After a suicide, two oddball female sleuths investigate a coin collection that is anything but small change. Maggie Hill's life has become temporary. Her marriage was temporary, her jobs are temporary, and if work doesn't pick up, her time in California might be temporary, too. Her latest employer is Ellis Kenilworth, an aging coin expert with a first-rate collection and a tenth-rate family. One morning, he has Maggie type up a codicil to his will, changing the document so that his million-dollar rare-coin collection goes not to his kin, but to a woman named Claire Conrad. By the end of the day, the codicil has vanished, and Kenilworth has killed himself with a shotgun. When the...

As elegant, enigmatic private eye Claire Conrad and her very independent assistant Maggie Hill prepare to fly to L.A., a young woman appears at their hotel bearing an unusual messsage: a legendary fashion model who died recently did not commit suicide. When the messenger is stabbed to death, Claire and Maggie decide to stay in New York to further investigate her claim.

A forty-year-old actress tries to make a comeback - but death keeps getting in the way Diana Poole was the last of the starlets. A vibrant blonde with a quick wit and sharp intelligence, she was on her way to the top when Colin Hudson changed her mind about being famous. He was the finest screenwriter in Hollywood, and loved her well enough that she lost the acting bug forever. When he dies, he leaves Diana lonely, broke, and verging on middle age - a combination that's difficult anywhere, but toxic in Hollywood. Thankfully, Diana still knows how to play the game. Working her old contacts and hustling for a job, she contends with crazy young ingenues, lecherous studio heads, and the...

This new crime thriller takes amateur sleuth Diana Poole deep into Southern California's underworld to uncover the mystery of a diamond-encrusted scorpion - and the reason for the murders that follow in its wake. One afternoon while standing outside her newly renovated Malibu house, Diana Poole sees a woman across the highway waving at her, but Diana doesn't recognize her. Still waving, the woman walks into the oncoming cars and is killed instantly. Why would anyone do such a thing? The next night, still horrified by the accident, Diana is held at gunpoint by a man demanding the dead woman's scorpion. What kind of scorpion? A live one? A brooch? A pendant? Diana searches the accident...

"City of Mirrors is deftly written and smart. On top of that, it is entertaining as hell." - Michael Connelly "A fine crime novel with an engangingly cynical edge" - Simon Brett Hollywood can be a dangerous business. In this suspenseful thriller, Diana Poole is already mourning the deaths of both her husband and mother when she has to go back to acting to make ends meet. Even as the daughter of a famous actress, it's hard for a woman in her forties to get work in a town where young starlets get all the leading roles. It seems like a stroke of luck when Diana lands a part in a major new movie. But when she discovers the leading lady murdered, she has to turn detective to find the killer and...

For many years, some of the most vital, creative, and exciting fiction published in America has been in the field of mystery, crime, and suspense. Now Robert B. Parker and Otto Penzler — both Edgar winners — have assembled the best that 1997 had to offer: twenty terrific, titillating tales from such masters of the genre as Elmore Leonard, Elizabeth George, James Crumley, Jonathan Kellerman, and Andrew Klavan, from newcomers like Brad Watson, and from well-known literary writers such as Joyce Carol Oates and Michael Malone.