Hailed by Sue Grafton as "a true original," ex-cop turned private eye Carlotta Carlyle risks her neck in Boston's Combat Zone for two very different clients Carlotta Carlyle is halfway through a pizza when her former boss, Lieutenant Mooney of the Boston Police, shows up at her door needing help even more than Carlotta needs a case. In a Combat Zone bar, Mooney got into a scrap with a stranger over a woman. Now the stranger is comatose, the woman...

Let go from the Beantown police force for insubordination, six-foot-tall, redheaded ex-cop, part-time taxi driver, and neophyte private eye Carlotta Carlyle is ready for business. Her first client is the genteel and elderly Margaret Devens, whose brother, Eugene, one of the last in a handful of Boston's aging Irish cabbies, has suddenly vanished. The case should be a cinch. Carlotta knows the territory. She even knew Eugene. But when Margaret is...

Boston's largest urban renewal undertaking in modern history draws Carlotta into an undercover gig at the site. It comes at the request of a disgruntled hardhat who suspects the multibillion-dollar project has set off a groundswell of graft, kickbacks, and fraud. The case hasn't unearthed anything but dirt, so Carlotta is tempted into moonlighting on another: a Beacon Street socialite who's deeply concerned about her vanishing tenant, a dog groomer...

Carlotta is frantic. It appears that Paolina, a street-smart teenage girl she's always thought of as a little sister, has run away. After dead-end investigations throughout Boston, Carlotta fears the worst. Especially when she connects the disappearance to Paolina's biological father, Roldán Gonzales, a ruthless Colombian drug lord. To find Paolina, first Carlotta has to find Gonzales-but he's vanished too. The official report is that he's dead....

Hired to find a missing novelist, Boston private investigator Carlotta Carlyle gets tangled up in a cutthroat political campaign Thea Janis was a literary Mozart. She published her first novel at age fourteen, shocking the upper crust of Boston with her frank depiction of blue-blooded indiscretions, and she seemed to have a magnificent career ahead of her. But before Thea could publish her follow-up novel, she mysteriously disappeared and was eventually...

Helping an old college friend who made it big in the music industry puts Boston PI Carlotta Carlyle in a deadly spotlight She may be Boston's most tenacious private detective, but by night, Carlotta Carlyle is just another cab driver hustling for an honest buck. When blues superstar Dee Willis climbs into her cab, Carlotta isn't starstruck-she's shocked. The two women were friends in college, right up until the day Dee ran off with Carlotta's husband....

Available for the first time in one volume: three delectably puzzling mystery stories—including the Anthony Award–winning story “Lucky Penny”—starring the inimitable taxi-driving Boston private investigator Carlotta Carlyle
Six-foot-tall, redheaded ex-cop and Boston-based private eye Carlotta Carlyle is “the genuine article: a straightforward, funny, thoroughly American mystery heroine” (New...

Snapshot: A series of strange photos draws Carlotta into a chilling case of medical malpractice. Hardware: After a series of assaults on cabbies, Carlotta's moonlighting job as a taxi driver turns into the most dangerous, high-octane case of her career. Cold Case: Hired to find a long-missing novelist, Carlotta gets tangled up in a cutthroat political campaign. Flashpoint: Carlotta tries not to get scorched when an arsonist targets her.