Download or read book The Stoner Detective written by Douglas H. Doyle and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2009-09-16 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's the summer of 1981, and the streets of Hollywood are a riot of sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll, the glory days of the L.A. punk scene. At 21, Sean Stoner is young to be working at Krapp Productions. After receiving the ultimate insult from his boss, Sean conspires to get himself fired and sets up shop as a private detective. His first client is easy enough: a gorgeous woman searching for a lost husband who doesn't exist. But Sean is in trouble when he finds his nympho punk secretary with a broken neckstark naked on top of his desk. Things quickly get worse: the CIA moves in next door ... Sean's old Pinto explodes ... Nazi skinheads try to kill him with baseball bats ... and a strange disease breaks out in the gay community. Meanwhile, Sean investigates the mysterious death of his own father, who died twenty years ago in a bizarre double murderin the very office where the CIA is conducting its top-secret operation. When Sean's screenwriter friend, Conrad, is found with his brains blown out, Sean refuses to believe it was suicide. Then Hillary appears, Conrad's hauntingly beautiful sister, and Sean and Hillary join forces to uncover Conrad's killer.

Download or read book The Music Lovers written by Jonathan Valin and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Detective Harry Stoner has seen better days. It's the middle of January and business is slower than a crawl. Curled up in his office with a paperback mystery, a little classical music on the radio, and a bottle of Scotch, Harry's ready to cut his losses and hibernate until spring. The only problem is that Harry's been living off Visa credit and Christmas cash, and the money faucet is beginning to run dry. Enter Leon Tubin, an odd little man with worn trousers but a pocketful of cash. Leon's a collector of vintage LP recordings and he's sure another member of his music-listening group is ripping him off. They're all jealous of his record library, especially his Wagner-loving rival, Sherwood Loeffler. It seems to be nickel-and-dime stuff to Harry but Leon insists that the recordings in question are worth about ten thousand dollars. Convincing arguments are one thing, an advance of five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills is another. Harry takes the case. After interviews with Leon's music-loving cronies, Harry is struck by their obsessive audio compulsions but almost positive that when it comes to grand theft, they are all on the up-and-up. It's Leon's blond bombshell of a wife, Sheila, who has Harry doing a double take. What's a woman like her doing with a wimp like Leon? Sheila confides that Leon saved her years before from her days as a swizzle-stick lounge singer, and out of loyalty and true love she'd do anything to protect him. But what does Sheila's past have to do with a bunch of stolen records? A bizarre trail of clues emerges but, in the end, Harry finds his case won't be completely resolved even though he's heard the fat lady sing over and over again.

Download or read book Fire Lake written by Jonathan Valin and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A phone ringing after midnight means trouble, especially in private eye Harry Stoner's business. This time the 1:30 call is trouble, all right. A motel clerk wants somebody to pick up the loser registered as Harry Stoner who just tried to kill himself. When the real Stoner gets to the Encantada Motel, he finds his old college roommate nearly dead and too many memories still alive. It's a suicide attempt that forces Stoner back into his own past, where a pretty woman, a brutal murder, and the bitter remnants of the sixties drug culture make Stoner's future look rosy...like flowers on a grave.

Download or read book Final Notice written by Jonathan Valin and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: She was perfect. She smelled of toothpaste, talc, and something sweeter than lilacs. And in that crazy season of autumn, when Cincinnati was ablaze in the blood-red color of fall, Kate Davis made Harry Stoner feel old, and a little in love too. But for Harry Stoner those were only two more reasons that Kate shouldn't have anything more to do with this case. Because what had started with a twisted act of vandalism in the local library had led Kate and Harry, paired together, on a twisting path to a brutal, unsolved murder and to a pumped-up, speeded-up psycho.

Download or read book The Lime Pit written by Jonathan Valin and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stoner is a private eye in the classic tradition: a loner with a history of failed relationships with women and all-too-successful relationships with bottles of scotch. He's unable to look away from the world's corruption-and unable to avoid trying to do something about it. His latest hopeless cause is Cindy Ann, a teenage hooker. She's not very pretty or bright or engaging ... she doesn't have much to offer at all. So when she disappears, it's all the more disturbing for Stoner-who knows what can happen to girls that nobody wants. And he's got a sick hunch that he knows what happened to Cindy Ann, right across the Cincinnati border. Stoner's hunches are almost always on the money-and they rarely feature happy endings.

