The first story in the Al Pennyback mystery series, about a DC private detective who acts as a knight in armor for the under privileged.

The second book in the Al Pennyback mystery series pits Al against the Chinese mob.

Another in the Al Pennyback mystery series, set mainly in an old mansion in Washington, DC. This is the third in the series.

Al Pennyback is hired to be a bodyguard to an up and coming young singer, Cindy Caton, who is also receiving death threats via email. There's no shortage of suspects, from her agent-manager, Conrad Bierbaum, to three frustrated singers who are jealous of her exclusive contract with Bierbaum. Al lets himself be talked into accompanying the singer and her band to Colombia, where he has to contend with poisonous snakes in bed and an unfortunate Cindy Caton look alike who winds up with a knife in her back. Back in the US after the tour, he's under increasing pressure to catch the killer before Cindy becomes the next victim. Problem is, he finds himself quickly running out of suspects.

The latest in the Al Pennyback mystery series

Gordon and Allison Naismith didn’t have a honeymoon right after they got married, so after a year and Allison’s announcement that she’s pregnant, Gordon takes her to Jamaica for the long delayed trip. While in Jamaica, Allison is brutally murdered in an apparent carjacking. Her father, wealthy businessman Jacob Treworthy, believes there’s more to the murder than meets the eye, and he hires ace detective Al Pennyback to look into it. Al travels from Washington, DC to Jamaica in search of clues. He finds plenty of clues; unfortunately, none of them help him get to the bottom of Allison Naismith’s murder. His encounter with a killer who likes carving his victims is saved from becoming a fatal encounter by a sexy Jamaican lady cop who is an expert marksman with intimacy issues. When he returns to DC, Al’s problems only get worse. He runs afoul of a group of street toughs in the music industry who are better at cutting throats than records. With a ten million dollar trust riding on the outcome of his investigation, Al has ten million reasons to get the job done right.

Number 16 in the Al Pennyback mystery series. Al and Sandra go to Hawaii to attend the wedding of one of Quincy's cousins. The festivities are interrupted by a sniper who plans for death to part the couple before they can even say 'I do.'

When fashion designer Calvin Rigg was accused of murdering his partner, he turned to Al Pennyback for help to prove his innocence. Now, he and his staff are being threatened by a mysterious caller who wants money and revenge. It couldn’t come at a worse time – Rigg’s designs have come to the attention of the New York fashion industry, a chance for him to move up in the fashion world. Al finds himself once again immersed in the world of high fashion and evil deeds as he races against time to keep Rigg from ruin. It becomes even more urgent when the extortionist turns to murder to prove that he’s serious. Al must not only save his friend’s business, but the lives of his staff – as well as his own.

Christopher Cross has it all – a woman who loves him and a son who adores him. When he runs afoul of mobster Augie Manson, though, he must give it up to save those he loves. So, he does what any good con man will do when threatened; he runs away. Cross’s girlfriend, Candace Kaine, hires Al to find him and bring him home. What should have been a simple missing person case becomes complicated when Al finds himself in Manson’s crosshairs. Our intrepid detective must use all his wits to survive and find Cross before Manson does.

Why would someone who stands to inherit millions run away from home and live the life of a hermit? Al Pennyback’s friend, lawyer Quincy Chang asks him to answer that question. He wants Al to find Megan Sutliff, heir to the Sutliff Pharmaceutical fortune, and bring her back to Washington, DC for the reading of her late father’s will. Al tracks her down, but before he can bring her home, he has to fend off a killer who is trying to make sure she doesn’t return. Now, Al has another problem, he has to find out who wants her dead, and why. As the date of the will probate draws near, so does the killer stalking Megan. Al finds himself in a race against time and the elements – and the inner demons that both he and Megan have to deal with.

When a bomb goes off in a grocery store parking lot in a small Pennsylvania town, killing a local criminal, it also kills the wife of one of Al Pennyback’s old army colleagues, Lucky Luciano. Lucky feels the local law isn’t giving him the answers he seeks about who is responsible for his wife’s death, so he comes to Al for help. Al travels to Pennsylvania, where he finds that rival criminal gangs are engaged in a turf war, and Lucky’s wife was collateral damage. Even worse, it appears that there’s official complicity. If justice is to be done, it’s up to Al and his old special operations team to do it.

Henry Waylon spent ten years on death row, before finally being executed. A day after his death by lethal injection, DNA evidence shows that he was innocent of the crime for which he’d been convicted. The judge who sentenced him to die receives a threatening note, and hires Al Pennyback to find out who is threatening him. As Al digs into the background of the crime, he finds that there’s more to the case than meets the eye, and, when people associated with it start to die, he finds himself in a race against time to catch a ruthless killer.

