Offthebookshelf.com
Crime Fiction
Top 10
- DEAD END
by J. Anthony Graves - SIGNAL 30
by James Twerell - Wrath
by Kevin Davison - NINE ZEROS
by Michael Flynn - A Murder In Zurich
by Ralph Gregorio - Capitol P
by Stuart Benjamin - Abduction and Revenge
by Ralph Gregorio - The Percolators
by Chuck Fair - Swann's Last Song
by Greenpoint Press - STAND AND PROTECT
by Kt Banks
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- The House
- by Aaron Kruse
“They say the dead don’t rest without a marker.”
– High Plains DrifterWhat is the true nature of Hell?
Why do some go to Purgatory?
Must everybody pass through the nether realms?
Sometimes the dead don’t rest, especially when they have unfinished business among the living. If a debt is owed, the dead can sometimes make a deal to come back and collect.
What they pay for the chance depends on how badly they want to win.
But in a deal with the devil, you never really know all the details.
And you never win.
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- Bubbala, Biker Scum and the 'T' Girls
- by Jacky Yanovsky
In this book we meet Nathan, a motorbike courier and Esther, his wife, who teaches special needs. They, along with a bunch of other characters are all trying to survive in inner city London in the early part of this new century.
Complete with all their baggage from the latter half of the last century they strive to remain at the right side of lawlessness. Their hearts are generally in the right place as they go about their daily tasks, in particular dealing with the impact of events historical when they surface once more.
Written in an inimitable style Jacky Yanovsky’s book portrays a part of inner city life, foreign to many, but home to Nathan and his friends. Dyslexia rules! KO.
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- River City Ambush
- by Aaron Kruse
A middle-aged housewife is shotgunned in rush hour traffic. A church-going, small-town college boy takes a homeowner hostage. A small-time drug pusher takes two shotgun blasts in the chest. An overweight bully is beaten to death with an iron bar in broad daylight along a public road...and nobody saw anything.
Des Moines County sheriff’s deputy Cici Burns has her hands full trying to make sense of multiple murders in a town where murder is hardly known. Clues are few, and questions many, not least of them where the husband of the murdered woman fits in. Is the Dean of the local college on Cici’s side or not? And not who or why, but how the bully was beaten to death without a clue being left behind. Most peculiar of all, none of the families of the victims seem to have any questions at all.
And finally, there’s the case of the bomber who got everything right except how to get his bomb to explode.
With the help of a wily old sheriff, an experienced forensics investigator and one insightful psychologist, Cici tries to make sense of seemingly unrelated leads. When you’re outsmarting drug dealers, murderers and possibly one psychopath, you have to be cagier than they are. But is she setting up an ambush – or walking into one?
River City Ambush is the second in the River City series.
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- River City Justice
- by Aaron Kruse
At first, the death of Patty Masterson looks like nothing more sinister than the suicide of a woman overcome by shock at the loss of her son in a tragic accident. But the careful work of one very conscientious medical examiner, and Deputy Sheriff Cici Burns’ own detective work, soon convince Cici it was really murder.
The trouble is…who would want her dead? Her obviously distraught husband seems an unlikely candidate, although he collected a nice insurance payment after the death of the son and stands to collect again from her death. Her brother? He needs money to start his own business, and seems to control the husband. And, when he sees something he thinks needs doing, he just does it without a second thought or a look back. Her first husband is another wild card. He is snake-mean and might have decided it was time to pay Bobby Masterson back for the beating Bobby gave him, and the wife Bobby took away from him.
Fortunately, Cici has allies in the form of one experienced old sheriff and the chief forensics investigator. Unfortunately, she’s soon an object of interest for the dead woman’s brother. Romance, or a quest for information? Or worse? Someone’s taking a night-time interest in her home and vehicle. Is there a link with the dead woman, or the series of robberies she’s investigating? Or the woman’s brother? And at what point did someone’s interest turn deadly?
River City Justice is the first in the River City series. Look for the second book in the series, River City Ambush.
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- Bring Her Back to Me
- by Aaron Kruse
Private Investigator Bob Benson takes on a dying man’s request to bring home his kidnapped daughter. What he can’t understand is what the kidnappers want. There have been no ransom demands, but there is evidence of torture. As if the situation isn’t confusing enough, it appears the girl purposely erased all details of her own past to hide her trail, and may have cooperated with her kidnappers.
As Bob begins to piece together her past, he finds a sordid trail of drugs and casual sex, a self-destructive spiral ending with her disappearance. Her college crowd won’t talk to him; her professors don’t remember her; her drug supplier disappeared with her; and her father only grudgingly supplies important details which might clear up the mystery.
Throw in the meanest narcotics pusher he’s ever met and a private security man who seems fanatically dedicated to the client, and it takes all Bob’s CIA-honed talents to finally find the key to the mystery.
Bring Her Back to Me is the second in the Bob Benson PI series which starts with Home Guard.
