A city that never sleeps needs a detective with insomnia…

The information age didn’t make private detection obsolete, but it did make things…complicated. The ability to find almost anything on anyone means that the only detectives who stay in business are the ones who can sort the signal from the noise, and that takes a particular kind of mental illness, such as the one that plagues the brain Clarke Lantham.

Things that don’t fit bother Clarke Lantham. They keep him up at night. And because it contains things like quantum physics, biotechnology, serial killers, alien hunters, crooked cops, murderous mercenaries, and people who use Facebook, the universe is the primary offender.

On the upside, it means he’s never likely to go begging for work–a good thing, considering how many of his creditors and clients like to settle their disputes with guns, rabid dogs, and pet politicians.

In its third volume of a planned seven, The Clarke Lantham Mysteries are hard-boiled, fast-paced, humor-filled suspense novels that have already garnered rave reviews from View From Valhalla, Gail Carriger, Seth Harwood, and Philippa Ballantine.

Disgraced former cop Clarke Lantham doesn’t mind making his living as a PI. He doesn’t mind the long hours, living in his office, or even dealing with bill collectors, because it keeps him in the city, as close to heaven as he’s ever likely to get.

Fortunately, the world needs private detectives. Unfortunately for Lantham, on this particular Saturday morning, “the world” consists of a fretful mother with a missing daughter, and the place he has to go to look for her has a name every bit as ominous as hell: Suburbia.

With only a teenager’s diaries to go on, and time running out, Lantham chases puzzle pieces from the posh shadow of Mount Diablo to the kink clubs of San Francisco to the genetic engineering labs of Stanford. Tailed by mercenaries, framed for murder, forced into hiding, he somehow must keep keep his head in the face of a world where the normal rules of reality don’t seem to apply, all for the sake of a nineteen-year-old girl whose face he sees every time he closes his eyes.

Read a sample here.
Buy it now in Paperback, or as an ebook for Kindle, Nook, and all other readers.

It’s hard to beat being thrown in an out-of-state jail on a trumped up charge as a Christmas present, but detective Clarke Lantham loves a challenge. So when he calls up his brother for help with bail, he thinks he’s prepared for the ordeal of spending a holiday weekend with relatives who put the “strange” back in “estranged.”

That was his first mistake. Unfortunately, with an old client gumming up the works, a ten-year-old neice with a ghost problem, and the occasional murder competing for his attention, it’s unlikely to be his last.

Read a sample here.
Buy it now for Kindle, Nook, and all other readers.

Clarke Lantham has a checkered relationship with holidays, and this New Year’s Eve is no different. His space is cramped, his personal life is on the skids, and his business is once again under assault from lawyers and bill collectors.

But it’s not all bad. The year from hell is ending tonight, and he has his office to himself, so when an old girlfriend shows up with a chance for a $50,000 reward and a New Year’s Eve reconciliation, he jumps at it. After all, things can only get better, right?

Yeah, right.

Read a sample here.
Buy it now for Kindle, Nook, and all other readers.

The California Academy of Sciences, a bastion of integrity in scientific public relations, has agreed to play host to one of the most valuable travelling exhibits in the world: a Mars rock with microbial alien life. But the attention it’s drawing isn’t just international, it’s interstellar. When a commando team of gray aliens steals the rock and abducts a security guard, in full view of the cameras, the head of the security contractor has only one place to turn: Clarke Lantham Investigations.

Clarke Lantham already turned down an alien-related job earlier in the week, and has had his fill of kooks, cranks, and crooks of all kinds. Unfortunately, with an old client suing him, a employee to pay for, and a new ward chewing through his finances, he needs the paycheck. This time, though, he’s not the only one looking for a missing person: the FBI, Lloyd’s of London, and the Chinese Ministry of State Security are all breathing down his neck.

From the dark underbelly of the Tongs slave trade to the shark-infested waters of Bolinas Bay to the skies far above the concerns of mere mortals, Lantham races against spies, assassins, and conspiracy theorists to find the missing man–and the treasure that went with him–before the theft becomes a diplomatic incident between the world’s most fearsome superpowers and the alien overlords they allegedly support.

When the field gets that crowded, someone’s bound to get hurt. But even that might be okay for Lantham…if he didn’t have to sleep on the couch.

Read the rest on your Kindle or Nook, or other e-reader.