The Unlikely Detective And The Dark Society

The Unlikely Detective And The Dark Society
Author: H. A. Bryant
Publisher: Harry Bryant Books
Total Pages: 567
Release: 2023-05-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

In a spellbinding new masterpiece by author H. A. Bryant, Matt Kelly undertakes a high-stakes investigation. The legendary PI and kickboxer Matt Kelly has at long last severed ties with his friends in Tokyo and settled quietly in Nagoya, the only place where he thinks he can ever truly know peace. His beautiful girlfriend, Mitsuko, has taken over the day-to-day management of a dress shop in the neighborhood of Marunouchi, Naka-ku, Nagoya. But when a mother, a Mrs. Nishimoto, asks Matt to investigate the circumstances surrounding the disappearance and possible abduction of her daughter, he is drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse where nothing is as it seems. For his part, Matt spends his days first in Hakusanbora, Inuyama, Aichi Prefecture, and later in Sakae’s streets and alleys looking for the missing woman. And later back to Tokyo to get help from some new friends. As Matt delves deeper into the investigation, he uncovers layers of corruption and deceit that reach far beyond the missing woman and the Chubu-kai yakuza. He finds himself in a dangerous game of wits against some of the most powerful and dangerous people in the country, and realizes that he will have to use all of his skills and intelligence to stay one step ahead of his enemies and uncover the truth. With the help of his friends in Tokyo, including a former lawyer and a brilliant investigator, Matt races against time to find the missing woman and bring those responsible for her disappearance to justice. Along the way, he must navigate the complexities of Japanese society, from the glamorous nightclubs of Sakae to the seedy back alleys of Nagoya, in order to piece together the puzzle and stay alive. The deeper Matt delves into the investigation, the more he realizes that nothing is what it seems, and that the truth is far more sinister than he ever imagined. Will he be able to uncover the truth and bring those responsible to justice, or will he become just another pawn in a deadly game of power and deceit?

The Unlikely Detective

The Unlikely Detective
Author: H. A. Bryant
Publisher: Independently Published
Total Pages: 446
Release: 2020-05-19
Genre:
ISBN:

Matt Kelly is a recently discharged U.S. Marine living in the city of Shimbashi, Tokyo. He has started a new life for himself. While enrolled at Sophia University, Kelly focuses on his two passions in life; kickboxing and women. The second passion sometimes gets him into trouble. One evening while Kelly is out bar-hopping in the Ginza district of Tokyo, he meets another American who is looking for his girlfriend Mariko. One thing led to another and Kelly decides to help the American look for his girlfriend. Well, this unlikely situation pushes Kelly into a role he never anticipated, as a private detective. While looking for this girlfriend, he falls into several interesting or should he say dangerous situations that involve counterfeiting, smuggling, North Korean spies, yakuza, a few killings, and an unusual cult. And, of course, unbeknownst to Kelly, he becomes involved with the fairer sex that works and plays in the Japanese hostess bars and strip clubs that make up the unusual world of mizu-shōbai or the night time entertainment business of Japan.

The Unlikely Detective And The Stolen Stamps Enigma

The Unlikely Detective And The Stolen Stamps Enigma
Author: H. A. Bryant
Publisher: Harry Bryant Books
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2024-04-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Number 4 in the Matt Kelly series starts slowly—unless philately is your thing—but quickly picks up the pace, leading to a vintage Kelly climax that evokes the classic movie "Cape Fear." Kelly is reluctant to get involved in an aging stamp dealer's problems—inexplicably, a client's stamp collection worth millions of yen has been switched with one containing far less valuable material—but the dealer is an old friend of Kelly's friend and sometimes colleague Miller, and, in the end, Miller usually gets what he wants. It doesn't hurt that one of the stamp dealer's assistants is a five foot buxom doll called Masako and is nearly as fit as the legendarily flat-bellied Kelly. As Miller cogitates over how a bank locked-room switch could have been engineered, Kelly noses around the client, a supposed financial investment advisor, who turns out to be a money launderer for the Sumiyoshi-kai yakuza. Series fans will immediately see that the investment advisor/yakuza does more than the laundry—the advisor's own clients clearly indicate that Kelly has found his adversary. No one is quite what they seem this time around—Masako and the investment advisor/yakuza, especially—and it takes Kelly quite a while to put the pieces together. Cut to a rented cabin cruiser, heading to Oshima Island, as Kelly lays in wait for a predawn visit from the investment advisor/yakuza on his way, just like in the classic movie "Cape Fear," to settle scores once and for all.

