18 books like A Drink Before the War
Sacred
Sacred
The master of the new noir, Dennis Lehane brilliantly interweaves beauty and violence, integrity and evil in this thrilling, powerfully resonant novel.A beautiful, grief-stricken woman has vanished without a trace. So has the detective hired to find her. And a lot of money. Enter saavy, tough-nosed private investigators Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. Rooted in the no-nonsense streets of…
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The Last Detective
The Last Detective
Elvis Cole is back...With his acclaimed bestsellers, *Hostage* (a New York Times Notable Book) and *Demolition Angel*, Robert Crais drew raves for his unstoppable pacing, edgy characterizations, and cinematic prose. Now, in *The Last Detective*, Crais returns to his signature character, Los Angeles private investigator Elvis Cole, in a masterful page-turner that probes the meaning of family and…
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The Judas Goat
The Judas Goat
Private eye Spenser returns to take on the terrorists who killed his client's wife and daughters in a London bombing, chasing them across Europe to the Montreal Olympics and a devastating climax.
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God Save the Child
God Save the Child
New York Times bestselling author of the Spenser series of crime thrillers - Book 2 in the series -Appie Knoll is the kind of suburb where kids grow up right. But something is wrong. Fourteen-year-old Kevin Bartlett disappears. Everyone thinks he's run away -- until the comic strip ransom note arrives.  It doesn't take Spenser long to get the picture -- an affluent family seething with rage,…
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The Widening Gyre
The Widening Gyre
The adoring wife of a senatorial candidate has a smile as sweet as candy and dots her "i's" with little hearts. A blond beauty, she is the perfect mate for an ambitious politician, but she has a little problem with sex and drugs -- a problem someone has managed to put on videotape. The big boys figure a little blackmail will put her husband out of the race. Until Spenser hops on the candidate's…
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The Friends of Eddie Coyle
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
"Eddie Coyle is a small-time punk with a big-time problem - who to sell out to avoid being sent up again. Eddie works for Jimmy Scalisi, supplying him with guns for a couple of bank jobs. But a cop named Foley is onto Eddie, and he's leaning on him to finger Scalisi, a gang leader with a lot to hide. And then there's Dillon, a full-time bartender and a part-time contract killer pretending to be…
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Sudden Mischief
Sudden Mischief
Brad Sterling - former Harvard football player, ne'er-dowell, and Susan Silverman's long-out-of-touch ex-husband - is, by all appearances, a successful businessman. But when he is charged with sexual harassment in the course of running a vast fund-raiser called Galapalooza, he turns to Susan for help. Though Brad denies the charge, he's desperate, behind in alimony and child support to other…
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Gone, Baby, Gone
PI Patrick Kenzie is hired to find a four-year-old girl, abducted while the mother was out drinking. The search takes Kenzie through Boston's underworld of drug dealers, kidnapers and pedophiles.
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A Catskill Eagle
A Catskill Eagle
Spenser loves just one woman, even though she's the one he's just lost. So when her desperate letter arrives, he doesn't think twice. He has to free his best friend from a life sentence, and get Susan out of trouble.
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Mortal Stakes
Mortal Stakes
Everybody loves a winner, and the Rabbs are major league. Marty is the Red Sox star pitcher, Linda the loving wife. She loves everyone except the blackmailer out to wreck her life. Is Marty throwing fast balls or throwing games? It doesn't take long for Spenser to link Marty's performance with Linda's past...or to find himself trapped between a crazed racketeer and an enforcer toting an M-16.…
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Taken at the Flood
A few weeks after marrying an attractive young widow, Gordon Cloade is tragically killed by a bomb blast in the London blitz. Overnight, the former Mrs. Underhay finds herself in sole possession of the Cloade family fortune. Shortly afterwards, Hercule Poirot receives a visit from the dead man's sister-in-law who claims she has been warned by 'spirits' that Mrs. Underhay's first husband is still…
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Ceremony
Ceremony
Spenser tracks down a young high school dropout who has run away from home to a life of prostitution.
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Half Moon Investigations
Fletcher Moon has never been like other kids. For one thing, he has had to suffer the humiliating nickname "Half Moon" because of his short stature. But the real reason Fletcher is different is that ever since he was a baby, he's had a nose for sniffing out mysteries. And after graduating at the top of his Internet class, he is officially certified as the youngest detective in the world.
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Requiem for a dummy
London 1943. Successful ventriloquist Raymond Carter begins receiving death threats over the telephone. These calls are especially unnerving as the threats are made in the voice of his dummy, Charlie Dokes. Carter calls on the services of private detective Johnny Hawke to get to the bottom of this bizarre case.
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One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
The dentist was found with a blackened hole below his right temple. A pistol lay on the floor near his outflung right hand. Later, one of his patients was found dead from a lethal dose of local anaesthetic. A clear case of murder and suicide. But why would a dentist commit a crime in the middle of a busy day of appointments? A shoe buckle holds the key to the mystery. Now – in the words of the…
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Prayers for rain
The master of the new noir, Dennis Lehane delivers a shattering tale of evil, depravity, and justice that captures the dark realism of Boston’s gritty blue-collar streets.Private Investigator Patrick Kenzie wants to know why a former client, a perky woman in love with life, could, within six months, jump naked from a Boston landmark -- the final fall in a spiral of self-destruction. What he finds…
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The Thin Man
The Thin Man
Nick and Nora Charles are Hammett's most enchanting creations, a rich, glamorous couple who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. At once knowing and unabashedly romantic, The Thin Man is a murder mystery that doubles as a sophisticated comedy of manners.
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Pale Kings and Princes
Pale Kings and Princes
Spenser is hired to determine whether a reporter was killed by dope dealers or by an irate husband.
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