private detectives

Lethal White is the fourth book in this mystery series, featuring detectives Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. If you're unaware, Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for J. K. Rowling, and she does a great job with this adult series. 

Coming off the success of catching the Shacklewell Ripper, Cormoran Strike is busier and more famous than ever. With Robin having been fired, Strike must hire contract workers to help provide surveillance on his cases. One of his hires, Barclay, is a likable character who gets decent coverage in this book, and hopefully future books. Thankfully, we pick up pretty

In Don't Look for Me, private investigator Amos Walker is hired to track down a missing wife. He has no solid leads, so he starts at the herbal remedies store that she frequented. All of a sudden, people are tailing him and people are dying! Raymond Chandler once said that when he didn’t know what to do, he would send a man through the door with a gun in his hand. I get the sense that Estleman's approach is the same.

Estleman holds true to the private eye formula, and he plots well, but I think he tries too hard when it comes to dialog. Nonetheless, I enjoyed his latest effort. 

It’s not often that you open a book to find the main character quoting author James Crumley. But Ken Bruen is clearly a student of the genre; references to the history of hard-boiled fiction keep dropping, which is a very nice treat for the reader. 

Jack Taylor, a functioning alcoholic, has been kicked out of “the Guards” (Irish National Police) and now makes his living as a private detective. The story is set in Galway and begins when Boru Kennedy, a young American, comes to Ireland to research his thesis on Beckett. But, with Jack’s help, Boru becomes sidetracked by Taylor’s pursuit of a

The Sundown Speech is the twenty-fifth Amos Walker novel by Loren D. Estleman, and he still has it.  He has set the story in Ann Arbor, a useful change of scenery for our private detective, who is usually based in Detroit. A married couple has invested money in a filmmaker’s latest venture, and they think they have been swindled. They hire Walker to get their money back, but when Walker investigates, he finds the filmmaker dead. Estleman has plenty of fun with the college town culture of Ann Arbor, and you’ll have plenty of fun with the characters, sparkling dialogue, and plot of this novel.

The improbably-named Cormoran Strike, a war-wounded vet with overdue bills to pay, has an equally improbable day; his fiancé dumps him, he accidentally hires a new secretary, and the biggest case of his career walks through the door.  This is how Robert Galbraith’s (aka J.K. Rowling’s) book The Cuckoo's Calling starts out, and thankfully, it gets much better from that over-the-top introduction.  When young model Lula Landry falls to her death from her balcony, family members deny it was a suicide.  Strike is brought in to prove that someone killed Lula, and he digs up family secrets and plenty

Aimee Leduc, private investigator, starts the novel with her longtime partner Rene Friant absent and out of the country.  Already concerned about running Leduc Detective on her own, matters grow exponentially worse when her friend Saj hits and possibly kills a Serb with Rene's car.  Soon, the accident is tangled up in the mysterious death of a Russian bookbinder, a missing painting that could be nearly invaluable, and even Aimee's own mother, who's been missing for many years.  Without Rene and Saj--who is under suspicion for the Serb's death--to help, Aimee has to draw on all of her cunning