Showing results by author "Jesse Kellerman" in All Categories

Eccentric, reclusive Walter Rennert lies cold at the bottom of his stairs. At first glance the scene looks straightforward: a once-respected psychology professor done in by booze and a bad heart. But his daughter, Tatiana, insists that her father has been murdered, and she persuades Clay Edison to take a closer look at the grim facts of Rennert's life. What emerges is a history of scandal and violence and an experiment gone horribly wrong that ended in the brutal murder of a coed.

It’s been more than a year since LAPD detective Jacob Lev learned the remarkable truth about his family, and he’s not coping well. He’s back to drinking, he’s not talking to his father, the LAPD Special Projects Department continues to shadow him, and the memory of a woman named Mai haunts him day and night. And while Jacob has tried to build a bridge to his mother, she remains a stranger to him, imprisoned inside her own tattered mind. Then he comes across the file for a gruesome unsolved murder that brings the two halves of his life into startling collision.

A raging wildfire. A massive blackout. A wealthy man shot to death in his palatial hilltop home. For Clay Edison, it’s all in a day’s work. As a deputy coroner, caring for the dead, he speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves. He prides himself on an unflinching commitment to the truth. Even when it gets him into trouble. Then, while working the murder scene, Clay is horrified to discover a link to his brother, Luke. Horrified. But not surprised. Luke is fresh out of prison and struggling to stay on the straight and narrow. And now he’s gone AWOL.

Cut loose from his former life at the coroner’s office, Clay Edison has set up shop as a private investigator. It’s steady, safe work. Until it isn’t. The trouble begins when a young man, tasked with managing his grandmother’s estate, hires Clay to examine some minor financial discrepancies. What starts off as a case of simple fraud rapidly explodes into a web of deception, an elaborate con game stretching back decades and involving countless victims. All the evidence points to a tiny town on California’s rugged, remote Lost Coast.

Clay Edison has left behind the Alameda County coroner’s office to strike out on his own as a private investigator. He’s perfectly happy working low-stakes embezzlement cases—that is, until PI Regina Klein calls him with a mystery only he can solve. The son of a wealthy couple has washed up dead on the shores of San Francisco Bay with a head injury and drugs in his system. The police are calling it an accident. But the parents are adamant something's not right—and as Clay digs deeper, he uncovers a horrifying tangle of betrayal and lies.

Clay Edison has his hands full. He’s got a new baby who won't sleep. He’s working the graveyard shift. And he’s trying, for once, to mind his own business. Then comes the first call. Workers demolishing a local park have made a haunting discovery: the decades-old skeleton of a child. But whose? And how did it get there? No sooner has Clay begun to investigate than he receives a second call - this one from a local businessman, wondering if the body could belong to his sister.

Detective Jacob Lev wakes one morning, dazed and confused: He seems to have picked up a beautiful woman in a bar the night before, but he can’t remember anything about the encounter, and before he knows it, she has gone. But this mystery pales in comparison to the one he’s about to be called on to solve. Newly reassigned to a Special Projects squad he didn’t even know existed, he’s sent to a murder scene far up in the hills of Hollywood Division. There is no body, only an unidentified head lying on the floor of a house.

Former star basketball player Clay Edison is busy. He’s solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man, earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. Plus his brother’s fresh out of prison, bringing with him a whole new set of complications. Then the phone rings in the dead of night. A wild party in a gentrifying East Bay neighborhood. A heated argument that spills into the street. Gunshots. Chaos. For Clay and his fellow coroners, it’s the start of a long night and the first of many to come.

Ethan Muller is struggling to establish his reputation as a dealer in the cut-throat world of contemporary art, when he stumbles onto a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: in a decaying New York slum, an elderly tenant named Victor Cracke has disappeared, leaving behind a staggeringly large trove of original artwork. Nobody can say anything for certain about Cracke, except that he came and went in solitude for nearly forty years, his genius hidden and unacknowledged. All that is about to change.

