A dance at the slaughterhouse
Lawrence Block
Matthew Scudder Crime Novel #9. "A master…. Lawrence Block's estimable private eye Matthew Scudder is one of the most fully developed and credible characters working in the genre today" (Chicago Tribune).

by Stuart Woods (2009)
Dumped by his glamorous Russian girlfriend during dinner at Elaines, and running low on cash, Stone Barrington is having a bad week. So his luck seems to be improving when hes hired to locate the missing son of a very wealthy manlucky because the job pays well, and because the son is hiding in the tropical paradise of Key West. But when Stone and his sometime running buddy Dino Bacchetti arrive in the sunny Keys, it appears that someone has been lying in wait. When Stone very nearly loses his life after being blindsided at a local bar, he realizes that the young man hes been hired to track may have good reason for not wanting to be found. Suddenly Key West is looking less like Margaritaville and more like the mean streets of New York. . . .
Lawrence Block
Matthew Scudder Crime Novel #9. "A master…. Lawrence Block's estimable private eye Matthew Scudder is one of the most fully developed and credible characters working in the genre today" (Chicago Tribune).
Michael Kurland
> In 1891, Sherlock Holmes, in a struggle with his archenemy, the Napoleon of crime, Professor James Moriarty, plunged with him over Reichenbach Falls to his inevitable death. All of England - indeed, the entire world - mourned the irreplaceable loss of the greatest detective. And that's where things stood until 1894, when Holmes suddenly reappeared in London, revealing himself to his friend Dr. John Watson, and resumed his activities as a consulting detective. Holmes remained very quiet and mysterious on those nearly three years he was missing, never revealing precisely where he'd been or what he'd done in the "hidden years." >Now, in this anthology of original stories, the truth about those thirty-five months is unveiled and Holmes's adventures described. While some of these stories place Holmes in such familiar locations as New York and San Francisco, others find him high in the Himalayas or above the Arctic Circle. With stories from such writers as Rhys Bowen, Peter Beagle, Carolyn Wheat, Michael Collins, and many others, *Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years* is a must-have book for every fan who has ever wondered about the untold adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
James Patterson and Mark Pearson
For Hannah Shapiro, a beautiful young American student, this particular nightmare began eight years ago in Los Angeles, when Jack Morgan, owner of Private - the world's most exclusive detective agency - saved her from a horrific death. She has fled her country, but can't flee her past. The terror has followed her to London, and now it is down to former Royal Military Police Sergeant Dan Carter, head of Private London, to save her all over again. In central London, young women are being abducted off the street. When the bodies are found, some days later, they have been mutilated in a particularly mysterious way. Dan Carter's ex-wife, DI Kirsty Webb, is involved in the investigation and it looks likely that the two cases are gruesomely linked. Dan Carter draws on the whole resources of Private International in a desperate race against the odds. But the clock is ticking... Private may be the largest and most technologically advanced detection agency in the world, but the only thing they don't have is the one thing they need - time.
Sara Paretsky
A nagging conscience makes V.I. Warshawski agree to fill in as coach for the girls' basketball team at her South Side alma mater-which in turn leads her to the headquarters of By-Smart, the global retail empire where V.I. hopes to get some desperately needed funds for the struggling squad. But conscience seems to be in short supply at By-Smart...with the exception of Billy Bysen. He's the earnest teenage grandson of the chain's gruff, tight-fisted founder. And when Billy disappears-along with a mysterious document much desired by By-Smart's management team-V.I. is hurled onto a twisted, body-strewn path that runs through Chicago's dirtiest places, and reveals some of its dirtiest secrets.