Showing results by author "Al Lamanda" in All Categories

When counterfeit money is reported in large amounts from thirteen towns and cities across the country and the U.S. Secret Service is at a loss as to its origin, President Cleveland turns to The Illinois Detective Agency for help. Old friends with Charles Porter, founded of the Illinois Detective Agency, Cleveland brings James Duffy and Jack Cavill, principal owners of the agency to Washington DC, where they accept the assignment. Duffy, Cavill and the rest of the agency members, Miss Potts, Quill, Harvey, Joseph Goodluck and Lester Holt start the investigation by visiting the thirteen ...

Claire Evergreen, Sheriff of small, Long Island beach community Smokey Point, returns in an all new mystery/thriller. After the summer ends and Smoky Point enters the fall season, hunters discover a dead body in the Smoky Point woods reserve when coyotes dig up an arm. Claire has the site excavated and is shocked to discover the naked body of a very old man. Claire brings in the FBI and State police to help identify the old man. Who turns out to be the older brother of Jewish Mafia leader, Abby Kleinfeld, a resident of Long Island. Kleinfeld identifies the body as being his older brother, ...

Book three, The Case of Duffy’s Revenge, picks up where book two leaves off, with the murder of James Duffy’s future wife in the town of Miles City, Montana. The Agency is naturally outraged and Agency Director Charles Porter sends James Duffy, Jack Cavill, and Joseph Goodluck to Miles City to investigate. Porter and his personal assistant, Miss Potts, also make the trip. In Miles City they meet with Sheriff Bates, who provides details of what happened. During the Miles City founding day celebration, Duffy’s future wife, Sylvia Trent, attended the dance with a family friend. Sometime ...

On the night of the full moon in Wyoming Territory, somebody dies a horrible and ghastly death by being scalped. For months, the territory is held by the grip of fear and Governor Hale turns to Charles Porter, founder of the Illinois Detective Agency, for help. Porter's two top agents, James Duffy and Jack Cavill, are on holiday with their lady friends, so Porter assigns Joe Charles and Tom Adcock and scout/tracker Joseph Goodluck, a Mexican Comanche, to the assignment. Charles, Adcock, and Goodluck report to Governor Hale in Wyoming Territory. The most recent full-moon killing took place ...

After the murder of Illinois Detective Agency founder Charles Porter by a mysterious criminal named King Valdez, the team comes together with just one thought on its mind, find Valdez and bring him to justice. King Valdez is kidnapping children and selling them into slavery around the world. His operation is large and well organized and well financed. James Duffy assumes control of the agency and works closely with the Justice Department to find Valdez. Agents Jack Cavill, Joseph Goodluck, Quill, Harvey, Holt and newcomer Mr. Sato round out the team. A countrywide investigation uncovers ...

It’s 1887 and The Illinois Detective Agency now has a new branch in San Francisco to support the existing office in Springfield, Illinois. A gruesome string of murders gives the Justice Department cause to contact The Illinois Detective Agency. Five men, seemingly unrelated have been found murdered with a Bowie Knife in their chest and the Justice Department doesn’t know what to make of it. Two additional men in Canada were found murdered in the same fashion. The entire agency, plus a disheveled, funny, little detective from Scotland Yard named Alfie Birdwhistle goes to work on the case...

In 1884, the founder and matriarch of the Illinois Detective Agency is now elderly and active in the way that “Charlie” of “Charlie’s Angels” was. Founded in 1848 as a Stock Detective Agency, the founder is still the backbone of the business he built from the ground up. In the case of the Missing Cattle, the Stock Growers Association of Montana appeals to Porter for help with a major cattle theft problem inside the Montana Territory. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of cattle are being stolen off the open ranges and the local sheriffs and Army outposts are helpless to stop it. ...

Cillian Goodknight is a man blessed with many talents. A Yale and Harvard graduate with a degree in law, he has intellect and education. One of five children to inherit the Goodknight Oil Company, he is blessed with wealth. He has charm and a flair for words and wit. He seemingly has it all, except for one major flaw. What Goodknight doesn’t have is height. He stands just four-foot-four-inches tall, well below the minimum height for military service when World War Two broke out. However, his education qualified him for Army Intelligence and he spent the war years in Europe, gathering ...

Sinner or Saint? That’s the question on everyone’s mind that comes in contact with the mysterious stranger and lives to talk about it. The stranger is a killing machine who appears to pick his victims at random, but really uses a very select process to make his choice. And he can’t be stopped. Not by the police, the FBI or the special task force chasing him across the countryside. And the more he kills, the stronger he grows. Moving at breakneck speed, Messenger races to its shocking conclusion and the final twist will leave the reader breathless. This is Horror/Suspense at its finest.

Just Another Day In The Life It’s an all out mob war in The Bronx. When seven million dollars disappears from a Las Vegas casino, the number one suspect is a mid-level Vegas mobster named Anthony. The problem is Anthony has vanished without a trace along with the money. Casino owner, a powerful mob boss named Viny Boots calls upon the highly regarded skills of organization hit man Michael DeSousa to track down Anthony and bring the stolen cash home. This takes Michael back to the Bronx in New York City where he and Anthony grew up in the legendary section known as Little Italy. Once in ...

