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Brocks boyhood idol moves in next door before vanishing and leaving a body in his wake In Hollywoods golden age, there was no finer swashbuckler than Fortney Grange. Decades after he last swung on a chandelier, Grange is nearly forgotten, his legacy surviving only in fuzzy black-and-white on the late-late movie channel. But to Brock Callahan, Grange remains a hero. When his idol shacks up with the aged widow next door, the ex-private investigator is starstruck. It takes a murder for the celluloid sheen to begin to fade. A strange pair of Arizona blackmailers takes up residence in a van outside Granges house. Grange and his new lady friend disappear, and a few days later, his agent is found dead. Though it breaks his heart, Callahan is forced to investigate the man who has given him so much joy. And it will take more than swordplay for this aging daredevil to escape the chair. The Dead Seed is the 11th book in the Brock Callahan Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

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While tangling with radicals, Brock stumbles on a colleagues corpse Brock Callahan, ex-private investigator, is still not used to wealth and retirement. In fact he is struggling through a game of golf when the clubhouse calls with the curious news that his wife is in jail, pulled in at an anti-nuclear protest. Callahan hires Joe Puma, private detective and onetime peer, to post bail for the budding radical. A few days later, Puma is dead, and Brock begins to wonder where the student movements shadowy roots lie. The agitators want to stop the proposed Mirage Point reactor, which sits at the intersection of mob money, corrupt utilities, and the violent rage of the radical fringe. And as Callahan knows all too well, California doesnt run on nuclear energy; the state is powered by the dirtiest fuel there isold-fashioned, murderous greed. The Cana Diversion is the 9th book in the Brock Callahan Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

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A gang of jet-setting slanderers cause havoc at the stately Beaumont HotelUnder the stern eye of manager Pierre Chambrun, life at the Beaumont runs with the efficiency of a Swiss watch. So reliable is the service at New Yorks finest hotel that guests could set their timepieces to the movements of its bellhops. But a wrench is about to be thrown into this perfect mechanisma redhead named Doris Standing. Standing is queen of the jet set, that army of playboys and party girls who tour the world in search of a good time. Lately, she and her gang have found a vicious kind of fun, exposing the misdeedsreal or imaginedof the rich and powerful. When this cruel young woman checks in to the Beaumont, Chambrun and his press man, Mark Haskell, take note. Because where Standing touches down, good men will be destroyed. 

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A Nazis widow comes to the Beaumont Hotel with death in her entourageAs befits the manager of New Yorks finest hotel, Pierre Chambrun has certain standards for his guests at the Beaumont. Were it not for the pleading of the hotels owner, no amount of money could persuade him to allow the Baroness Charmian Zetterstrom a room. She is the stunning young widow of a Nazi war criminal; her husband was an infamous sadist who escaped before the fall of the Reich to live out the rest of his days in hedonistic isolation on a Mediterranean isle. Off the island for the first time since the war, the baroness comes to New York with an entourage of misfits, and mayhem follows. The first victim is the baronesss dog, which is savagely murdered by an unknown hand. The next to die will be human, forcing Chambrun to identify the killer, or risk having his hotel destroyed by the vindictive ghosts of the fallen Reich.

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A prank outside the Beaumont Hotel goes haywire, and an assassin kills the wrong man Political fundraisers can be cynical and coarse when theyre among their own kind, and Pierre Chambrun, manager of the elegant Beaumont Hotel, prefers not to let them through his doors. But when his friend Douglas Maxwell, a hard-nosed senatorial candidate, asks to host a thousand-dollar-a-plate dinner in the Beaumonts famous ballroom, Chambrun cannot refuse. The fundraiser has just begun when bad taste rears its ugly head, and Maxwell steps out of his limousine smiling, waving, and wearing no pants. The crowd roars with laughter until the pantsless man falls to his knees, shot dead.  Less than half an hour later, Maxwell appears in Chambruns office, very much alive. The dead man was his cousin, a lookalike who came to New York to play a prank, and caught a bullet in return. Chambrun must find the gunman to save his friend and spare the Beaumont a second killingbecause murder is the ultimate faux pas.