Sloth, Sam Sloth: the Unlikely Detective

Sloth, Sam Sloth: the Unlikely Detective
Author: Sara Noble
Publisher:
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2021-09-28
Genre:
ISBN:

Sam Sloth is a detective that needs help from friends to solve mysteries in his four hours of wake time each day. Sam needs help finding Kiki Kinkajou and enlists the help of Ella the spider monkey to solve this mystery. This book encourages reader listener interaction with easy words and relatable illustrations for easy understanding and to inspire your little listener to be a writer, artist and creator. Sam Sloth positively presents naps and asking for help. The author believes writing and art is for everyone and hopes the book will foster child/ teacher/ caregiver interaction, inspiring all little learners.

Murder Under Her Skin

Murder Under Her Skin
Author: Stephen Spotswood
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2022-10-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0593312805

A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice • Rex Stout meets Agatha Christie with a fresh twist in the new Pentecost and Parker Mystery, a delightfully hardboiled high-wire act starring two daring women sleuths dead set on justice as they set out to solve a murder at a traveling circus “A delight.... It’s a pleasure to watch [Pentecost and Parker] sifting through red herrings and peeling secrets back like layers of an onion.” The New York Times Book Review Someone’s put a blade in the back of the Amazing Tattooed Woman, and Willowjean “Will” Parker’s former knife-throwing mentor has been stitched up for the crime. To uncover the truth, Will and her boss, world-famous detective Lillian Pentecost, travel to the circus, where they find a snake pit of old grudges, small-town crime, and secrets worth killing for. Will called Hart & Halloway’s Traveling Circus and Sideshow home for five years, and Ruby Donner, the circus’s tattooed ingenue, was her friend. To make matters worse, the prime suspect is Valentin Kalishenko, the man who taught Will everything she knows about putting a knife where it needs to go. To uncover the real killer and keep Kalishenko from a date with the electric chair, Will and Ms. Pentecost join the circus in sleepy Stoppard, Virginia, where the locals like their cocktails mild, the past buried, and big-city detectives not at all. The two swiftly find themselves lost in a funhouse of lies as Will begins to realize that her former circus compatriots aren’t playing it straight, and that her murdered friend might have been hiding a lot of secrets beneath all that ink.

The Thursday Murder Club

The Thursday Murder Club
Author: Richard Osman
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2021-08-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1984880985

A New York Times bestseller | Soon to be a major motion picture “Witty, endearing and greatly entertaining.” —Wall Street Journal “Don’t trust anyone, including the four septuagenarian sleuths in Osman’s own laugh-out-loud whodunit.” —Parade Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves A female cop with her first big case A brutal murder Welcome to... THE THURSDAY MURDER CLUB In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it's too late?

A Curious Beginning

A Curious Beginning
Author: Deanna Raybourn
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2015
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0451476018

Receiving a warning from a mysterious baron after suffering a home invasion, Veronica Speedwell accepts the baron's shelter and teams up with an ill-tempered naturalist when her host is subsequently murdered.