Retired on a disability pension after being shot in the hip, FBI agent Duncan Wyatt is bored to tears after making a full recovery. His hum-drum existence comes to an abrupt end when he is recruited by ATF to work undercover in the Florida Keys. A Keys native, Wyatt not only knows the territory, but the target of their investigation, his high school sweetheart of twenty-five years ago, Katherine Wolfe. Wealthy Miami based industrialist Xavier Estes, a first generation born Cuban has long been suspected of gun smuggling to Cuban rebels by ATF. His suspected accomplice is Keys resident ...

Walking Homeless John Tibbets is not just another homeless man living in New York’s Bowery. He also suffers from advanced amnesia and has no idea how he arrived at the most famous mission in America. A recluse, he lives a quiet life of desperate isolation. While wandering the Bowery streets one summer night, Tibbets comes upon three men mugging a police officer. Acting on unknown instincts, Tibbets intervenes. Displaying the fighting skills of a Navy Seal, Tibbets saves the life of the police officer, suffering a bullet wound in the process. While recovering at the hospital, Tibbets ...

Kellerman is back, bigger, bolder and deadlier than ever. When his old friend, attorney Cal Hawkins recruits Kellerman and Maria to bodyguard an eighty-six-year-old man named Aaron Grace, who is the last member of a fifty-year-old tontine worth eight million dollars, it’s an easy assignment for an easy payday. Except that somebody else has a different idea and soon Kellerman, Maria and Kellerman’s usual gang find themselves elbow deep in a plot involving murder, extortion and their own extinction.

Body and Soul is an explosive story of crime, deception, war, romance, lust and redemption. It’s the story of Saint, a young man raised in an orphanage and Angie, a girl from the streets, who fate brings together during the late 1930’s. As they take to a life of crime and grow in wealth and stature, fate again intervenes when Saint is drafted into the Army to fight in World War Two and Angie is left behind to fend for herself. Body and Soul is the ultimate in Crime Fiction and Noir.

Likeable but deadly outlaw Jack Posey is serving a long stretch of hard labor at Yuma Prison in Arizona when his fortunes turn for the better when his older brother Dale pays him a visit. Dale is a United States Marshal and his visit isn’t sociable. Dale is there to offer Jack a deal approved by the governor. Jack s old gang now led by Jack’s former number two man Tom Spooner has become the most wanted outlaws in the west. Dale is authorized by the governor to offer Jack a full pardon in exchange for helping to bring Spooner and the gang to justice.

Lee Gavin and his band of ne-er-do-wells are back in an all new pulse pounding, roller coaster ride of excitement crime novel. No, not really. But if you like your crime with a whole lot of belly laughs, The Theory of Everything is right up your alley. Kick back and spend some time with Lee, Ian and the gang and be warned, laughter is contagious. From Edgar and Nero Award nominee l Lamanda.

Harbor Island is a sleepy little island town off the coast of Maine. When an old man dies, his eighty year old secret is revealed and the power of Satan is unleashed upon the island. Slowly, the power of the anti-Christ spreads throughout the island, possessing citizens and driving them to insane murders and suicides. Seemingly unstoppable, the power is determined to kill every resident on the island and spread to the mainland. The Harbor is classic horror that will frighten and leave the reader breathless as the story races to its startling climax.

Lee Gavin and his traveling band of ne’er-do-well’s are back with a new caper to pull. Hired by a famous writer to steal an unpublished manuscript from its unknown author so he can claim it as his own, the band sees it as a simple job for easy money. Simple except that the key that unlocks the safe deposit box where the manuscript is kept is around the neck of Felix, the unknown author’s family pet cat. Solution, steal the cat, except that Felix, a thirty pound Maine Coon Cat doesn’t want to be stolen. From start to finish, nothing in the world of Lee Gavin ever goes according to plan.

When the inner circle of President John F. Kennedy conspires to assassinate him, they turn to organized crime and the very powerful New York City based LaCasa crime family to get the job done. Irish/Italian mobster Jimmy Fallen came out of World War Two a disillusioned man and followed the career path of his father as a hit man for organized crime. Scarred by years of fighting in the war, Fallen’s existence is bleak and lonely. However, his professional services are highly sought after and he lands the prize of contracted hits when Tommy LaCasa hands him the assassination of President ...

War has been declared…on comedy. After decades of being under federal surveillance, mob boss Victor Grant finally figured out a way to beat them at their own game and hold a mob meeting in private. He arranges a Caribbean cruise, where, in international waters he and his mob cohorts can meet in peace and quiet and plan and scheme. Back home all goes well until, under the watchful eye of Grant’s British housekeeper, his young son is kidnapped. Elizabeth, the housekeeper, in a panic calls Jack Pellegrino, Grant’s nephew for help with paying the one million dollar ransom. Thus sets in ...