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A spy marked for death finds a corpse in his hotel roomGeorge Lovelace has spent more than two decades in the shadows. Shielded by an array of forged passports, he has battled Nazis, Communists, and anyone else who might harm the United States. He has enemies on every continent, and one is planning to kill him. When a series of threats convinces the aging spy that he is about to be retired permanently, Lovelace comes to the Beaumont hotel. If he must die, he prefers to do it in style.  The manager of this most exclusive establishment is his old friend Pierre Chambrun, a former resistance fighter who promises to protect him with the full resources of the hotel. But when an unknown guest is found murdered in Lovelaces room, it becomes apparent that the assassin has already penetrated the Beaumonts walls. Someone wants Lovelace dead, and only the worlds greatest hotel manager can save him.

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Newly rich, married, and bored, Brock investigates an upper-class tragedy Private detective Brock Callahan, onetime star of the Los Angeles Rams, is racing toward a touchdown when the morgues phone call wakes him up. His only rich relative, Uncle Homer, has just flown through the windshield of his midlife-crisis Ferrari, and Brock will never have to work again. The private detective hangs up his license, marries his longtime girlfriend, and decamps for the California hillswhere he finds life among the nouveau riche to be duller than he ever imagined. However, there is one old ladythe quick-witted Maude Marnerwho charms the old jock. But the day after she drops hints that she might have some work for him, she is found dead, having choked to death on her cars exhaust in a gruesome apparent suicide. As Brock digs into the dark corners of upper-crust suburbia, he finds that no matter how you dress it up, murder is always declasse. The Bad Samaritan is the 8th book in the Brock Callahan Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

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From sourcing rare ingredients to solving crimes, this appealing detective serves up nuggets of culinary trivia and wry food humor (People).  They call him the gourmet detective; the only thing sharper than his mind is his palate. When chefs need a rare ingredient, an ancient wine, or simply a new idea to gain that extra Michelin-star boost, they come to the detectives cozy London office and plead for his help. For top-notch cooking, he is always happy to lend his taste buds to the cause. Now Raymond Lefebvre, executive chef at one of Londons finest French restaurants, has asked for the detectives help with a bit of kitchen espionage. Lefebvres crosstown rival is winning international accolades cooking a dish called Oiseau Royal, and Lefebvre wants the recipe. Getting it takes the detective deep into the Circle of Careme, where the most elite chefs in Britain gather to swap recipes, techniques, and gossip. But when the chefs of Careme start to die, the detective starts to salivate. There is no finer appetizer than murder.

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An ex-football player and a crooked insurance man cook up a blackmail schemeProfessional football player John Harlan is driving back from a lakeside cabin when a drunk driver named Cannon knocks him off the road. When he comes to, Harlans leg is shattered and Cannon is dead. His career over, Harlan goes on a bender, and a few days after his hangover clears, he dives headfirst into a life of immorality. An insurance investigator named Purvis is checking into Cannons death, hoping to avoid laying out $100,000 to his widow. He suspects Cannon may have survived the accident, only to be murdered while Harlan was unconsciousand the more he talks about it, the more Harlan believes it. They devisea plan to blackmail dear Mrs. Cannon, but if Harlan was a pro on the field, hes an amateur in the underworld. Next to what the lovely widow is going to do to him, football is a cakewalk.

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This appealing detective serves up nuggets of culinary trivia and wry food humor (People).   In the days of Marco Polo, men risked their lives for spices. And in an age when black pepper was so valuable that it was sold one peppercorn at a time, there was no spice more valuable than the legendary Ko Feng. Known as the Celestial Spice, it supposedly vanished five centuries ago, and its name lives on only as culinary myth. But now a sack of it has turned up in New York City, and the leading experts of world cuisine will kill for a taste. When Londons finest gourmet detective proclaims the mysterious spice authentic, this sack of weeds becomes the most valuable substance on earth, worth thousands of dollars per gram. But soon the spice vanishes, one of his colleagues is murdered, and the detective is forced to dive into New Yorks culinary underworld. His palate may be refined, but this gourmet knows how to fight dirty.

