FREE/BARGAIN — Mystery, Suspense & Thrillers

[GA Russell]

Mr. Paradise - Elmore Leonard - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Paradise-N...dp/B000FC1PIY/

[Mort1997]

Free on Amazon UK - Echo of Darkness by John A. Bray

Spoiler:

Dante Falconieri is now a private detective with an office in Manhattan.

A former agent with the DEA, he left Federal service under a cloud of suspicion that still follows him.

His partner, both at the office and in matters of the heart, is Clara O’Shea.

She was a New York City detective now retired on three quarters disability pension after being shot while working as Dante’s handler when he was on loan to the NYPD as a confidential informant.

A woman named Amelia Boyle comes to their office to retain their services.

Her husband disappears at strange hours and she suspects infidelity and wants to know who he is involved with.

With the marriage failing, and Amelia seeks a divorce.

She also wants a large financial settlement from her husband’s wealth when she leaves, knowing if he has secret trysts might increase her chances of a significant cash award.

From the first time Dante follows Ada’n ‘Ed’ Boyle, he knows an extra marital affair is not the reasons for his absences from home as he witnesses Ed meeting with a group of suspicious looking men on a Hudson River pier.

The question is why Ed, a Syracuse University graduate with a high IQ, a former employee of the United States Agency for International Development and now a well paid investment banker with the firm of Karagian Brothers, is associating with unsavoury people.

As Dante pursues leads into Boyle’s involvement to uncover the husband’s strange conduct, Amelia Boyle is found murdered.

This event brings the NYPD and all of Dante’s past crashing together as more and more bodies appear.

Ed Boyle then asks Dante for help in disentangling himself from the gang he meets on the pier.
Filled with twists and turns, Echo of Darkness takes the reader through the dark world of international crime and diamond smuggling.

Finally, Dante risks his life to help his new client and unearths evidence of another conspiracy far worse than gem smuggling.

UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Echo-Darkne...ndeavour+press


US
https://www.amazon.com/Echo-Darkness...ndeavour+press

Au
https://www.amazon.com.au/Echo-Darkn...ndeavour+press

Can
https://www.amazon.ca/Echo-Darkness-...ndeavour+press

[Mort1997]

Free on Amazon UK - Lethal Streets (A Flood and Flood Mystery Book 2) by Will Rayner

Spoiler:

Making enemies is all too easy for private dicks in Depression-hit San Francisco.

So the last thing the father and son team of Flood and Flood need is a demented dame assailing them with a machete and a crossbow.

And what in God’s name is driving the mysterious, murderous but elusive woman in grey to first target rich old coot Randolph Baggett who then turns to the Floods – Sam and his son Thomas (T.J.) – to watch his back?

Will Rayner’s colourful romp through the underworld in 1930s America continues as the pair steer a tricky path between gangsters and law enforcers.

Sometimes it is tough to tell the two apart – maybe just a uniform.

When Sam is asked by his friend, the hat-seller Solly Silverman, to find his missing niece Sharon, he enters the depraved world of Digger O’Doul who runs a string of illicit taxi-dance venues.

When Digger proves less than cooperative with their inquiries, the Floods enlist the help of vice-king Packy Shannon as they begin to lift the lid on the seamy side of city life.

Things begin to really heat up when the Floods take on an assignment from an LA firm of investigators trying to expose rampant police corruption in San Fran.

Will they be able to hunt down pickpocket Dobie the Dip who fled the courtroom while testifying in a bribery case against the boys in blue?

The deeper they dig, the more patrolmen they unearth who are on the take. And the crime lords are none too happy about that.

It means war, but Elder partner Sam Flood has more than enough on his plate, trying to keep his pistol-packing son in line and caring for his elderly and increasingly absent-minded second wife.

The hard-headed T.J., whose wife died on their honeymoon three years before, shows he may have a softer side as he is drawn towards the ‘real piperoo’ Indigo Cody.

But is he still tough enough to strike a deal with Lieutenant James ‘Jimbo’ Bracken of homicide when he gets a tip-off about a rogue cop’s payroll heist?

Meanwhile the woman in grey has acquired a meat cleaver and a revolver!

Lethal Streets is an entertaining and satisfying mystery set against the backdrop of crime and corruption that flooded America after Prohibition.

It is another book in Rayner’s series set in the authentic atmosphere of San Francisco during a turbulent decade marked by a major riot, widespread police corruption and the establishment of the infamous Alcatraz prison.

