The Lost Detective

The Lost Detective
Author: Nathan Ward
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2015-09-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1632862778

A 2016 Edgar Award Nominee Before he became a household name in America as perhaps our greatest hard-boiled crime writer, before his attachment to Lillian Hellman and blacklisting during the McCarthy era, and his subsequent downward spiral, Dashiell Hammett led a life of action. Born in 1894 into a poor Maryland family, Hammett left school at fourteen and held several jobs before joining the Pinkerton National Detective Agency as an operative in 1915 and, with time off in 1918 to serve at the end of World War I, he remained with the agency until 1922, participating alike in the banal and dramatic action of an operative. The tuberculosis he contracted during the war forced him to leave the Pinkertons--but it may well have prompted one of America's most acclaimed writing careers. While Hammett's life on center stage has been well-documented, the question of how he got there has not. That largely overlooked phase is the subject of Nathan Ward's enthralling The Lost Detective. Hammett's childhood, his life in San Francisco, and especially his experience as a detective deeply informed his writing and his characters, from the nameless Continental Op, hero of his stories and early novels, to Sam Spade and Nick Charles. The success of his many stories in the pulp magazine Black Mask following his departure from the Pinkertons led him to novels; he would write five between 1929 and 1934, two of them (The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man) now American classics. Though he inspired generations of writers, from Chandler to Connelly and all in between, after The Thin Man he never finished another book, a painful silence for his devoted readers; and his popular image has long been shaped by the remembrance of Hellman, who knew him after his literary reputation had been made. Based on original research across the country, The Lost Detective is the first book to illuminate Hammett's transformation from real detective to great American detective writer, throwing brilliant new light on one of America's most celebrated and remembered novelists and his world.

The Pussy Detective

The Pussy Detective
Author: DuVay Knox
Publisher: Clash Books
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2022-02-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781955904131

A surreal Blacksploitation joint for the 21st Century. An Occult, Erotic Mystery bout Reverend Daddy Hoodoo helping his Wommin find their Lost-R-Missing Pussies with the help of the extraordinary Madam X. Featuring heartless gangsters, Vodoo sex Magick, and a young Wommin in distress by the name of Abysinnia who is in desperate need of the services of Daddy Hoodoo. This tale leads from Between the Sheets to the Streets to the Boardroom Suites--and Beyond.

A Detective's Complaint

A Detective's Complaint
Author: Shimon Adaf
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2022-08-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374720908

"In Shimon Adaf's Lost Detective Trilogy, what begins as conventional mystery becomes by degrees a brilliant deconstruction not just of genre but of our own search for meaning. Both profound and compulsively readable, these books demand to be devoured." —Lavie Tidhar, author of By Force Alone In A Detective's Complaint, the sequel to One Mile and Two Days Before Sunset, Elish Ben Zaken has traded working as a private investigator for writing detective novels based on unsolved cases from the past. He appears to live an ordinary writer’s life: meeting with his agent, attending literary conferences. But all is not quite right with Elish, who cannot escape his past so easily, especially when his sister’s daughter, Tahel, a teenager and an aspiring sleuth herself, calls on him for help. Tahel has uncovered a mystery: a young woman boarded a bus in Beersheva on a Thursday evening and stepped off in Sderot, close to the Gaza border, on Sunday evening. A bus ride that should have lasted an hour instead took three days, and the young woman remembers none of it. To assist Tahel—and, he tells himself, to conduct research for his next novel—Elish moves back to Sderot, where he grew up. His sister, Yaffa, has moved her family from Tel Aviv to a new lakeside development there; the property came cheap, despite the attractive setting, and there are murmurs that the developer fled the country before it was completed. Some of the houses still stand empty, and Tahel keeps waking up at night to find her mother staring out at the lake, convinced she is being watched. Now, in the summer of 2014, Sderot lies near the center of the Gaza–Israel conflict, and sirens and missile strikes are part of the town’s daily reality—as are violent clashes between anti-war protestors and those who oppose them. In this pressurized environment, Elish must grapple with the deep wounds of history, both personal and political, and the human need for answers in a world that offers few.

One Mile and Two Days Before Sunset

One Mile and Two Days Before Sunset
Author: Shimon Adaf
Publisher: Lost Detective Trilogy
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2022-08-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374227039

"In this first volume of a trilogy by the celebrated Israeli poet, novelist, and musician Shimon Adaf, meet Elish Ben Zaken: a lapsed rock critic, sometime philosopher, and wholly unlikely private investigator"--

Take Up and Read

Take Up and Read
Author: Shimon Adaf
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2022-08-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374720916

"In Shimon Adaf's Lost Detective Trilogy, what begins as conventional mystery becomes by degrees a brilliant deconstruction not just of genre but of our own search for meaning. Both profound and compulsively readable, these books demand to be devoured." —Lavie Tidhar, author of By Force Alone In the summer of 2014, at the height of the Gaza-Israel conflict, Elish Ben-Zaken met the poet and librarian Nahum Farkash in the border town of Sderot. They spoke only briefly, but in that brief encounter, Elish might have missed the key to unraveling the case of a Sderot woman who disappeared for two days, only to reappear with no memory of her time away. In Take Up and Read, Shimon Adaf returns to Farkash’s story. Attempting to defend the legacy of the singer Dalia Shoshan—whose murder Elish investigated several years before—Farkash tries to impede the production of a new documentary about her life. Meanwhile, he reminisces about his past, reflecting on his experiences as a young religious boy growing up in Sderot. Fourteen years later, in a militant Israel that has been distorted by catastrophic war, Elish’s niece and nephew are haunted by their uncle’s death and the failure of his 2014 investigation. As Tahel and Oshri conduct experiments in search of the truth, they draw near to the heart of a great conspiracy. In this masterful conclusion to the Lost Detective Trilogy, Shimon Adaf brings together futuristic biotechnology, parallel universes, and Jewish mysticism. Take Up and Read addresses a central concern of the trilogy, interrogating humankind’s tenuous grasp on the boundaries of our selves, and the arbitrary connections between the body, consciousness, and perception.