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A corrupt P.I. will do anything to make a buck and save his own skinJoe Puma didnt kill Albert Target, but he is happy the pimp is dead. A small-time creep whose niche was recruiting wannabe actresses, Target perjured himself for Pumas sake, and the detective was afraid he might decide to talk. The cops know that Pumas crooked, but they cant prove a thing. Hes a slick operator with an itchy trigger finger and a flimsy moral codetwo things hell need if his next case is to end as happily as his last. Fallen starlet Jean Roland comes to Puma with a plan to blackmail her lesbian lovers fathera dangerous scheme that would put Puma off if Roland werent the most stunning woman in Los Angeles. Joe Puma likes money and he likes being alive, but he likes women even more. Hed die for a girl like Jean Rolandbut hed prefer it if someone else died first.

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A copywriters wife has vanished, and only John Easy is slick enough to save herJim Benning makes $25,000 a year writing drivel for the admen at the Arbogast & Joseph Agency, and his wife thinks hes worth a whole lot less. Joanna is a model: nervous, beautiful, and prone to meltdowns. In a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage, she agrees to a few sessions with a psychiatrist in San Ignacioa quack whose psychobabble is more sinister than it appears. But when Joanna disappears, Jims only hope is John Easy, the hippest P.I. in Hollywood. Jim gives John a matchbook found in his wifes purse for a club called Maybea swingers hideout where morality is not in styleand John plunges into the seedy side of sunny San Ignacio, where the copywriters wife led an entirely different sort of existence. To save Joanna from her shadow self, John Easy will have to swing harder than ever before.

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Stranded in a small town, a stranger falls for a suspected murderessBored, divorced, and unemployed, Chatham is on his way to the Gulf of Mexico when he passes through a small town by the river. Its a miserable little burgfour stoplights and not much elseand hes almost escaped it when a drunks car darts out in front of him, causing a nasty fender-bender. The thought of three days waiting for his clunker to get fixed is a grim one, but though he doesnt know it, there wont be a dull minute. Chatham finds hospitality in the lovely form of Mrs. Langton, motel owner and local pariah. Seven months ago her husband was murdered, and though the police could find no evidence to support the theory, everyone in town is convinced she killed him. Now a string of anonymous threats have left her close to a nervous breakdown, and the violence is about to become real. In a town this small theres no room for secrets, but plenty of places to bury a corpse.

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Missing Rolls Royces, Renaissance fair revelryand murder: A witty, literate and charming mystery featuring Bostons married art sleuths (Publishers Weekly).   Sarah Kelling and her husband, Max Bittersohn, have made names for themselves tracking down stolen paintings, sculptures, and, when necessary, the occasional murderer. But this is the first time they have been asked to find a missing Rolls Royce. When Bill Billingsgates prize 1927 New Phantom disappears, they head for his estate on the Massachusetts coast, arrivingto their horrorjust in time for Billingsgates annual Renaissance fair. Donning period dress, they grab pints of mead and start searching the crowd for the thief. Instead they find a corpse. When the local police bungle the investigation, Max and Sarah take it upon themselves to find the killer. In the course of their search, they confront a car thief, corruption at a radio station, and a horde of murderous bees. If this is the Renaissance, Max and Sarah cant wait to return to the present.

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A museum robbery leaves a guard dead, and two Boston sleuths investigate: If this is your first meeting with Sarah Kelling, oh how I envy you (Margaret Maron).   Its only been a few months since Sarah Kellings elderly husband passed away, and shes struggling to adapt to life as a penniless young widow. To make ends meet, she converts her stately Boston home into a boardinghouse, a decision that brings something even better than money: the company of art-fraud investigator Max Bittersohn. The budding couple is standing on a balcony, recovering from a second-rate concert at a third-rate museum, when something plummets past them. The museum has been robbed, and a guard has fallen to his death. Dozens of priceless paintings have been stolen and replaced with forgeries, and recovering these masterworks will mean tearing the lid off the quiet life of the Boston upper crust. But its a chance Sarah and Max must take, lest they join the guard on his long trip down.

