Declan Hughes

Emily Howard is nineteen years old, slim and petite with a pale complexion and a red rose tattoo. She is also missing. She disappeared three days ago, and now her father has been sent photographs of her naked body. He is desperate to find her. So he calls Ed Loy, a private investigator who knows the dark streets of Dublin better than most; a man who will find Emily Howard within twenty- four hours. But locating Emily turns out to be only the beginning. Within hours, Emily's ex-boyfriend is found murdered, and Loy finds himself in a race against time to catch a killer - and to unearth the many dark secrets the Howard family have kept long buried.

After twenty years in Los Angeles, Ed Loy has come home to bury his mother. But hers is only the first dead body he encounters after crossing an ocean.The city Loy once knew is an unrecognizable place, filled with gangsters, seducers, hucksters, and crazies, each with a scheme and an angle. But he can't refuse the sexy former schoolmate who asks him to find her missing husband—or the old pal-turned-small time criminal who shows up on Loy's doorstep with a hard-luck story and a recently fired gun. Suddenly, a tragic homecoming could prove fatal for the grieving investigator, as an unexplained photograph of his long-vanished father, a murky property deal, and a corpse discovered in the foundations of town hall combine to turn a curious case into a dark obsession—dragging Ed Loy into a violent underworld of drugs, extortion, and murder ... and through his own haunted past where the dead will never rest.

"Even the best private eye needs more than a name to find a missing person, but that's all that Father Vincent Tyrrell, the brother of prominent racehorse trainer F.X. Tyrrell, will offer Loy when he comes to him for help."--Provided by publisher.

That night, Samantha Jones was doing what she always did: just trying to get by. Left to make her own way on the mean streets of East St. Louis, the pretty twenty-three-year-old single mother supported herself and her son as best she could by repo-ing cars. When she hooked her junker of a tow truck up to the BMW she'd been sent to haul in, the last thing she expected was to find a beaten, bloody man in the in the trunk--or to be catapulted into a terrifying fight to survive. Pantrero was minutes away

Dublin PI Ed Loy is trying to escape his past—a task easier said than done—in this new novel from Shamus Award-winning author Declan HughesShortly after moving from his childhood home on the outskirts of Dublin to an apartment in the city, Ed Loy is approached by Anne Fogarty, a woman whose father was killed fifteen years ago. She thinks the police nabbed the wrong person, and now she wants Loy to find the truth. At the top of the list of possible suspects are three men Anne's father, a revenue inspector, was preparing claims against for criminal activity: Bobby Doyle, an ex-IRA man turned property developer; Jack Cullen, also ex-IRA, now the head of a gang of disgruntled IRA men; and George Halligan, Loy's underworld nemesis.At the same time, Loy is asked to look into the death of Paul Delaney, a rising soccer star who may have been connected with Jack Cullen. With the two cases on a collision course, Loy scours the streets of a city divided—where the wounded Celtic Tiger walks hand in hand with the ghosts of a violent past.With his gripping mysteries in the tradition of Raymond Chandler's and Ross MacDonald's best, a striking portrayal of an Ireland seldom seen, and a classic hero in Ed Loy, Declan Hughes cements his place as one of the most talented new crime writers working today.

Clare Taylor arrives home after a wild week in Chicago to discover that the house has been stripped bare and there's no sign of her husband and two daughters. By dawn next morning, her house has been foreclosed against, there's a dead body in her backyard, and Clare is caught up in a nightmare that began with her husband on Hallowe'en night, 1976.

Dublin PI Ed Loy tackles a case that takes him back to Los Angeles — his home of twenty years — and a past he'd rather forget in this gripping new novel in the Edgar Award-nominated and Shamus Award-winning series.Ed Loy has laid his ghosts to rest. He's been back in his hometown of Dublin for several years, his work is wearing but steady, and he's in his first loving relationship since the death of his daughter caused the ruin of his marriage six years ago. But when two girls go missing from a Dublin film set, Loy knows his past has caught up with him.Loy's longtime friend, film director Jack Donovan, is shooting his next movie, an Irish historical epic. Donovan and his three right-hand men — together, the Gang of Four — have made numerous movies together spanning several decades, but the new film is primed to be their masterpiece. Production grinds to a halt, though, when not one but two female cast members fail to show up to work. Chances are they're party girls sleeping off a late night, but the circumstances feel familiar to Loy. A little too familiar. Twenty years ago, three girls disappeared from a movie Donovan was shooting in Malibu and their bodies were never found. Today, Loy has a sinking feeling in his heart: Those girls are gone.Knowing that one of the film crew — maybe even Jack Donovan himself — is responsible for the girls' disappearances, Loy races to uncover the truth before a third girl goes missing. And in order to find answers, he must return to L.A. and delve deep into his past. But while he's so far from home, a cunning killer seizes the chance to strike at what's closest to Ed Loy's heart.

A reputable dentist from a venerable medical family, Shane Howard wants Loy to find his lost daughter after receiving a set of photographs featuring nineteen-year-old Emily in provocative poses. But a simple missing persons case rapidly devolves into something even more sordid and grisly when two of the players are savagely slain. And it's only the beginning.The Howard family is not what it seems. Beneath a veneer of wealth and respectability is a dark history of corruption and rot and secrets best left unearthed. By entering the Howards' vicious circle, Loy may find himself stained with the most corrosive and lethal type of blood—the kind that even death cannot eradicate.