Young, idealistic, and overworked, Jonah is living the lonely life of a medical student in New York City when he accidentally stumbles across a murder in progress: a woman, being stabbed to death in the middle of the sidewalk. Without thinking, he rushes in to protect her, inadvertently killing her attacker in the process. Thrust into the media spotlight, crushed by guilt, Jonah quickly learns that heroism isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Perpetual graduate student Joseph Geist is at his wit's end. Recently kicked out of their shared apartment by his girlfriend, he's left with little more than a half bust of Nietzsche's head and the realization that he's homeless and unemployed. He's hit a dead end on his dissertation; his funding has been cut off. He doesn't even have a phone. Desperate for some source of income, he searches the local newspaper and finds a curious ad....

Gloria Mendez is single and 36, and secretly and somewhat hopelessly in love with her oblivious boss. He is both single and solitary, and far too old for her, but she has worked for him, side by side, for 10 oddly companionable years. But when he disappears on his annual trip to Mexico, the one aspect of his life to which she's never been privy, Gloria's sudden and impulsive search for him reveals the wreckage of a hidden past.

It’s the hottest winter on record, but Raymond’s demanding, bedridden mother doesn’t mind. She likes it warm. Lately, however, control over the thermostat has become a nasty struggle. And each morning that she’s still alive is a suffocating new challenge for Raymond. How high can the mercury climb before he boils over?

Clay Edison has left behind the Alameda County coroner’s office to strike out on his own as a private investigator. He’s perfectly happy investigating calm, low-stakes embezzlement cases—that is, until PI Regina Klein calls him with a case only he can solve. Adam Valois, the missing son of a wealthy Los Gatos couple, was found floating dead in the Bay with a head injury and drugs in his system. The police have lost interest, ruling it a likely overdose. But as Clay digs deeper into Adam’s mysterious death, he begins to suspect darker forces are at play . . .

A burned-out L.A. detective...a woman of mystery who is far more than she seems...a grotesque, ancient monster bent on a mission of retribution. When these three collide, a new standard of suspense is born. The legend of the Golem of Prague has endured through the ages, a creature fashioned by a 16th-century rabbi to protect his congregation, now lying dormant in the garret of a synagogue. But the Golem is dormant no longer....

Clay Edison gets the call in the middle of the night, and it's a bad one. A party in Oakland, feuding neighbours, a wild crowd in the street. Two guns, firing at random, spreading chaos and death. Nobody knows the body count yet. It's going to be a long night for Clay - longer than he ever could have imagined. Because when the dust settles, there's a victim who can't be accounted for. A young woman, strangled instead of shot, without ID and a stranger to all. Clay's journey to give her a name and bring her justice will lead him into a bizarre world where right and wrong begin to blur.

Responding to a call at a mansion in an East Bay neighbourhood, Deputy Coroner Clay Edison comes upon the body of Dr Walter Rennert, a controversial Berkeley psychologist, sprawled at the foot of his stairs. There are no wounds and no signs of intrusion or struggle. Clay knows the obvious diagnosis is natural death. But 10 years ago, Rennert's partner was found dead, and to this day the crime remains unsolved.

Arthur Pfefferkorn is a has-been, or perhaps a never-was: a middle-aged college professor with long-dead literary aspirations. When his oldest friend, bestselling thriller writer William de Vallèe, is lost at sea, Pfefferkorn is torn between envy and grief, for de Vallèe not only outshone Pfefferkorn professionally, but married the woman Pfefferkorn loved.

When coroner-turned-private investigator Clay Edison is approached to work on a fraud case, he uncovers more than he bargained before: a decades-old scheme targeting the vulnerable. His investigation leads him to a strange town in the remote California wilderness where the residents don't care much for outsiders. They certainly don't like Clay asking questions. And they'll do just about anything to keep him quiet.

Deputy Coroner Clay Edison is juggling a new baby who won’t sleep with working the graveyard shift. For once he’s trying to keep things simple. When infant remains are found by developers demolishing a local park, a devastating cold case is brought back to light. Clay has barely begun to investigate when he receives a call from a man who thinks the remains could belong to his sister – who went missing 50 years ago. Now Clay is locked in a relentless search that will unearth a web of violence, secrets and betrayal.