The Quickie

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Faye Kellerman

Billionaire genius Genoa Greeves never got over the shocking death of her favorite teacher, Bennett "Dr. Ben" Alston Little, murdered execution-style and stuffed into the trunk of his Mercedes-Benz. No arrests were ever made, no killer charged for the brutal crime. Fifteen years later, the high-tech CEO reads about another execution-style murder; this time the victim is a Hollywood music producer named Primo Ekerling. There is no obvious connection, but the case is eerily similar to Little's and Genoa feels the time is right to close Dr. Ben's case once and for all—offering the L.A.P.D. a substantial financial "incentive" if justice is finally served for Little.Lieutenant Peter Decker resents having to commit valuable manpower to a fifteen-year-old open case simply because a rich woman says "Jump!" Still, the recent murder of Primo Ekerling does bear a disturbing resemblance to Little's case, even though two thug suspects are currently behind bars for the Ekerling murder. Decker can't help but wonder about a connection. His first phone calls are to the two primary investigators in the Little case, retired detectives Calvin Vitton and Arnie Lamar. Lamar is cooperative, but Vitton is not only reluctant to talk, he winds up dead of a suspicious suicide twelve hours later. Plunging into this long-buried murder, Decker discovers that even though the two slayings are separated by a decade and a half, there is still plenty of greed, lust, and evil to connect the dots.Decker's team of top investigators not only includes his favorite homicide detectives, Scott Oliver and Marge Dunn, but also his newly minted Hollywood detective daughter, Cindy Kutiel, whose help proves to be invaluable. His wife, Rina Lazarus, continues to be his backbone of support, offering a cool, rational outlook despite her growing concern for her husband's welfare and safety. Rina's worries and fears begin to build at a fevered pitch as past and present collide with a vengeance, catapulting an unsuspecting Peter Decker closer and closer to the edge of an infinite dark abyss.A relentlessly gripping tale spun by a master, Faye Kellerman's The Mercedes Coffin races through a dangerous urban world of fleeting fame and false dreams, making heart-pumping hairpin turns at each step of a terrifying journey, where truth and justice are fine lines between life and death.

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Erin Hart

Nora Gavin remains haunted by a cold case that nearly cost her sanity five years ago: her sister Tríona's brutal murder. After failing to bring the killer to justice, Nora fled to Ireland, throwing herself into her work and taking the first tentative steps in a new relationship with Irish archaeologist Cormac Maguire. She's driven home by unwelcome news: Tríona's husband—and the prime suspect in her murder—is about to remarry. Nora is determined to succeed this time, even if it means confronting unsettling secrets. As she digs ever closer to the truth, the killer zeroes in on Tríona's young daughter, Elizabeth. Back in Ireland, Cormac Maguire heads north to visit his ailing father, and hears the tale of a local woman who vanished a hundred years ago. Was she a seal-maiden who returned to the sea, or was some more sinister force at work in her disappearance? Caught up in parallel mysteries, Cormac and Nora wrestle with identity, suspicion, truth and falsehood, and of course the biggest riddle of all—will they have a chance at a life together, or will tragedies of the past continue to keep them apart?

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Tom Turner

Burned out New York homicide cop Charlie Crawford goes south to take it slow. But after six months in steamy Palm Beach, Florida, he's bored out of his mind and desperate for a face-down stiff with a little rigor setting in. One Halloween night, Crawford is first on the scene and finds a twenty-year-old male swinging from a stately banyan tree. This sets in motion colliding plots involving a billionaire with a thing for young girls, a far-reaching art scam with Crawford's girlfriend playing a starring role, and a ruthless hustler passing himself off as the long lost son of one of the richest men in town.

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David Roberts

Verity Browne returns from Prague, where she is reporting for the "New Gazette", with suspected tuberculosis. Lord Edward Corinth to whom she is engaged is naturally desperately anxious about her. The only cure for TB in 1938 is rest and a healthy diet so he suggests she go to a private clinic in Henley-on-Thames run by a Cambridge friend of his, Dr Leonard Bladon. It is convenient for Edward as he can keep an eye on her while he investigates the sadistic murder of his dentist, Eric Silver whose death has a Henley connection. Edward had been his dentist's last appointment during which Silver had told him that he believed three elderly patients of his had been murdered. What was more, Silver had identified an entomological connection between the killings. General Lowther had had a heart attack drinking a wine called Clos des Mouches, Hermione Totteridge, a well-known gardener, had been poisoned by the new insecticide with which she had been experimenting, and James Herold had been stung to death by his bees. All three had lived in or near Henley. Edward goes to stay with his old friend Harry Makin who had recently come back to England from Africa as he had inherited a title and a property in Henley. Edward's investigation comes to a thrilling climax during what many believe will be the last Henley Royal Regatta before a new European war. Both Edward and Verity face death from someone or something wicked.