UK
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lethal-Stre...ndeavour+press


US
https://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Street...ndeavour+press

Au
https://www.amazon.com.au/Lethal-Str...ndeavour+press

Can
https://www.amazon.ca/Lethal-Streets...ndeavour+press

[GA Russell]

The Shattered Raven - Edward D. Hoch - $1.99
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GH2G7WU

[sufue]

The Grub-and-Stakers Pinch a Poke is the third in the Grub-and-Stakers series by Charlotte MacLeod. It has dropped to $0.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/Grub-Stakers-...dp/B009S33JS0/

Spoiler:

An amateur play turns serious when a prop gun is swapped for a real one

When Jenson Thorbisher-Freep announces an amateur theatrical contest, the women in the Grub-and-Stake gardening club race to join in. They enlist Osbert Monk as their playwright—not only is he married to their club leader Dittany Monk, but he’s famous the world over as Lex Laramie, bestselling novelist of Westerns. Taking the legend of Dangerous Dan McGrew as his inspiration, Osbert delivers a rough draft faster than the Pony Express. Now all the Grub-and-Stakers have to do is cast it.

To play McGrew, Dittany picks town cad Andrew McNaster, who has recently improved his manners in an attempt to woo Osbert’s aunt, Arethusa. The gunslinger’s performance gets a bit too real on opening night, though, when his prop bullets are replaced with real ones, and claim the toe of a fellow thespian. Is McNaster as nice as he pretends to be? Or has he taken his part too close to heart, and decided to become very dangerous indeed?

[sufue]

Too Many Crooks Spoil the Broth is the first in the Magdalena Yoder series by Tamar Myers. It has dropped to $0.99 at Kindle and Kobo US (coupon/VIPable).

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/Crooks-Spoil-...dp/B00DGFC4VO/
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/too...poil-the-broth

Spoiler:

An Amish Bed and Breakfast Mystery with Recipes - PennDutch Mysteries #1

Readers will delight in this laugh-out-loud cozy mystery debut - and relish the country cooking recipes included.

This debut mystery introduces Magdalena Yoder, prim, proper, and persnickety proprietor of the PennDutch Inn, where guests luxuriate in the true “Amish experience,” (read: doing Magdalena's chores and paying top dollar for the opportunity!).

When one of her more reclusive guests takes a tumble down the PennDutch's picturesquely steep staircase and breaks his neck, the timing couldn't be worse. It's the start of hunting season - and her inn is packed to capacity!
What at first seems to be a horrible accident (and insurance nightmare for Magdalena!) could turn out to be a much more sinister event; and when another mishap occurs, Magdalena is certain there is a killer in her group - and it's up to her to sniff out the culprit…before the world's most incompetent town sheriff throws her in jail!

[sufue]

A Fool and His Honey is the 6th in the Aurora Teagarden series by Charlaine Harris. It has dropped to $1.40 at Kindle US and $2.99 (VIP/couponable) at Kobo US.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/Fool-Honey-Au...dp/B01JGYTIDA/
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/a-fool-and-his-honey-4

Spoiler:

Author of the books that inspired True Blood on HBO and Midnight Texas on NBC

Aurora Teagarden should be used to surprises by now. Yet when a local handyman begins dancing naked in her yard, she’s thrown for a loop and suspects it could be a bad omen of unwelcome events to come. When her husband’s niece, Regina, appears in Lawrenceton with a baby in tow and evading questions, tensions escalate. It’s not much longer before Regina’s husband is found murdered and Regina herself has disappeared, leaving both her baby and a large amount of money behind.

Traveling north to Ohio seeking relatives to care for the abandoned child, and accompanied by a friend of Regina’s who seems to know more than he’s letting on, Roe and Martin search for clues that will point them to Regina’s location and why she abandoned her baby. There’s a killer at large and Roe, snowed in in rural Ohio, will have to peel back the layers of secrets to find the truth before more people die.

The charismatic Roe Teagarden is back in this unforgettable tale of mystery by the #1 New York Times bestselling author, Charlaine Harris. Real Murders, A Bone To Pick, Three Bedrooms, One Corpse, and the rest of the Aurora Teagarden series has been adapted into films by the Hallmark Movie Channel.

[sufue]

Lonely Hearts is the first in the Charlie Resnick series by John Harvey. It has dropped to $0.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/Lonely-Hearts...dp/B006ZE1I1K/

Spoiler:

A serial killer terrorizes the young women of Nottingham

Shirley Peters was murdered in her own home. A directionless young woman with a fondness for cheap red wine and a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend, her death is just another in the files of the Nottingham detective’s bureau. The police round up her ex-lover without much fuss, and are preparing to try him when another body surfaces. The method, the target, and the extreme violence are all a match for the killing of Shirley Peters. Nottingham is facing a serial killer.

Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick is the first to see the connection. Both victims placed ads in a citywide Lonely Hearts column, and the rumpled detective suspects that their killer found them by preying on their isolation. He has little time to find the killer before more women die and Nottingham erupts into panic.

[sufue]

Dear Mr. Holmes: Seven Holmes on the Range Mysteries by Steve Hockensmith was briefly free a couple of months ago, and is free again today at both Kindle US and Kindle UK.

Info and links in these previous posts by Mort1997 and Dr Drib:

UK: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh....php?p=3508165
US: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh....php?p=3508180

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sufue

Lonely Hearts is the first in the Charlie Resnick series by John Harvey. It has dropped to $0.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/Lonely-Hearts...dp/B006ZE1I1K/

Excellent series! Highly recommended, if anyone's not read it.