Download or read book Natural Causes written by Jonathan Valin and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Detective Harry Stoner has seen too much of the seamy side of life not to notice the tarnish on Los Angeles' glitter or the gritty reality behind the never-never land of television's biggest daytime soaps. A detergent manufacturer, already begrimed by scandal and rumor, doesn't want his image further muddied by the mysterious death of the head writer on the daytime series he sponsors. So it's up to Stoner to find out what really happened that sunny August weekend when Quentin Dover took his last shower. What Stoner uncovers is a slick world of high finance and low morals, all powered with cocaine, a sexy blond widow turned on by booze and boys, the broken lives of the men and women who create America's TV fantasies, and the perfect setting for greed, jealousy, and murder.

Download or read book Extenuating Circumstances written by Jonathan Valin and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To PI Harry Stoner, Ira Lessing had everything to live for: money, a beautiful wife, good friends, and a reputation that would do credit to a saint. But Lessing disappeared one hot July night, and Stoner knew in his gut that the man was dead. Years on the street had taught Stoner that no man is what he seems. Peeling away layers to the bone would reveal what had become of Lessing. It would lead Stoner into the underbelly of Cincinnati, into the places where desire and violence meet, into the darkest byways of the human heart where his own values would be tested to the bloody limit, by acts of love—and murder.

Download or read book Missing written by Jonathan Valin and published by Dell. This book was released on 1998-12 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Dead Letter written by Jonathan Valin and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The professor was an eccentric old bird, and his daughter was a delicate flower. So how could Harry Stoner suspect the snake pit of hatred and greed he was walking into that winter day when he agreed to find a missing document for Professor Daryl Lovingwell? Following Sarah Lovingwell to a subversive group landed Stoner face-to-face with a towering ex-marine making a new career of murder. Before Stoner could catch his balance, one of the two Lovingwells was dead, and snow-steeped Cincinnati was cut through the center by a highway of blood and violence. Harry Stoner was in the middle of it—holding the pieces of an explosive puzzle of lies. Blackmail, adultery, and evil—an evil you’d never associate with a sensitive little man in tweed, until you saw good people die before your eyes.

Download or read book The Gay Detective Novel written by Judith A. Markowitz and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-02-16 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gertrude Stein called it "the only really modern novel form that has come into existence," yet the mystery genre was a century old before it featured its first gay main character in a novel. Since then, gay and lesbian detective fiction has been one of the fastest growing segments of the genre. It incorporates gay and lesbian cultural elements and offers crossover appeal. Its authors call upon a century of development in the mystery genre, while providing new, more accurate images of lesbians and gay men than generally found in mainstream literature and popular media. This groundbreaking study of gay and lesbian detective fiction examines mystery series and historically significant stand-alone novels published since the early 1960s. Part I is an overview that describes how these novels make gay and lesbian life visible and forge new, powerful images. It also examines how they fit into the larger history of mystery fiction. The series analyses in Part II are grouped according to the type of main character (police officer, private investigator, amateur sleuth, etc.). Each section discusses main and secondary characters of that type, characteristic themes for the group, and more. The analyses of individual series cover main characters, themes, plot points and other elements. Comments from authors interviewed for this book play a central role in those analyses. Part III lists series-spanning themes (e.g., homophobia, the closet, gay marriage) and the novels and series that address each of those themes.

Download or read book Day of Wrath written by Jonathan Valin and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sheltered but precocious Robbie Segal has run away from home, a small brick house on an unexceptional street. Her desperate mother has asked Harry Stoner to find her. What begins as an ordinary missing-persons case, a case that should be settled without any violence at all, suddenly changes in an impossibly terrifying way. Now Harry is on the trail of a shockingly brutal act of murder, because it might lead him to a runaway girl, because it had become part of the job, because something deep and indelible inside him simply has to.

