David Handler

Les plans a high-profile gala to welcome ninety-four-year-old icon Ada Geiger's return to the area, filled with Hollywood celebrities, supermodels, and high-profile athletes, hoping to boost sales at the inn, but his event is downsized by a blizzard, which makes it even easier for Des and Mitch to track down a guest is really a murderer in disguise.

Stewart Hoag has quit ghostwriting. Living in Connecticut with his ex-wife, Hoagy works on a novel and tends to Tracy, his brand-new daughter, who’s more beautiful than anything he’s ever written and only took nine months to make. Life is peaceful, until Thor Gibbs arrives to tear it apart. An unapologetically swaggering author, Thor is past seventy but still looks like the brash young man who befriended an aging Hemingway and inspired the first of the Beat poets. Once he was Hoagy’s mentor, but now he needs his help. Thor is in the middle of a tryst with his eighteen-year-old stepdaughter, and every newspaper, lawyer, and cop in the country wants him strung up from the highest tree. He hires Hoagy to help the beautiful young woman tell their side of the story. But trouble is following the controversial couple, and death is about to visit the cottage.

A blizzard-marked first Dorset Christmas for Des Mitry is overshadowed by the drug-related death of Mitch's neighbor, a shoplifting Kylie, and a mail thief whose activities are linked to a prescription drug gang.

"The historic New England village of Dorset has actually elected a living, breathing woman as its First Selectman. And now she's about to undertake the Historic District's biggest public works project in a generation--the widening and re-grading of Dorset Street. The job has needed doing for ages but the previous First Selectman, Bob Paffin, always opposed it. So did a lot of Dorset's blue-blooded old guard. The long put-off dig uncovers a body buried underneath the pavement in front of the Congregational Church. It belongs to Lt. Lance Paffin, Bob Paffin's older brother, a dashing U.S. Navy flyer who went missing off his sailboat the night of the country club's spring dance more than forty years ago. Everyone had assumed he just left town. But now it's clear Lance has been under Dorset Street this whole time, and that he was murdered. Des and Mitch soon discover that there are deep, dark secrets surrounding Dorset's elite, and some very distinguished careers have been built on lies. Coal Black Asphalt Tomb is the tenth in David Handler's original and very funny Berger and Mitry mystery series featuring this engaging biracial couple" --

After being hired to ghostwrite a new book about their family, Hoagy investigates a man claiming to be the Aintree sisters' father, who disappeared years ago.

"Every year, the Gant family performs an annual ritual desecrating the tomb of Aurora Bing. The Gants have held a grudge against the legendary silent film star for almost eighty years, but for Shem Gant and his son, things have become personal. Aurora's only grandchild, Hubie Swope, has shut down Shem's notoriously rowdy beachfront bar, and refuses to allow The Pit to reopen until Shem undertakes expensive upgrades. This means war. And when The Pit catches fire and Hubie Swope's charred remains are found in the rubble, it also means murder. Who killed Hubie Swope? Crime-fighting duo Mitch and Des have no idea. Not only are Shem and his son prime suspects, but so are the women in Hubie's life. To their surprise, Mitch and Des discover that Dorset's building inspector, a quiet widower who repaired cuckoo clocks in his little house on Lavender Lane, was secretly juggling four girlfriends at once. And then there's Gaylord Holland, a builder who had a beef of his own with Hubie. Dorset is in turmoil, and only New York City film critic Mitch Berger and Connecticut State Police Resident Trooper Des Mitry can put it back together. This is the eleventh in David Handler's original, hilarious and charming series featuring the engaging biracial couple that fans love"--

""Series fans will have fun catching up with the latest twists in the always interesting relationship of this interracial couple."--Publishers Weekly on The Shimmering Blond Sister When a famously volatile and suspended NFL superstar linebacker and his entourage decide to spend his season in exile in bucolic Dorset--much to the dismay of his early-to-bed, ultra-white neighbors--Des Mitry is put on the spot. And when his 17-year-old sister-in-law washes up on Mitch Berger's beach, bloodied and barely alive, Des is on the case"-- "When a famously volatile and suspended NFL superstar linebacker and his entourage decide to spend his season in exile in bucolic Dorset--much to the dismay of his early-to-bed, ultra-white neighbors--Des Mitry is put on the spot. And when his 17-year-old sister-in-law washes up on Mitch Berger's beach, bloodied and barely alive, Des is on the case"--

"When it comes to tracking down teen runaways there is no private investigator in New York City better than street-wise Benji Golden. His newest client is Morrie Frankel, the last of the great Broadway showmen. Morrie's current extravaganza, a lavish $65 million musical adaptation of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, is the biggest unfolding disaster the Great White Way has ever seen. Rumor has it if he doesn't find a deep-pocketed 'angel,' or investor, soon, he might go down and take the production with him. Morrie tells Benji he thought he had found such an investor in hedge fund billionaire R.J. Farnell, who promised to keep the teetering production afloat. But Farnell and his $12 million vanished"--