Showing results by author "Larry Darter" in All Categories

Hollywood Division detective Ben Malone is caught up in a run of bad luck. The worst of it, his unfortunate entanglement in three separate fatal on-duty shootings in less than a year at a time when activists are protesting the use of deadly force by police and provoking riots all over the country. The spate of shootings has his LAPD superiors spooked and questioning his judgment. Is Malone too quick to use deadly force?

One of Tinseltown's brightest stars has been murdered. The accused is her estranged husband, and the situation doesn't look good. A knock on the office door of Los Angeles private eye Ben Malone can only mean one thing, a new case. Local defense attorney Liz Harper from the Los Angeles law firm Ross & Logan pays Malone a visit with an interesting story to tell.

For a homicide detective, a day on the job means hunting killers while trying not to get killed. If you’re a homicide detective in Los Angeles, it also means dealing with the most overwrought, desperate, and deluded criminals anywhere. When you’re a brand-new homicide detective spending your days and nights in the gritty underbelly of the city that never sleeps with a tetchy veteran murder cop for a partner, you must keep your cool and your wits about you when the bodies start hitting the floor.

NCIS is after millions in stolen government money from a holdup, and they aren’t the only ones... When an old friend asks Honolulu private investigator Rick Bishop to free a man locked in the closet of his downtown office before running away with men in hot pursuit, Rick discovers that the friend’s successful investment firm is only an elaborate front. Once he learns NCIS suspects his friend was part of a crew that stole a shipment of government money in a heist during the war in Afghanistan, Bishop joins the search for his friend and millions in loot. Along the way, he encounters the ...

TROUBLE IS HIS BUSINESS However, private investigator Rick Bishop isn’t as hard-boiled as he likes to think he is. Since he’s no Philip Marlowe, his close friends and associates think of him more as “half-boiled.” Bishop may be irresponsible, unreliable, and unable or unwilling to meet basic adult responsibilities on his own, but he’s actually a competent detective and generally manages to solve the case. Honolulu P.I. Rick Bishop, a defective detective, likes nothing better than getting the goods on a cheating spouse and then collecting his fees in short-order, all with as little...

“Easy money,” thought Honolulu private investigator Rick Bishop as he accepted a new client’s request to hold on to a package of documentary evidence for a local mobster’s upcoming trial for a few days. But when a gun-wielding associate of the gangster shows up at Rick’s office demanding the package, things quickly take a dangerous and painful turn. Despite taking a beating, Rick manages to keep the evidence hidden. But he knows he can’t hold on to it for long. He decides to return the package to his client along with the generous retainer, even though he desperately needs the ...

China Doll, another comical and exciting adventure, ripped straight from the files of Honolulu’s most incorrigible and languid, soft-boiled private eye, Richard Bishop.People come to Richard Bishop’s shabby Hotel Street office for professional help when trouble raises its ugly head because trouble is his business. But when the private investigator accepts an assignment from Nikki Kwan, a stunning and curvaceous China doll, to protect her and to deliver a sealed envelope to her ex-boyfriend, Rick soon has plenty of trouble all his own. He finds himself squarely in the crosshairs of rival...

Join Richard Bishop, the wise-cracking private detective from Honolulu, as he embarks on a thrilling quest to retrieve a rare Hawaiian antiquities artifact in San Diego. With a high-stakes bonus on the line, Bishop must outsmart a rival collector and navigate a dangerous chase through the city to protect the valuable treasure. But as the stakes get higher and the danger intensifies, Bishop must use all of his cunning and wit to secure the artifact and outwit his adversary in a heart-pounding showdown. For fans of fast-paced mysteries with a touch of humor, this is a must-read book that will...

Hamstrung by the fallout from the pandemic and budget cuts thanks to the defund the police movement, the LAPD’s elite Homicide Special Section gets caught short-handed when a North Hollywood murder involving a celebrity actor goes down. The Robbery-Homicide Division commander pulls Detective Howard Drew and his partner Amy Li from Open-Unsolved to spearhead the high-profile investigation. Temporary assignment to Homicide Special puts Howard squarely into the midst of a media firestorm when he takes the lead on the murder investigation after someone shoots to death the wife of a famous ...

A beautiful blonde socialite, with a penchant for seduction and secrets to keep, witnesses a murder and turns to LA private eye Ben Malone for help. Known for playing it fast and loose with the rules, the eccentric Shamus has a decided weakness for attractive women. A vicious LA mob figure gets tossed into the mix, and the body count rises. What else could go wrong?

Experience the exhilarating world of The Dedman Emergence, a heart-stopping debut spy thriller that will captivate fans of Ludlum's Jason Bourne and Greany's Gray Man. Immerse yourself in the extraordinary journey of U.S. Army Ranger 1LT Ethan Ross, the lone survivor of a devastating helicopter crash in Afghanistan. With seemingly insurmountable injuries, Ross's life takes an unexpected turn when he is recruited by the CIA for an off-book operation known as Hydra. Through cutting-edge genetic engineering, Ross undergoes a stunning transformation into a super assassin, surpassing normal ...

Bloodied clothing and an unexplained injury. A night lost to an alcohol-fueled blackout. The discovery of a grisly murder. A powerful politician’s son awakens to find his hand injured, his girlfriend missing, and his memory a blank.When Dylan Quinn, a young naval aviator and the son of the U.S. Senate majority leader, awakens with a hangover to find his hand injured, his clothes bloodied, and his memory of the previous evening all but wiped out by an alcohol-related blackout, he turns to Honolulu private investigator T. J. O’Sullivan for help. Quinn tells T. J. all he can recall are ...

When a mother and her young daughter are found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in a car parked at an overlook off a Hollywood freeway, it appears they are victims of a culturally driven parent-child suicide. LAPD Detective Howard Drew faces his first real test as a new lead homicide investigator as he follows a twisted trail of clues to find the truth in his most challenging case yet. The Pendulum is the second novel featuring Detective Howard Drew in a new fast-paced police procedural series set in Los Angeles that crime fiction fans won’t want to miss. When a 3 A.M. callout sends West...

Some secrets are too dark to stay buried. Pressed into helping his love-struck best friend track down a mysterious, beautiful girl that the friend shared a brief romantic beach encounter with, a lazy Honolulu private investigator finds himself chasing a ghost when he gets sucked into the vortex of a forty-year-old unsolved double homicide mystery. When the killer, one of Honolulu’s wealthiest and most powerful men, targets him for elimination, the slothful sleuth must find out where all the bodies are buried and fast before it’s game over for both him and the girl on the beach. Rick ...

The Rick Bishop private investigator series continues when a local attorney hires Bishop to find her missing friend and then insists on tagging along to help with his investigation. The missing friend has a sordid past. Her mob-connected ex-father-in-law wants to find her just as badly for about two million good reasons. When Honolulu attorney Nicole Hersey hires Bishop to help her find her best friend Diane Clark, she insists on accompanying him in the search. In a financial bind, he agrees. Rick and Nicole follow her friend’s trail to a small town on the North Shore, only to learn from ...

Howard Drew, an unrelenting LAPD homicide detective assigned to the Open Unsolved Unit, investigates the murders of victims long dead. He prowls moral fault lines and assumes the perspectives of his victims and their killers. Drew waits, poised to listen when guilty people divulge information and tired people fold and betray their secrets. Drew also listens to the chorus of forgotten voices and speaks for them because the collective dead demand it. In 2000, a friend discovered Anastasia Stepanchikov, a pretty 29-year-old prostitute from the Ukraine, beaten and shot to death inside her ...