You might know the author of the 509 Crime Stories and the co-author of the Charlie-316 series already. This is his PI style series. Former deputy Sam Strait has been snowbirding and comes back home to discover a dead body in his home. He decides to investigate himself and ends up getting involved with a tough female bodybuilder, several thugs and more. Sam is a fun character. He might be an ex-cop, he's not the tough guy you might expect. His fighting prowess puts him pretty much into cozy territory. He's also really more of an amateur sleuth than an unlicensed PI type. His rules of ..read more

 Former Spec Ops veteran John Tyler is working as a mechanic. When a woman brings in her Porsche but never returns to it he starts to investigate. Soon he is clashing with a drug cartel who decide to get him out of the way. Together with his old Army buddy and hacker/PI C.T. Ferguson (of Tom Fowler's other series) he takes the fight to the bad guys. There's also a subplot where his ex-wife is trying to scam him and his daughter.  The John Tyler series is different from the C.T. Ferguson books in the way these are action thrillers, not detective stories. Mr. Fowler is really good at ..read more

  I saw love this idea of combining two PI novellas in one book. I loved the first one and the second one turned out to be pretty awesome as well. In Frank Zafiro's Hallmarks of the Job,we meet PI Stanley Melvin. He's no superheroic or tough Spenser. But when he gets involved in a routine case his neigbor points out the case is full of hardboiled detective novel tropes. He will need to toughen up a bit! It is a pretty quirky and fun story. I really could identify with Stanley and the plot was really inventive. In Michael Bracken's Aloha Boys, we read about Private investigator Morris Ro ..read more

 It is pretty obvious Lee Child's Jack Reacher was a big influence on this one. Ex-military loner with good detective skills shows up in a small town to deal justice. I guess that is starting to become a genre of it's own. So, this might be seen as a Son of Reacher instead of Son of Spade. Anyway, the story is about the mentioned military loner called Grant Fletcher. He is enlisted by an old army mate to investigate the disappearance of his daughter. He encounters some unfriendly citizens as well as a smart and attractive FBI agent. Fletcher as a character isn't that unique at a first g ..read more

 Ex-cage fighter Mike Romeo helps out a woman with missing kids after rescuing her from an exploding church. He ends up getting caught and tortured. Luckily, after some time with a PI and fighting in cages he has the skills to strike back. And there's that ex-Mossad sidekick to help him out. Lots of the story is a pretty straightforward hardboiled thriller. Some fights, some investigations, some twists. Mike is a wisecracking tough guy like Spenser or Elvis Cole. However, he is even more intellectual than Spenser is. As a kid, he read a lot of books and he still continues to do so. The ..read more

Shelby Alexander, retired boxer and fixer gets involved in a serial killer case when his lady love is endangered. When the killer tries to set him up for a murder he has to face the local law, who are not a fan of him after he took down some local criminals the hard way. I liked how Shelby had his doubts about his younger girlfriend. Shelby himself is a good, aging tough guy in the Eastwood manner. The writing is pretty tight and readable. The pacing is good, the dialogue attractive. The plot, however, is a bit thin.   I am not a fan of scenes written from the POV of a serial kille ..read more

I had the pleasure to ask Alexandra Amor, author of the Freddie Lark series and podcaster some questions about her work and PI fiction in general. Q:What makes Freddie Lark different from other hardboiled characters? Well, first she’s a woman, which is somewhat unusual in the hardboiled genre, though not as much as it used to be. Second, she’s accidentally falling into solving mysteries. She’s not an ex-cop, doesn’t have a PI license, and defines herself as an artist, not a detective. She leads with compassion and kindness rather than with a tough attitude. And she doesn’t even own pepper spr ..read more

  As many of our favorite hardboiled characters do, Mike Millek has a boat. He's also a limo driver for the stars in Hollywood. When one of  his client, a music producer, ends up dead he also ends up with a lot of cash in his hands. He decides to keep it, which gets him into all sorts of trouble.  Not so much a PI story as a noirish tale this one is full of people who only think about money and sex. Millek is a nice enough guy, but has some characters flaws when it comes to his morals. Of course Hollywood is a great place to be the background for this kind of tale. The fact the ..read more

 The C.T. Ferguson series always reads like you are watching a TV show and this one does more then ever.  In this one Ferguson tries to find a stolen painting that is exceptionally bad. Why would anyone steal that is one of the biggest mysteries.. What follows is a fast-paced story with Ferguson taking on some drugrunners ending in an action-packed finale. I love the concept where Ferguson works for his clients without pay, but gets paid after closing the case by his rich parents. This concept, and the pacing of the series always keeps me coming back. This one might go a bit overbo ..read more

 In 2020 I read more horror and biographies than PI fiction. Still, I read enough to have some favorites. So, as every year, here they are. BEST PI NOVEL: Rolling Thunder (Hammerhead Jed Ounstead) by A.J. Devlin BEST NEW PI: Arch Dixon (in One Mississippi) by Steve Ulfelder ..read more