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Murder upstages a Kelling family theatrical productionand Bostons art sleuths are on the case. The screwball mystery is Charlotte MacLeods cup of tea (Chicago Tribune).  Producing a Gilbert & Sullivan opera requires a special kind of madness, and the Kelling family is large enough and peculiar enough to undertake an entire company by themselves. For years now, Sarah Kellings Aunt Emma has supervised these annual productionsfrom The Pirates of Penzance to The Mikadoand this year she has invited her cast of relatives to rehearse The Sorcerer in her stately mansion. The show is nearly ready when a team of burglars drugs the cast and crew to make off with a priceless portrait. Theft or no theft, Aunt Emma insists the show must go on. Even when one of the cast dies suddenly, she finds a replacement and continues rehearsal. But when Sarah begins to suspect the actor was murdered, it becomes clear that dear Aunt Emma may be in danger of taking her final bow.

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Long-lost relatives and priceless jewels turn a wedding upside down For all the Kellings quirks, no other family in Boston is more adept at throwing a wedding. So when Max Bittersohns wife, Sarah Kelling, offers to organize his nephews nuptials, Max is smart enough to stay out of her way. But when the art-fraud investigator stumbles onto a family mystery, he is drawn into something far more serious than the question of who will catch the bouquet. Stolen years earlier, the priceless Kelling jewels were last seen in Amsterdam, so how did they end up among the wedding gifts? Max is trying to answer that question when a talkative burglar wallops him with a shovel in a failed attempt to rip off the rubies. Then, as the reception winds down, a hot-air balloon lands on the wedding tent, spilling out the Zickerys, a branch of the Kelling clan who prove even odder than the original strain. Family weddings are never easy, but for Max Bittersohn, this one could be murder.

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Bostons married art sleuths are about to discover that you cant fake a murder: Entertaining . . . good humored . . . Sarah and Max are a winning team (Baltimore Sun).  If she werent so fabulous, the Countess Lydia Ouspenska might be considered a gangsters moll. The last time she met Max Bittersohn, Bostons famed art-fraud investigator, she was forging minute Byzantine masterpieces to make ends meet. But when Max bumps into her on the Common, the Countess is back on her feet. She has taken up with Bartolo Arbalest, a master forger currently masquerading as an art restorer. And as Bittersohn knows all too well, even the most genteel fraudster cannot be trusted. With the help of his wife, Sarah, Max looks for the secret lair of Bartolos supposed restoration guild. But when the guilds clients begin to die, it becomes clear there is more at stake than a few fabricated icons. The art may be fake, but for Max and Sarah the danger is very real.

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A funny and exciting mystery in the series featuring a husband-and-wife sleuthing team in Boston (Publishers Weekly). Boston and its suburbs are stuffed with Kellings, and the city is about to get one more. Sarah Kelling and her husband Max Bittersohna pair of amateur sleuths equally at home in back alleys as they are at black-tie ballsare about to have a baby. And if the child takes after his parents, he will be one of the cleverest infants in New England. But while Sarah is a month away from giving birth, she cannot let pregnancy slow her downshe has a murder to solve. A resident at one of Sarahs Uncle Dolphs homeless centers is found mugged and murdered on one of Bostons seedier side streets. Someone at the shelter has been dealing drugs, and plans to frame Uncle Dolph for the murder. Now Sarah and Max must race to clear Dolphs name, lest the newest Kelling arrive before his family honor can be restored.

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A museum murder puts Bostons married art sleuths to work: The screwball mystery is Charlotte MacLeods cup of tea (Chicago Tribune). When the doddering patrons of the Wilkins Museum learned that dozens of their priceless masterworks had been stolen and replaced by forgeries, there was no one to turn to but Sarah Kelling and Max Bittersohnthe savviest art detectives of the Boston upper crust. Nabbing the crooks was easy, but finding the missing paintings has proven trickier. Years later, the collections prized Titian is still lost, and the new director, loudmouthed cattle baron Elwyn Fleesom Turbot, is getting impatient. And things get even more troublesome when members of his staff begin to die. It starts when Dolores Tawne, the elderly, bossy museum administrator, is stabbed through the base of her skull with an antique hatpin. Inside the dead womans safe deposit box Sarah finds clues to a conspiracy that stretches back decades and a way to stop the murders that are still to come.