shot athletes, movie stars, hookers, and stand-up comics come to her establishment, and when more than one of them winds up dead, Alex becomes embroiled in a mystery as hot as the Nevada desert. Alex isn't sure who wants her dead, but she better figure it out before the Desert Flower becomes Vegas's next morgue.

A singularly compelling debut novel, about a desert where people go to escape their past, and a truck driver who finds himself at risk when he falls in love with a mysterious woman. Ben Jones lives a quiet, hardscrabble life, working as a trucker on Route 117, a little-travelled road in a remote...