[sufue]

Death Comes to Suburbia is a "modernized" version of Just the Fax, Ma'am, originally published in 1996, which is the second title in the Molly Masters series by Leslie O'Kane. It has dropped to $1.40 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/Death-Comes-S...dp/B00PFX2SJS/

Spoiler:

Trouble returns for cartoonist Molly Masters when Preston Saunders, the husband of Molly's least-favorite person--Stephanie--is murdered in his and Stephanie's living room. An hour earlier, Molly and Preston had a terrible argument on Molly's front porch, when he confessed that he'd stolen Molly's one ribald cartoon, which won a contest in a porn magazine with Preston posing as cartoonist "Mike" Masters. Shocked at discovering her husband's body and nine-months pregnant, Stephanie goes into labor, and Molly winds up having to play midwife.

While holding her newborn son, Stephanie pleads with Molly to do the one thing that, as a mother herself, Molly doesn't have the heart to refuse: to help prove that Stephanie's teenage daughter did not kill her own father. Molly's quest leads her to going undercover at both the high school and the country club...and to becoming a killer's second target.

[sufue]

House of Evidence is a non-series title by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson. It has dropped to $0.99 at Kindle US.

link: https://www.amazon.com/House-Evidenc...dp/B005OBXNEK/

Spoiler:

On a cold January morning in 1973, inside a stately old house in Reykjavik, blood pools around Jacob Kieler Junior from a fatal gunshot wound to his chest. Detective Jóhann Pálsson, an expert in the emerging field of forensics, is called to the scene and soon discovers something more unsettling than the murder itself: the deceased’s father, Jacob Kieler Senior, a railroad engineer, was shot to death in the same living room nearly thirty years earlier. The case was officially closed as a botched robbery.

Pálsson soon uncovers diaries that portray Kieler Senior as an ambitious man dedicated to bringing the railroad to Iceland no matter the cost. Sensing a deeper and darker mystery afoot, the detective and his colleagues piece together through the elder Kieler’s diaries a family history rich with deceit…

[sufue]

Three titles in Robert Goldsborough's excellent (IMO) continuation of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin series have dropped to $1.99 at Kindle US. Titles are:

• Murder in E-Minor, #1
• Archie in the Crosshairs, #10
• Archie Meets Nero, #8

link for all three: https://www.amazon.com/gp/search/?se...price-asc-rank

[sufue]

Two titles in the Hugo Marston series by Mark Pryor have dropped to $2.99 at Kindle and Kobo US, one of which is the most recent in series.

The Bookseller, #1
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/Bookseller-Fi...dp/B00C4B2LRI/
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-bookseller-1

Spoiler:

Who is killing the celebrated bouquinistes of Paris?

Max—an elderly Paris bookstall owner—is abducted at gunpoint. His friend, Hugo Marston, head of security at the US embassy, looks on helplessly, powerless to do anything to stop the kidnapper. Marston launches a search, enlisting the help of semiretired CIA agent Tom Green. Their investigation reveals that Max was a Holocaust survivor and later became a Nazi hunter. Is his disappearance somehow tied to his grim history, or even to the mysterious old books he sold?

On the streets of Paris, tensions are rising as rival drug gangs engage in violent turf wars. Before long, other booksellers start to disappear, their bodies found floating in the Seine. Though the police are not interested in his opinion, Marston is convinced the hostilities have something to do with the murders of these bouquinistes. Then he himself becomes a target of the unknown assassins.

With Tom by his side, Marston finally puts the pieces of the puzzle together, connecting the past with the present and leading the two men, quite literally, to the enemy's lair. Just as the killer intended.

The Paris Librarian, #6
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/Paris-Librari...dp/B0180SLMC8/
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-paris-librarian

Spoiler:

Hugo Marston’s friend Paul Rogers dies unexpectedly in a locked room at the American Library in Paris. The police conclude that Rogers died of natural causes, but Hugo is certain mischief is afoot.

As he pokes around the library, Hugo discovers that rumors are swirling around some recently donated letters from American actress Isabelle Severin. The reason: they may indicate that the actress had aided the Resistance in frequent trips to France toward the end of World War II. Even more dramatic is the legend that the Severin collection also contains a dagger, one she used to kill an SS officer in 1944.

Hugo delves deeper into the stacks at the American library and finally realizes that the history of this case isn’t what anyone suspected. But to prove he’s right, Hugo must return to the scene of a decades-old crime.

[sufue]

The first four titles in Ben Pastor's Martin Bora series have dropped to $2.99 at Kindle US. (The fifth and most recent was on sale not too long ago...)

Titles are:

• Lumen
• Liar Moon
• A Dark Song of Blood
• Tin Sky

Link for all four: https://www.amazon.com/gp/search/?se...price-asc-rank