Lawrence Kelter Books in Order

Kelter's early standalone turns official power and top-down decisions into the engine of suspense. The danger starts high above ordinary people, but the fallout lands on the ground, where someone has to uncover the truth before it spreads.

When women begin turning up dead with cryptic notes stuffed in their mouths, young NYPD detective Stephanie Chalice realizes Manhattan has a serial killer on its hands. Solving the case means following a trail of clues while facing demons of her own.

Stephanie Chalice goes after the kidnappers of an autistic boy who happens to be the ward of a billionaire and tied to the prophecies of Nostradamus. To get him back, she has to outthink a killer known only as Black.

This Frank Mango tale leans hard into hard-boiled mood, quick danger, and urban grime. It is a short, pulpy crime story where trouble gathers fast and survival depends on moving quicker than the people who want you cornered.

An unconscious torture victim is found in Central Park with a sterilized skull nearby and almost no useful evidence. Stephanie Chalice has to work backward from madness, pain, and a comatose witness to reach a killer hiding in plain sight.

A bullet meant to kill two people sends Stephanie Chalice into a case built from four murders with four different signatures. From Ground Zero to the icy narrows below the Verrazzano, she races a clever killer before the clock runs out.

Siblings Lexa and Axel have spent their lives hiding an extraordinary ability to change their appearance. After a violent night on Long Island exposes them to revenge and suspicion, secrecy becomes harder to keep and far more dangerous.

Josh, a naive California boy, comes to New York for the summer and collides with Rocky, a teen from a very different world. Their meeting turns into a coming-of-age story about friendship, place, and the heat of a city summer.

A decorated general learns that old wars do not always stay buried. When a personal blow brings danger to his own doorstep, he is pushed into a brutal fight against enemies who have not forgotten him.

A woman is dead, a suspect is already in custody, and the case looks closed before rookie Stephanie Chalice has even settled in. She sees the cracks anyway, and her first big investigation becomes a lesson in fraud, conspiracy, and deception.

A chance glimpse becomes a dangerous obsession in this darker standalone. Kelter turns longing into suspense as one man's need to possess the woman he cannot have slowly erodes judgment, restraint, and everything else in its path.

A younger Stephanie Chalice is forced to work with little more than instinct, nerve, and grit. Cut away from easy jurisdiction and familiar support, she has to solve a dangerous case before the pressure around her turns deadly.

A long-buried story of loss and abandonment collides with a present-day Long Island case when Stephanie Chalice and Gus Lido are supposed to be on vacation. Fires, murder, and old secrets start linking up in unsettling ways.

Three men have been executed in a strikingly deliberate way, and Chloe Mather is forced to ask what message the killer is sending. The case pulls her toward organized crime, hidden agendas, and a threat bigger than the bodies suggest.

When an Israeli woman is brutally murdered in New York, FBI agent Chloe Mather takes the case personally and professionally. Her search for the killer pulls her into a web of mob activity, intelligence work, and looming mass violence.

After a rooftop shooting leaves Stephanie Chalice injured and her rookie partner dead, she wakes with seizures and a shattered memory. Hurt and furious, she hunts both the shooter and a predator stalking young women across New York.

A call from a dying man drags Chloe Mather into another volatile investigation. What begins with one desperate voice quickly opens into buried secrets, fresh violence, and the kind of danger that rarely stays contained for long.

Young Stephanie Chalice refuses the obvious explanation after a bomb explodes in a house of worship. With few usable clues and pressure to accept the easy answer, she barrels into a case that quickly turns more dangerous than anyone expected.

Stephanie Chalice and Chloe Mather are both trying to return to duty after devastating setbacks when they get paired on what should be an easy case. Instead, a routine homicide opens into an international manhunt with far higher stakes.

Fresh off the Alabama trial, Vinny Gambini heads home and tries to build a legal career while Lisa waits for him to finally grow up. Then a murder case lands in his lap, and a young woman named Theresa Cototi needs saving.

In 1988 Washington Heights, crack cocaine is tearing a neighborhood apart. Assistant DA Frank Corda leads a dangerous push against Dominican drug boss Reinaldo Arenas, navigating gang violence, politics, and rival law-enforcement agendas along the way.