Jackson Meredith wants to hire Al to find his wife, Caroline. But, Caroline’s father has identified his daughter’s body after a one-car crash. Suspecting there is more to the case than meets the eye, and bored because he’s between cases, Al takes the case, only to find himself investigating a murder.

Leana Sonnenberg didn't usually accompany her writer husband, Jacob, on his trips. Then, the one time she does go with him to a vineyard in Northern Virginia, she disappears. The local police don't have a clue, so Jacob hires Al Pennyback to stick his PI nose into the case. Al finds himself looking into everyone's background, and what he finds is far more deadly than he thought—and, it has nothing to do with wine.

Al Pennyback is just your run of the mill private investigator. He and Heather Bunche, his partner, are on retainer for a law firm, doing routine legal investigations. They handle the occasional over the transom case, so they’re accustomed to strange cases, but when a morbidly obese client offers Al one hundred thousand dollars to pick up a painting worth three quarters of a million dollars, he learns what strange really means. What he figured would be a well-compensated, but routine, and probably boring, pickup and delivery turns into a run for his life as rogue Russian gangsters decide he needs to die.

Competition in the restaurant industry is cutthroat, but it’s not supposed to be literally fatal. When Al and Sandra accompany Buster Mayweather to upstate New York to attend the opening of a new restaurant by Buster’s old college friend, things take a turn for deadly when the restaurant’s head chef is found frozen to death in the freezer. Was it an unfortunate accident, or was the chef the victim of one of the town’s many long-standing feuds? Buster, a DC cop, is outside his jurisdiction, but when a friend’s in need, jurisdiction be damned. Al just hates to see injustice, and is a sucker for a difficult problem, and what’s more difficult than a murder with no motive, but a town full of suspects?

Al Pennyback will do anything for friend and kin, so when an offer is made to buy his cousin, Winston’s land, an offer that seems to good to be true, Al is asked to look into it. Back in East Texas, a place that Al left as a teen and swore never to return to, he finds that nothing is what it seems. Things smell bad, literally and figuratively, and when Al starts digging, he unearths secrets that someone will kill to keep buried.

Gabriel Birdsong is found in the basement of his house, with his throat cut. The killer left no evidence, no weapon, and the police can’t determine the motive for the killing. What they do know is that his granddaughter, Lena, who has been living with him since the death of her parents, is missing. Her aunt hires Al Pennyback to find her, but offers no clues to where she might be, or with whom. As Al searches the city for the missing girl, he begins to uncover secrets about the reclusive Gabriel Birdsong that shake him to his very core, so much so that he’s not even sure he wants to find Lena.

She was rich, and she was afraid. The victim of a real estate fraud scheme, she’s now suspected of killing the man who defrauded her. She comes to Al for help in proving her innocence; a problem, given that Al really doesn’t care much for rich, spoiled people who don’t know what it’s like for the average guy. He takes the case anyway, because he doesn’t like to see the innocent suffer, even the rich innocent, and finds himself neck-deep in fraud and murder. Identifying the guilty party is a real challenge when someone’s trying to kill you. From the working-class neighborhoods of Rockville, Maryland, to the dingy streets of Northwest DC, Al follows a faint trail, trying to identify a cold, calculating killer. At the same time, danger shadows his every step. With the clock ticking, and his client’s continued freedom in doubt, Al has to do the impossible. But, the more complex the problem, the more Al likes it; and he really loves this one.

Al and Sandra get married, and decide to take a nontraditional honeymoon. On an eco-tour of Chesapeake Bay's western shore, Al stumbles across the body of a young woman who has been strangled. Police are stumped, unable to ID her, or determine a motive for her murder, but Al takes personally the fact that someone has not only brutally murdered someone, but in the process has disrupted his honeymoon. Despite being warned to keep out of it by the local cops, he pulls out all the stops to solve the case, and in the process, discovers an even deadlier plan.

There’s a reason they call it Dead Man’s Cove - - - Al’s best friend, Quincy Chang invites him and all his friends to join him on his new yacht for a Chesapeake Bay cruise. Not thrilled at the prospect of a week-long boat ride, Al is nonetheless duty bound to accept the invitation, to make up for the fact that his first honeymoon was a total bust. When they accidentally witness a drug smuggling operation, things turn deadly, as the smugglers try to eliminate them as witnesses. As if all this wasn’t enough to upset him, in their flight to elude their would-be killers, they end up in Dead Man’s Cove, a place that holds some not-so-fond memories for Al.