by John Baker (1995)
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.
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.
David Housewright
Twin Cities P.I. Mac McKenzie is called in by the First Lady of Minnesota when she receives an e-mail hinting at nasty rumors about her husband, but as Mac begins sifting through the governor's past, he uncovers lies and decades-old secrets.
Ken Bruen
Someone is scraping the scum off the streets of Galway, and they want Jack Taylor to get involved. A drug pusher, a rapist, a loan shark, all targeted in what look like vigilante attacks. And the killer is writing to Jack, signing their name: C-33. Jack has had enough. He doesn't need the money, and doesn't want to get involved. But when his friend Stewart gets drawn in, it seems he isn't been given a choice. In the meantime, Jack is being courted by Reardon, a charismatic billionaire intent on buying up much of Galway, and begins a tentative relationship with Reardon's PR director, Kelly. Caught between heaven and hell, there's only one path for Jack Taylor to take: Purgatory.
Carolyn Haines
When a contentious professor makes claims about the identity of a woman found in a mysterious Mississippi grave and implicates wealthy Zinnia families of having ties to a related scandal, Sarah Booth Delaney is hired by a group of society ladies to clear their names only to discover another body in the professor's hotel room.