Brooklyn homicide detective John Mocha Moccia is obsessed with one last impossible case, the murder of Jessica Shannon. With evidence thin, pressure mounting, and his career on the line, he pushes forward even if this arrest really could be his last.

Another compact Stephanie Chalice case begins with facts that look settled and quickly stop cooperating. Kelter keeps the story short, sharp, and suspicious, as Chalice pushes past the easy version and finds something worse underneath.

Bill Gambini and Stan Rothstein are wrongly charged with murder in Alabama, and their only hope is Vinny Gambini, a brand-new lawyer from Brooklyn. With Mona Lisa Vito at his side, Vinny has to bluff, brawl, and outthink a courtroom stacked against him.

An old act of greed and cowardice comes back to haunt a rich Manhattan family when their infant son is abducted. With no ransom demand and too many secrets in play, Stephanie Chalice has to work out whether the motive is money, revenge, or both.

Kelter steps away from crime into a playful fantasy adventure built around mystery, layered storytelling, and a treasure hunt. It is a lighter, more storybook detour that still moves with suspense and a taste for surprises.

Drug lord Rodrigo Lopez is supposed to be dead, until he seems to surface at a murder scene in a crowded uptown bar. Stephanie Chalice is left sorting witnesses, lies, and a case that makes less sense the longer she studies it.

This short Chalice City Beat entry drops Stephanie Chalice into yet another New York case built on bad assumptions and hidden motives. The pleasure is watching her keep digging after everyone else is ready to stop.

Grifters Sam and Rachel head into Manhattan's University Club with a bold impersonation and a diamond-mine con. Then they realize someone else may also be running a game, and the whole scam starts wobbling in dangerous ways.

This short holiday story looks back at how Vinny Gambini's legal career first got rolling. It is a quick, funny Christmas-side trip for readers who want a little more Vinny and Lisa between the bigger cases.

Rivalry, pressure, and loyalty drive this standalone as old allegiances collide with fresh trouble. Kelter keeps it lean and quick, building the story around the kind of contest that refuses to stay contained.

This collection of early Stephanie Chalice novellas shows the detective before the main series begins. It tracks the cases that help turn a bold young cop into the sharp, fearless investigator readers meet later in full-length novels.

Tanner Fritz seems to have it all, which is exactly why four of his closest associates want him dead. Their problem is not motive, it is deciding who gets the honor first while they keep sabotaging one another's plans.

Two fast Stephanie Chalice cases come together here. One centers on an infant kidnapping with no ransom demand, the other on the possible return of a supposedly dead drug lord after a public murder scene turns impossible.

Kelter uses a simple, everyday setup and lets it drift into stranger territory in this short piece. It is brisk, a little offbeat, and driven by the creeping sense that something about the surface story is not right.

Rookie parole officer Stedman Groove sets out to prove his friend D. Wayne Tyrone innocent of the Palm Sunday Massacre. Kelter blends fact and fiction in a hard-driving return to 1980s Brooklyn and one of the city's ugliest miscarriages of justice.

Kelter's Tumbleweed entry drops a mystery into a small-town world already primed for gossip and chaos. The setup is playful, but the puzzle is real, and one disruptive case is enough to send the whole town spinning.

Brooklyn PI Gina Marie Cototi is already juggling insurance fraud work when her father's beloved 1963 Corvette is stolen. The search pulls her into mob trouble, a dangerous boxer, and a case that gets far more personal than it first appears.

Vinny Gambini is still loud, funny, and impossible, but the cases are getting tougher. After legal battles in New Hampshire and Mexico, he lands in New Orleans to defend a young man in a murder trial that may already be going wrong.

One of Kelter's later standalones, this novel leans into secrets, pressure, and the uneasy feeling that the truth is just out of sight. Ordinary explanations stop being enough, and the danger grows in that gap.

Disabled ex-Navy SEAL Nik Briscoe is running from one crime she did not commit when she gets pinned for another in Possum Trot. To survive, she has to clear her name and expose the town's corruption before her pursuers catch up.