In London to visit with an old flame over the Christmas holidays, detective Mitch Roberts is asked by the widow of an old friend to investigate the seemingly accidental death of her young son

A Penny for the Old Guy

Literature & Fiction

Dold, Gaylord

United States

St Martins Pr

Gaylord Dold, hailed by Loren D. Estleman as "the best new stylist to enter the crowded field of private-eye fiction, and one of its most daring innovators," brings us another literate and suspenseful adventure for his remarkable sleuth, Mitch Roberts. Rude Boys, like Dold's recent A Penny for the Old Guy, finds American cowboy Roberts in London, "looking for his life" and "trying to fall in love" with English widow Amanda Smith. He is doing some work for Amanda's lawyer friend, Hillary Root, when Hillary's Jamaican half brother is found brutally murdered. The crime is a grisly puzzle from the start. The man was in the hospital, well on the way to recovering from the mysterious illness that had put him there, when someone crept into his room and left him covered with blood, a gaping slash across his neck. Hillary is deep in a seemingly hopeless case, the defense of another Jamaican man accused of robbery and murder. Fighting prejudice as a female in the ranks of British barristers, and as a half-Jamaican female at that, Hillary now begins to receive horrifying and wordless threats, like the "gift" of a slaughtered cat. Sympathy with her burdens impels Roberts to travel to Jamaica, seeking the roots of these possibly connected events. Although his brief trip produces a number of answers as well as insight into the lives of Jamaicans at home and abroad, another murder takes place before Mitch is able to unravel the tight skein of horror and death and to set a strange kind of justice in motion.

Rude Boys

Mr. Winks and readers everywhere can only be impressed and delighted with this new adventure of Dold's vulnerable and complex private eye, Mitch Roberts, a thoughtful and sensitive man who can be tough when tested. For while The World Beat is a novel of enormous suspense, it is more than that. Set in Zaire and the Republic of the Congo, the story evokes modern Africa with a realism that few writers achieve. At loose ends, Roberts takes an assignment from Lloyds of London to deliver the ransom for Elyse Revelle, a Belgian mining company's doctor who has been kidnapped, presumably by separatists. Together with a Zairian employee of the company, Roberts undertakes an arduous river journey to make contact with the kidnappers at the doctor's clinic in the jungle. This journey, with its sights, sounds, and smells of Africa, is both actuality and metaphor. On the way, Roberts falls seriously, almost fatally ill, and the trip becomes a struggle to head off forces that are opposed to the mission, to find and pay off the kidnappers, and to elude death from disease or assassination.

The World Beat

In a Texas setting where oil rigs stand idle and shrimp fishing has dwindled, Vietnamese refugees and locals exist in uneasy proximity, and sheriff Tom Poole is awakened from his sleepwalking existence by the death of an old fisherman

Bay of Sorrows

When lawyer Jack Darwin, whose career and life have seriously hit the skids, finds himself accused of a brutal rape and murder, he feels lucky to accept the proffered help of fellow attorney David Avila, until Jack becomes suspicious of Avila's true motives

The Devil to Pay

After a long stay abroad and a love affair that fell apart, Mitch Roberts is headed home. Back to his ranch, his horses, and maybe - or maybe not - to being a private eye again. But if Roberts is looking forward to an uneventful life, he has farther to go than a return to southern Colorado. His problems start when a beautiful airline flight attendant suggests he meet her for a drink at her favorite bar in a stopover in Miami. The bar's parking lot, however, comes equipped with two thugs who knock Mitch out, take his passport, credit cards, and every cent in his pocket, and drive off in his rental car. Desperate, Mitch calls the only person he knows in Miami - a former college acquaintance. Bobby Hilliard, a rather sleazy character who has made a lot of money in questionable ways, and is now an art dealer. When Mitch finds the seductive flight attendant at the man's mansion, he is quick to realize he has been set up. But an offer of a sorely needed big fee tempts him, and he accepts a job. Hilliard's agent, sent to Haiti with money to buy a large number of paintings, has disappeared. Mitch's mission: find the agent and buy paintings to replace those that are lost. Haiti is dismaying. The police and officials openly scoff at Mitch and, more subtly, let him know that he should stop nosing around. He is also sickened by the tropical heat and humidity and by the poverty and fear that is everywhere. The atmosphere of Haiti's dark folklore pervades daily life - the frightening Baron Samedi is a very real presence. Mitch is convinced that Hilliard's agent has been murdered and the art stolen, but he is driven to go on, as much for a feeling deep inside that the quest has some meaning for him as to earn his fee. With a Haitian guide, a poor but educated and desperately loyal man, Mitch travels the country tracking down the painters of the missing art in remote towns and buying more of their work.

Samedi's Knapsack: A Mitch Roberts Mystery

Minotaur Books

Don't be a fool and think you can change the picture I've drawn you of the future. Look at it this way. Most guys your age would be happy as fuck to get a picture of the future that looks as clear as this. On a beautiful, foggy evening, Marine Corporal Palmer stands at the end of a pier, staring out over the ocean, waiting to meet his girlfriend Suzanne. Instead of meeting Suzanne, however, Palmer encounters Staff Sergeant Harry Wilde, who gives Palmer a stark choice: help Wilde's criminal activities, or be railroaded to jail on drug possession charges. With Suzanne's help, Palmer flees to Mexico. Seven years later, ex-Sergeant Wilde is a rich drug dealer and gun runner, trading stolen Marine guns for the deadly synthetic heroin, fetanyl. The murder of the "mule" who brings the drug over the border leaves Wilde badly in need of a new courier. Fate delivers one in an encounter with Palmer in the small Mexican town of Wilde's supplier. Wilde holds all the cards and Palmer is desperate. Desperation, however, doesn't make Palmer as easy to control as Wilde thinks. I was in a place where nothing mattered but one thing. It wasn't my life that mattered. Not my life, not anything but one thing. Nobody had any power over me, Sergeant. I was as free as those pelicans over there. Throughout, Gaylord Dold tells a story driven by human characters, raw tension, and palpable suspense.

Six White Horses: A Thriller

Mitch Roberts, a Wichita private detective, is hired by Carl Plummer to find his missing son, but Roberts' investigation leads straight to murder

Hot Summer, Cold Murder (Mitch Roberts Mystery)

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

Avon/Books

Private detective Mitch Roberts attempts to discover who killed two of Jules Reynard's valuable colts and tried to poison Reynard, and as he uncovers evidence of illegal activities undertaken by Reynard, Roberts finds his own life endangered

Snake Eyes

Ivy Books

Hardnosed private eye Mitch Robert's agrees to help a teenaged mother find her baby, kidnapped by its father, but things get rough when Mitch uncovers a baby-selling business and a massive cover-up

Cold Cash

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