John Swartzwelder Books in Order

Detective Frank Burly’s efforts to help a new client lead him into criminal schemes involving time travel. His investigation takes an increasingly strange turn as the case becomes entangled with a time machine.

The residents of the unremarkable western town of Slackjaw want the fame enjoyed by places like Tombstone. A visiting pulp writer offers them a chance at recognition, turning their ordinary lives into material for popular entertainment.

Detective Frank Burly is kidnapped and brainwashed by Martians, becoming involved in their invasion of Earth. His mishaps carry him between the invaders and the human resistance in a comic struggle over the planet’s future.

Seeking a gimmick to attract clients, Frank Burly buys a refurbished jetpack and becomes the Flying Detective. His explosive crashes make him an unlikely superhero just as a robot crime wave strikes Central City.

Frank Burly starts seeing ghosts everywhere and seeks psychiatric help to make them disappear. The troublesome visitors turn out to be former clients whose unfortunate deaths have given them reasons to haunt their hapless detective.

After a disappointing vacation, Frank Burly joins a criminal organization, hoping to enjoy its employee benefits. His uneven progress through the ranks leads toward alien employers and intergalactic pursuits, taking ordinary corruption into outer space.

While pursuing a counterfeiter, Frank Burly becomes entangled in identity theft and a series of mysterious disappearances. As the trouble spreads far beyond his original case, he must travel through time to recover what has vanished.

Professor Moriarty, an elementary-school mathematics teacher with criminal ambitions, challenges Frank Burly to stop his planned masterpiece. The detective’s efforts turn a science convention into a stronghold of mad scientists in this comic collision of detective and monster stories.

Frank Burly trades private detection for police work, attracted by the opportunities a badge might offer. His new duties send him to a retirement home, where elderly criminals are planning an ambitious theft of Earth’s core.

Frank Burly’s attempt to advertise his detective agency brings clients searching for stolen gadgets. As he investigates the thefts, a professor introduces a robot that supposedly does detective work better than any human investigator.

Frank Burly visits an alien enthusiast whose greatest passion is Earth and its culture. The encounter with a devoted collector of human memorabilia gives the bewildered detective another opportunity to experience his home planet from an unfamiliar perspective.

A time-travel mishap lands Frank Burly aboard the Titanic while he is pursuing Jack the Ripper for a television appearance. Certain the ship will sink, he places a large bet without remembering exactly how disaster occurs.

After losing a job with a trio of movie comedians, Frank Burly becomes a product tester with painful results. Strange behavior among Central City’s residents then draws his attention toward a mystery beyond his employment troubles.

Animals forced from their woodland home relocate to the city and struggle to find a place there. Their encounters with bureaucracy, employment problems and territorial disputes turn the search for safety into an increasingly absurd adventure.

Frank Burly answers a matchbox advertisement promising an exciting new career in espionage. When the spy school fails to deliver, his attempt to track down its operators leads him into another sequence of costly and ridiculous confrontations.