P.I. Frank Johnson investigates several of his clients' cases over the course of a week in frosty October. In his largest case, a woman hires him to locate her birth mother, who was last heard from in Frank’s hometown of Pelham, Virginia. He also declines an offer to join a bounty hunter team because the leader is dangerously reckless. Later, he discovers something very wrong is in his abandoned phosphate quarry, which requires his immediate attention before it’s too late.As he alw...

P.I. Frank Johnson accepts several cases of infidelity, which have become his primary source of income. Beth Humphreys hires Frank to follow her cheating husband, Trey. Frank loses sight of Trey’s vehicle during a torrential rain, which he reports to the enraged Beth. She decides to give him one more chance. Later, Frank achieves better results for his next clients who also have cheating spouses and is able to bill them for his detective work.Frank also seeks new ways to expand his...

P.I. Frank Johnson takes up investigating the violent death of Roz Fleming. A local prostitute, she’s been found dead from two headshots behind the local truck stop on a February morning. Roz’s older sister, Hallie, incensed and desperate, approaches Frank to investigate Roz’s grisly murder. Since the state cops, led by Sergeant Collingsworth, show only feeble interest in resolving “the whore’s homicide,” Frank agrees to take Hallie’s case.As Frank probes deeper into Roz Fleming’s ...

P.I. Frank Johnson accepts a missing person case when Cain Milsap seeks out Frank’s assistance to find Milsap’s 28-year-old daughter, Brett. Of course, nothing is simple as it seems on the surface in Frank's world. As he delves deeper into the twisty investigation, the more questions arise. All the while, he also deals with his personal problems and handles his other PI cases. He depends on his long-time business partner Gerald Peyton, his medical examiner wife Dreema, and his brilliant bu...

P.I. Frank Johnson takes up the homicide case of Cedric Barker, the bouncer at Aphrodite’s Crib, a local strip club. Engaged to the ex-stripper, Blaze O’Dwyer, Barker is found murdered at their outdoor wedding minutes before they exchange their marriage vows. Of course nothing is as it appears on the surface in Frank’s murky noirish crime world.Simple things become complicated and messy affairs, where more violence and mayhem come into play. As Frank probes deeper into Barker’s mur...

For their twelfth mystery, Isabel and Alma Trumbo, the retired sister sleuths living in Quiet Anchorage, Virginia, undertake solving yet another murder mystery. Their neighbor Trish Cox’s grandson Jason is found murdered on the old highway bridge spanning the Cornet River. Isabel and Alma put on their detective hats, sharpen their wits, and commence their snooping. Of course, Sammi Jo Garner, their gritty sidekick, and Petey Samson, their irrepressible beagle, help to develop the leads, id...

For his next hardboiled outing, P.I. Frank Johnson accepts a case from a distraught woman who suspects her husband of 10 years is having an affair with his female office manager. Before Frank can launch his investigation, her husband is found murdered in his insurance office. Frank’s client quickly comes under suspicion by the town sheriff. He identifies two other murder suspects, the office manager and a disgruntled insurance customer. As always, he depends on his long-time business partn...

Older and wiser, P.I. Frank Johnson, in The Zinc Zoo, has moved to the Washington, D.C. suburbs where he lives with his fiancé Dreema Atkins. A missing person case comes up when Zani Huang hires Frank to search for her husband Bao. Frank begins his investigation, but things get sticky when he discovers Zani's landlord, Kasper Peres, with a fatal slug in his chest. Then Zani vanishes and with her Frank's alibi when the police decide to charge him for Peres’ murder. So, Frank takes it on the...

After surviving a bad experience in his hometown, P.I. Frank Johnson moves away to Scarab, West Virginia, drawn by the promise of its leisurely days and the lure of its tranquil leafy mountains. Instead, while relaxing, what he finds is a Stinger rocket exploding over his cabin. The bestselling The Blue Cheer, originally published by the notable crime fiction imprint Point Blank/Wildside, has garnered praise from the San Diego Tribune-Union (“an unpredictable story filled with complex char...

Plucky and resourceful Juno Patchen runs her family truck farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwestern Virginia. She sells her produce at the Farmers’ Market held weekly in the nearby small town of Cat’s Paw. Her athletic cousin and godmother Fern McPhee and outspoken mother Rhoda McPhee assist Juno while her seven-year-old son Chip pitches in. The lurid murder of Clay Prestwick, a retiree and town neighbor, throws everybody into a tizzy, none moreso than the befuddled Sheriff Goose Di...

After repulsing three violent attacks by an unidentified adversary, Frank determines that he is facing a “cabal” bent on destroying him. Despite placing his paying clients’ cases on hold while he investigates it full-time, he can’t pin down who they are. Or why they targeted him to kill. He teams up with his ally, mobster don Maggot Nose, who has his own reasons for dismantling the cabal. However, they always seem to be one step behind its elusive maneuvers.Frank realizes that if h...

P.I. Frank Johnson is paid to make a video proving that an ex-boyfriend is stalking his client in violation of a protective order. Frank is also battling a midlife crisis as he hears the “clock” tick away. On a traumatic journey to México, he raced against the clock to obtain laetrile therapy for his friend with stage four liver cancer. By the end of the week, Frank has accepted that he cannot stop time and is a more seasoned, if not smarter, private investigator.As he always does,...