Download or read book Life s Work written by Jonathan Valin and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cincinnati Cougars' Billy Parks was All-Pro ... and missing. Harry Stoner's job was to find him and get him into shape for the season. But Billy's photo told Stoner he didn't like the man ... or the shape he was in. The eye revealed a killer mentality-a player who crushed, mangled, and sacked with pleasure. Billy's disappearing act might be part of a contract dispute or something far more deadly. For Stoner suspected that Billy had become a mean machine who went on scoring in a sordid world of drugs and violence, where death hit with a blind-side tackle ... and life lasted only until the final cut.

Download or read book Stoner s Boy written by Robert F. Schulkers and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mr. Stoner is bad, and it seems his son is turning out just the same. Masked and dressed all in gray, Stoner's Boy moves like a ghost up and down the river, stealing and causing mischief. Seckatary Hawkins and his club have crossed this dangerous lad, and (to make matters worse) Briggen and the Pelham gang across the river won't leave the ruthless thief alone: They know that he's hidden his treasure hoard somewhere in his cliff cave lair, and they're dead set on having it for themselves. Still, it doesn't seem that anyone can stand up to this clever foe -- except maybe another newcomer in town, sharpshooter Robby Hood, who is the only person that Stoner's Boy seems to fear. Before Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, Seckatary Hawkins and his friends from the Fair and Square Club were solving mysteries and thrilling readers with tales of adventure, loyalty, and courage. One of the biggest fans of the series was author Harper Lee, and Stoner's Boy makes a prominent appearance in her masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird. Now, the tales of the Fair and Square Club's encounters with the river renegade known as the Gray Ghost are back in print and ready to ignite the imaginations of devoted fans and new readers of all ages.

Download or read book Second Chance written by Jonathan Valin and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clients never tell the whole story. Harry Stoner had taken a snowy drive to Cincinnati psychiatrist Phil Pearson's mansion to hear the tale of daughter Kirsten—emotionally disturbed and missing. But the doctor left out the parts about his first wife's suicide and his second wife's bedroom eyes that were already chasing the winter cold from Stoner's blood. That's why Stoner suspected the search for Kirsten could take a kinky turn. He'd seen teens driven by desperation before—the dark things hidden deep in troubled minds become too much for flesh and blood to bear. And Kirsten's secrets were tied to an act so chilling that its reemergence could tear lives apart, unleashing passions so violent that even the hard heart of a seasoned PI could break or be stopped forever.

Download or read book My Dark Places written by James Ellroy and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's greatest crime writer investigates his mother's murder. On 21 June 1958, Geneva Hilliker Ellroy left her home in California. She was found strangled the next day. Her ten year-old son James had been with her estranged husband all weekend and was informed of her death on his return. Her murderer was never found, but her death had an enduring effect on her son - he spent his teens and early adult years as a wino, petty burglar and derelict. Only later, through his obsession with crime fiction, triggered by his mother's murder, did Ellroy begin to delve into his past. Shortly after the publication of his groundbreaking novel WHITE JAZZ, he determined to return to Los Angeles and, with the help of veteran detective Bill Stoner, attempt to solve the 38-year-old killing. The result is one of the few classics of crime non-fiction and autobiography to appear in the last few decades; a hypnotic trip to America's underbelly and one man's tortured soul.

Download or read book Stoner written by John Williams and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2015 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Born the child of a poor farmer in Missouri, William Stoner is urged by his parents to study new agriculture techniques at the state university. Digging instead into the texts of Milton and Shakespeare, Stoner falls under the spell of the unexpected pleasures of English literature, and decides to make it his life. Stoner is the story of that life"--

Download or read book Nineteenth Century Detective Fiction written by LeRoy Lad Panek and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-09-22 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In English and American cultures, detective fiction has a long and illustrious history. Its origins can be traced back to major developments in Anglo-American law, like the concept of circumstantial evidence and the rise of lawyers as heroic figures. Edgar Allen Poe's writings further fueled this cultural phenomenon, with the use of enigmas and conundrums in his detective stories, as well as the hunt-and-chase action of early police detective novels. Poe was only one staple of the genre, with detective fiction contributing to a thriving literary market that later influenced Arthur Conan Doyle's work. This text examines the emergence of short detective fiction in the nineteenth century, as well as the appearance of detectives in Victorian novels. It explores how the genre has captivated readers for centuries, with the chapters providing a framework for a more complete understanding of nineteenth-century detective fiction.