The game of thirty

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Kinky Friedman

"Alone in his New York loft, the private detective Kinky Friedman, reflects on friendship and why all his friends are out of town. With time on his hands and feeling a little melancholy his mind turns to Stephanie DuPont - very hot but pretty much resistant to all his advances. The phone rings and Kinky's old contact Hoover from Honolulu is on the blower to report that Kinky's great friend Mike McGovern has disappeared while in the process of researching and writing his cookbook Eat, Drink and Be Kinky. He was last seen heading for the beach. Our hero flies to Hawaii, and in a series of farcical wild goose chases, that includes identifying a faceless corpse in the morgue and trying to ensnare what turn out to be hoax kidnappers, Kinky ends up visiting the local museum on the island and in a room full of ancient relics he stumbles upon a full size, sculpted wooden head that is a dead ringer for McGovern." -- Back cover.

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Sue Grafton

It's April 1988, a month before Kinsey Millhone's thirty-eighth birthday, and she's alone in her office catching up on paperwork when a young man arrives unannounced. He has a preppy air about him and looks as if he'd be carded if he tried to buy a beer, but Michael Sutton is twenty-seven, an unemployed college dropout. More than two decades ago, a four-year-old girl disappeared, and a recent newspaper story about her kidnapping has triggered a flood of memories. Sutton now believes he stumbled on her lonely burial and could identify the killers if he saw them again. He wants Kinsey's help in locating the grave and finding the men. It's way more than a long shot, but he's persistent and willing to pay cash up front. Reluctantly, Kinsey agrees to give him one day of her time. But it isn't long before she discovers Sutton has an uneasy relationship with the truth. In essence, he's the boy who cried wolf. Is his story true, or simply one more in a long line of fabrications? Moving between the 1980s and the 1960s, and changing points of view as Kinsey pursues witnesses whose accounts often clash, Grafton builds multiple subplots and memorable characters. Gradually we see how everything connects in this thriller. And as always, at the heart of her fiction is Kinsey Millhone, a sharp-tongued, observant loner who never forgets that under the thin veneer of civility is a roiling dark side to the soul

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Lisa Scottoline

This time, justice is blonde. . . .New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline delivers a riveting page-turner about love and murder that starts in the elite chambers of a sexy female judge and ends on the cold, gritty streets of Philadelphia.Cate Fante is strong and smart, but when she becomes a federal judge, even she wonders if she can do the job justice. She's in her thirties, so she feels as though she's joining the world's most exclusive retirement village. She worries inwardly that she only looks the part, in a designer suit donned like overpriced armor. After all, a job described in the United States Constitution would intimidate anybody.But Cate keeps her doubts a secret. And, as it happens, much else. For she leads a dark double life that she hides from everyone, even her best friend.Then a high-profile case in her courtroom explodes into a shocking murder-suicide, and it blasts her cover wide open. Overnight the tabloids tell her secrets, her boyfriend dumps her, and her new career hangs in tatters. But Cate's troubles are only beginning. An enemy no one anticipated sends her running for her life -- -embarking on a journey that begins in the mystery of her own childhood, where she first learned to lie. She'll have to fight her way back to the truth, or die trying.Dirty Blonde is Lisa Scottoline's most suspenseful and gripping thriller to date. Mixing poignancy with her trademark wit and wonderfully compelling characters, it showcases her remarkable talents as never before, and questions whether law and justice are always the same thing.

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James Patterson, Maxine Paetro

*The police can't help you* Former CIA agent Jack Morgan runs Private, a renowned investigation company with branches around the globe. It is where you go when you need maximum force and maximum discretion. The secrets of the most influential men and women on the planet come to Jack daily--and his staff of investigators uses the world's most advanced forensic tools to make and break their cases. *The press will destroy you* Jack is already deep into the investigation of a multi-million dollar NFL gambling scandal and the unsolved slayings of 18 schoolgirls when he learns of a horrific murder close to home: his best friend's wife, Jack's former lover, has been killed. It nearly pushes him over the edge. Instead, Jack pushes back and devotes all of Private's resources to tracking down her killer. *Only one place to turn: Private* But Jack doesn't have to play by the rules. As he closes in on the killer and chooses between revenge and justice, Morgan has to navigate a workplace love affair that threatens to blow the roof off his plans. With a plot that moves at death-defying speeds, Private is James Patterson sleekest, most exciting thriller ever.