The Missing Ones

The Missing Ones
Author: Patricia Gibney
Publisher: Bookouture
Total Pages: 564
Release: 2017-03-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1786811502

The Detective

The Detective
Author: Roderick Thorp
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 521
Release: 2014-12-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1497680948

In this bestselling book that inspired the hit movie by the same name, starring Frank Sinatra, an apparent suicide forces a PI to reconsider his most famous case Joe Leland returned from World War II with a chest full of medals, but his greatest honor came after he traded his pilot’s wings for a detective’s shield. Catching the Leikman killer made Joe a local hero, but the shine quickly wore off, and it wasn’t long before he left the police force to start his own private agency. Years after his greatest triumph, Joe has a modest income and a quiet life—both of which may soon fall apart. When Colin MacIver dies at the local racetrack, the coroner rules that he took his own life, but his widow knows better. Because MacIver’s life insurance policy doesn’t cover suicide, his wife is left broke, desperate, and afraid for her safety. She hires Leland to find out who could have killed her gentle, unassuming husband—a simple question that will turn this humble city inside out.

Dangerous Davies

Dangerous Davies
Author: Leslie Thomas
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2011-01-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1446440672

As plain-clothes men go, Dangerous Davies looks like a non-starter. The small fry of petty larceny and minor disturbances in the backwaters of north-west London are his daily round. His philosophising Welsh drinking companion Mod, his outsized and unruly dog Kitty, his quarrels with his landlady Mrs Fulljames - none of these bodes well for the efficient solving of crimes and the outwitting of villainy. But Davies is encouraged by his beautiful friend Jemma, and every so often he stumbles upon something really big.

The Boy Detective Fails

The Boy Detective Fails
Author: Joe Meno
Publisher: Akashic Books
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2006-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1936070499

In this “charming” and melancholic novel, a former child sleuth “investigates the hard-to-crack case of Lost Innocence” (Entertainment Weekly). A Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist Book of the Year In the twilight of a mysterious childhood full of wonder, Billy Argo, boy detective, is brokenhearted to find that his younger sister and crime-solving partner, Caroline, has committed suicide. Ten years later, Billy, age thirty, returns from an extended stay at St. Vitus’ Hospital for the Mentally Ill to discover the world full of unimaginable strangeness: office buildings vanish without reason, small animals turn up without their heads, and cruel villains ride city buses to complete their evil schemes. Lost within this unwelcoming place, Billy befriends two lonely, extraordinary children—one a science fair genius, the other a charming, silent bully. With a nearly forgotten bravery, he experiences the unendurable boredom of a telemarketing job; encounters a beautiful, desperate pickpocket; and confronts the nearly impossible solution to his sister’s case. Along a path laden with hidden clues and codes, the boy detective may learn the greatest secret of all: the necessity of the unknown. “Haunted by the mystery of his sister’s death and feeling that a lapse in his sleuthing may be to blame, Billy is determined to find out the reason for her suicide and to punish those responsible . . . The story of Billy’s search for truth, love and redemption is surprising and absorbing. Swaddled in melancholy and gentle humor, it builds in power as the clues pile up.” —Publishers Weekly “The author gives Billy a gallery of rogues to combat and even sends him to investigate the Convocation of Evil at a local hotel (‘Featured Panel: To Wear a Mask?’). Meno sets himself a complicated task, marooning his straight-arrow, pulp-fiction protagonist in a world uglier than the Bobbsey Twins ever faced but refusing to go for satire. Instead, the author takes his compulsive investigator at face value.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Comedic, imaginative, empathic . . . investigates the precincts of grief [and] our longing to combat chaos with reason.” —Booklist

The Case of the Missing Moonstone (The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency, Book 1)

The Case of the Missing Moonstone (The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency, Book 1)
Author: Jordan Stratford
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2015-01-06
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0385754426

History, mystery, and science collide in a new series for middle-grade readers, perfect for fans of The Mysterious Benedict Society and Lemony Snicket! Jordan Stratford imagines an alternate 1826, where Ada Lovelace (the world’s first computer programmer) and Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein) meet as girls and form a secret detective agency! Lady Ada Byron, age eleven, is a genius. Isolated, awkward and a bit rude—but a genius. Mary Godwin, age fourteen, is a romantic. Adventurous, astute, and kind, Mary is to become Ada’s first true friend. And together, the girls conspire to form the Wollstonecraft Detective Agency—a secret constabulary for the apprehension of clever criminals. Their first case involves a stolen heirloom, a false confession, and an array of fishy suspects. But it’s no match for the deductive powers and bold hearts of Ada and Mary. Mystery fans will love this tween girl riff on Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. History buffs will be delighted to see all the real figures who play a role in this story and appreciate the extensive backmatter that helps separate truth from fiction. Parents and educators hoping to promote the STEM fields for girls will be thrilled to have a series where two girls use math, science, and creative analytical thinking to solve crimes. But most especially--emerging readers will love this series filled with humor, action, intrigue and wonderful artwork from Kelly Murphy.