A Beautiful Blue Death

A Beautiful Blue Death
Author: Charles Finch
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2007-06-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1429955333

Equal parts Sherlock Holmes and P.G. Wodehouse, Charles Finch's debut mystery A Beautiful Blue Death introduces a wonderfully appealing gentleman detective in Victorian London who investigates crime as a diversion from his life of leisure. Charles Lenox, Victorian gentleman and armchair explorer, likes nothing more than to relax in his private study with a cup of tea, a roaring fire and a good book. But when his lifelong friend Lady Jane asks for his help, Lenox cannot resist the chance to unravel a mystery. Prudence Smith, one of Jane's former servants, is dead of an apparent suicide. But Lenox suspects something far more sinister: murder, by a rare and deadly poison. The grand house where the girl worked is full of suspects, and though Prue had dabbled with the hearts of more than a few men, Lenox is baffled by the motive for the girl's death. When another body turns up during the London season's most fashionable ball, Lenox must untangle a web of loyalties and animosities. Was it jealousy that killed Prudence Smith? Or was it something else entirely? And can Lenox find the answer before the killer strikes again—this time, disturbingly close to home?

Yellow Bird

Yellow Bird
Author: Sierra Crane Murdoch
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2020-02-25
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0399589163

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • The gripping true story of a murder on an Indian reservation, and the unforgettable Arikara woman who becomes obsessed with solving it—an urgent work of literary journalism. “I don’t know a more complicated, original protagonist in literature than Lissa Yellow Bird, or a more dogged reporter in American journalism than Sierra Crane Murdoch.”—William Finnegan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Barbarian Days In development as a Paramount+ original series WINNER OF THE OREGON BOOK AWARD • NOMINATED FOR THE EDGAR® AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • NPR • Publishers Weekly When Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests, and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. Three years later, when Lissa learned that a young white oil worker, Kristopher “KC” Clarke, had disappeared from his reservation worksite, she became particularly concerned. No one knew where Clarke had gone, and few people were actively looking for him. Yellow Bird traces Lissa’s steps as she obsessively hunts for clues to Clarke’s disappearance. She navigates two worlds—that of her own tribe, changed by its newfound wealth, and that of the non-Native oilmen, down on their luck, who have come to find work on the heels of the economic recession. Her pursuit of Clarke is also a pursuit of redemption, as Lissa atones for her own crimes and reckons with generations of trauma. Yellow Bird is an exquisitely written, masterfully reported story about a search for justice and a remarkable portrait of a complex woman who is smart, funny, eloquent, compassionate, and—when it serves her cause—manipulative. Drawing on eight years of immersive investigation, Sierra Crane Murdoch has produced a profound examination of the legacy of systematic violence inflicted on a tribal nation and a tale of extraordinary healing.

Kingdom of the Blind

Kingdom of the Blind
Author: Louise Penny
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2018-11-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466873698

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A December 2018 Indie Next Pick One of Kirkus Reviews' Best of 2018 Picks BookPage Best of the Year 2018 A LibraryReads Pick for November 2018 A LibraryReads Hall of Fame Winner Washington Post's 10 Books to Read This November One of PopSugar’s Best Fall Books to Curl Up With “A captivating, wintry whodunit.” —PEOPLE "A constantly surprising series that deepens and darkens as it evolves." —Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review Kingdom of the Blind, the new Chief Inspector Gamache novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author. When a peculiar letter arrives inviting Armand Gamache to an abandoned farmhouse, the former head of the Sûreté du Québec discovers that a complete stranger has named him one of the executors of her will. Still on suspension, and frankly curious, Gamache accepts and soon learns that the other two executors are Myrna Landers, the bookseller from Three Pines, and a young builder. None of them had ever met the elderly woman. The will is so odd and includes bequests that are so wildly unlikely that Gamache and the others suspect the woman must have been delusional. But what if, Gamache begins to ask himself, she was perfectly sane? When a body is found, the terms of the bizarre will suddenly seem less peculiar and far more menacing. But it isn’t the only menace Gamache is facing. The investigation into what happened six months ago—the events that led to his suspension—has dragged on, into the dead of winter. And while most of the opioids he allowed to slip through his hands, in order to bring down the cartels, have been retrieved, there is one devastating exception. Enough narcotic to kill thousands has disappeared into inner city Montreal. With the deadly drug about to hit the streets, Gamache races for answers. As he uses increasingly audacious, even desperate, measures to retrieve the drug, Armand Gamache begins to see his own blind spots. And the terrible things hiding there.