McNally's luck

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John Baker

Sam Turner is trying to turn his life around. Newly divorced, he's kicked the habit of his wife and now he's working on the booze. Introducing himself at a group meeting one night, he succumbs to a sudden impulse to say he's a private detective, and the Sam Turner Detective Agency is born. Terry, one of the men from the meeting, comes to Sam because he thinks his wife is having an affair. Can he hire Sam on retainer? Piece of cake, Sam thinks. Follow her, snap a few photographs, pocket the money - how hard can it be? The case starts out so smoothly, Sam's convinced that life is really looking up. But then Terry is brutally stabbed to death, and the police begin to think they have a serial killer on their hands. Suddenly Sam's career as a private detective is taking off by leaps and bounds.

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Lawrence Sanders

Palm Beach private detective Archy McNally is hired by the wealthy owner of a bird store to investigate threats against his life, but the case soon becomes complicated by the murder of McNally's client and the kidnapping-killings of two store clerks. 175,000 first printing. $120,000 ad/promo.

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Robert B. Parker

Parker's "Spencer" novels continue in the crime fiction genre populated by classic authors like Chandler, JD MacDonald, etc. They also feature some of the most amusing bits of dialog and introspection this side of Elmore Leonard. Read them all, but start here with "Early Autumn" which many view as Parker's best of the series. I own them all.

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Richard Haley

Wealthy financier Gil Bentley, anxious that his daughter's boyfriend isn't marrying her just for money, hires Frank Crane to ascertain Stuart Knight's background. Crane discovers that Knight is concealing his past; he's also seeing another woman, and seems to have far too much money. It appears that Knight was implicated in a major robbery some years before, and some of those involved are now being murdered.