Showing results by publisher "Black Rose Writing" in Modern Detectives

Oklahoma, 1965. Emmett Hardy is focused on drinking his failures away. And despite his general enthusiasm for the social reforms sweeping the country, the disillusioned police chief isn't surprised by his community's ongoing casual racism. But he's still shocked when he discovers the body of a Black woman with a slashed throat dumped by the railroad tracks.

Mark "Slag" Ferguson (bartender, ex-boxer) adds unlicensed private investigator to his resume. Times are tough. The new side gig seems like a smart play. Kelly Mason is a cool, enigmatic blonde whose husband has been acting strangely. She believes he’s being extorted. Can Slag help? Slag is sure he knows where the case will lead. Of course, he might be wrong.

When a disabled young man is found shot to death in the back row of a drive-in movie theater, Burr's police chief, Emmett Hardy, considers it an isolated act of depravity. As the dominos fall, however, Emmett realizes he might be searching for a type of killer who, in 1974, had yet to be named-someone who kills repeatedly, savagely, and seemingly at random. Hardy searches for the culprit even as old habits cloud his mind and clues to the killer's identity go unnoticed. The trail circles back and becomes a noose. It's up to Emmett to cut himself down before it's too late.

After a kidnap-for-hire plot results in the death of a young boy, Burr police chief Emmett Hardy blames himself and has an alcohol-fueled breakdown. His life at a crossroads, Hardy checks into the hospital for treatment, only to discover upon his release that he's been suspended from duty. When a dying prisoner contacts him about a long-forgotten unsolved case, Emmett—temporarily at loose ends—begins an informal investigation.

Private detective Tracer Spence is being stalked by the song "You're So Vain," hearing it every day for a year. When he's hired by a man with the same problem, Spence realizes that his case is connected to another that he's working on-that of a kidnapped sister. In the process of solving both mysteries, Spence uncovers violent henchmen, a Mick Jagger doppelganger, and man-eating shadow creatures.

“LeeAnne James’s latest kidnapping thriller is a tragic exploration of evil borne of ignorance.” –Cam Torrens, award-winning author of the Tyler Zahn series When Sergeant Steve “Mac” MacIntosh interviews a young victim of kidnap and rape, he’s appalled. She came forward to say she’d been kidnapped by an older man wearing glasses. He held her captive in a damp and dark underground bunker for over a year and raped her daily. Even more disturbing, he appeared to think he was treating her well!

Al Vacarro is a made man, with all the honors and responsibilities that entails. But after a literal lifetime of violence in service to the Castella crime family, Al’s past is catching up with him, and neither his present nor any future he can imagine seems to hold any hope for salvation. For the sake of his family and his very soul, he needs out of “the life”.

Los Angeles, 1954. Sending a pair of mass murderers to the chair got his name in the papers, but veteran fighter pilot turned detective, Augy Small, couldn’t celebrate. The culprits confessed, but the cops only ever found one body. Who had the killers died to protect? Katya Tyler, a Russian enigma with a wad of cash in one hand and a hit list in the other, claims to have the answers. First, she wants Augy’s help to bring down a massive underground network of human traffickers. As the case unfolds, every clue is an echo of his past.

Special Agent Adam Locke quits DEA and joins his brother's artificial intelligence company so he can care for his dying girlfriend, but when his brother is killed in a suspicious accident, Adam discovers life-saving technology can be also deadly. Being a special agent meant everything to Adam, but when his girlfriend is diagnosed with cancer, he resigns to be closer to home. He takes a job at his brother's AI start-up and works for an eccentric billionaire on Cuttyhunk Island, a tiny community near Cape Cod.

Ex-detective Maddy Reynolds can’t escape her reputation and finds herself in the crosshairs of the FBI’s most notorious serial killer, Amos Whitfield. Why? Because like in the Old West, the fastest gun is the trophy. Whitfield comes to Berry Lake, and before he takes down the famous detective to carve another notch in his belt, he leaves a trail of death in her town, taking body parts from his victims for his collection. He taunts Maddy, making it clear he’ll be coming for her.

Tomas O'Malley simply wanted to enjoy his 55th birthday with his kids, and maybe a tall McNaughton's. Little did he know a dead body in the shadow of White Sox stadium and a dead CFO in North Chicago would both tie back to Dr. Alan Grove, Chicago's Chief Medical Examiner's husband and President of Manufacturing at one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the country.