Showing results by author "Stephen L. Brooks" in All Categories

Victorian London night: A lamplighter discovers the body of a very old man lying dead in an alley. Scotland Yard calls in the eminent physician Dr. Conan to determine the cause of death. The brilliant and opinionated Conan is often consulted by Scotland Yard. But his sometimes unorthodox solutions frequently have him butting heads with incredulous Yard officials. Despite the man's apparent age, Dr. Conan determines that the victim is no older than 30 and died as the result of rapid aging.

One of the reasons Mark Banning had become a private detective was to help those with seemingly "lost cause" cases no one else would take. The case Diedre Hammond begged him to take seemed hopeless - DNA evidence proved her brother had raped and killed a six-year-old. Months had passed since Diedre's brother, Sam, had been executed, protesting his innocence up to the moment of execution.

Her pa taught Allison Katherine “Kat” Crandall to ride, rope, and shoot as good as any man. That's why they called her "Wildcat"! Then her pa died in what folks called an “accident”, and when she returned from his funeral, half her ranch hands up and left. Kat knew that meant her father's death was no accident but cold-blooded murder, even if she couldn't prove it - yet!

Ryan Morgan, a married man, comes to Banning in a panic. He is being blackmailed with incriminating photos of Ryan with an attractive coworker. To Banning, with years of experience as a private eye, there is nothing unusual about that. What is unusual is that the photos show the pair in places where they have never been.

For Baltimore detective Mark Banning it starts out as a typical missing persons case: a man seeks his help in finding his daughter who disappeared after meeting with a man she met online. Mark enlists the assistance of his police detective friend Ed Taylor in the case. When the search results in finding the dead bodies of the girl, the man she met online, and the father as well, it becomes much more than that. But there was another involved: a mysterious phantom witness who may have the answer to the entire mystery.