Lawrence Sanders Books in Order

Safecracker Duke Anderson walks out of prison and immediately plans an audacious heist, looting every apartment in a luxury Manhattan building in one sweep. Unbeknownst to him, multiple agencies are taping everyone around him, and the resulting web of surveillance turns the caper into a deadly trap.

Helen, a good natured New Yorker who has drifted through a series of unsatisfying affairs, takes a day off work and replays the choices that brought her here. As she revisits lovers, friends, and an aging dog, the story becomes a frank portrait of desire and loneliness.

In coastal Maine, aging patriarch Pieter Vanderhorst presides over a crumbling family empire. One daughter has eaten and drunk herself into seclusion, the other returns as a famous but troubled singer, and their tangled loves push the household toward violence and betrayal.

New York homicide chief Edward X. Delaney investigates a series of seemingly random murders committed with an ice axe. While his wife lies gravely ill in the hospital, he tracks a polished killer through galleries and high rise apartments, weighing justice against the limits of the law.

Set in a near future America obsessed with control, government strategist Nicholas Flair helps design new technologies, including a pleasure pill meant to calm unrest. His work pulls him into conspiracies over genetics, surveillance, and who decides what being human means.

Corporate troubleshooter Peter Tangent is sent to the small African nation of Asante to secure oil rights for his company. Frustrated by a stingy king, he begins backing a military coup and soon finds himself balancing profit, politics, and a powder keg of competing loyalties.

Stage star Toby Marlowe learns he has months to live and decides to treat his impending death as one last performance. As he jokes, spars, and reminisces with his long time partner and struggling actor son, old grudges and unresolved ambitions come painfully into focus.

Retired detective Edward X. Delaney is lured back to work when a celebrated painter is found viciously stabbed in his Manhattan studio. Digging into the victim's circle of family, lovers, and dealers, he uncovers tax scams, forged canvases, and more than one person with a reason to kill.

Foundation investigator Sam Todd visits a secluded rest home and research center run by Nobel winner Dr. Thorndecker, who claims to be studying aging. The frightened town, secretive staff, and midnight burials convince Sam that the doctor may be sacrificing patients in the name of science.

In the second Peter Tangent adventure, the oil company fixer faces off against an ambitious African politician who wants to unite neighboring states under his rule. Their struggle over power, contracts, and a woman they both love turns the region into a battleground.

Bestselling crime novelist Jannie Sheen decides the only way to revive her sagging career is to plan a real, carefully staged robbery she will cancel at the last minute. When her recruited crooks refuse to back out, she is dragged into a dangerous heist that quickly spins out of control.

In the comfortable suburb of Penlow Park, a sultry young widow moves into a rental house and quietly begins seducing her married neighbors. As old resentments surface and passions overheat, what started as a steamy summer of affairs slides toward something darker and more uncanny.

Short, sharp tongued private investigator Joshua Bigg juggles two odd cases: a missing professor with a taste for poisons and a charismatic preacher accused of fleecing his flock. When the trails merge, Bigg uncovers a pattern of manipulation that leads to a deadly confrontation.

A series of brutal knife murders of traveling businessmen baffles the NYPD until Edward X. Delaney begins to suspect the unthinkable, that the killer is a seemingly mousy hotel secretary. Tracking her through medical clues and social expectations, he races to stop her as her health and sanity collapse.

On Florida's glittering coast, the Bending family looks perfect from a distance, but young Lucy lives in a world of manipulation, cruelty, and adult games she barely understands. A child psychiatrist trying to help her is drawn into a dangerous maze of abuse, jealousy, and revenge.

Struggling New York actor Peter Scuro accepts cash for a one night stand and discovers an unexpected talent for paid companionship. Partnering with a savvy ex call girl, he builds an upscale male escort service, only to find that jealous rivals and corrupt officials are even more dangerous than his clients.

Set in a near future America locked in culture wars, this political thriller follows activist Molly Turner as she helps transform a feminist defense group into a violent underground army. As bombings, vendettas, and Washington power plays collide, Molly must decide what price she is willing to pay for revenge.

When an East Side psychiatrist is bludgeoned to death in his townhouse office, Edward X. Delaney is called out of retirement to investigate. Interviewing six unstable patients and the doctor's elegant wife, he pieces together a tangle of therapy, obsession, and betrayal that culminates in another deadly secret.

Investment broker Harry Dancer discovers he is the target of two rival shadowy organizations that want to use him in their war for financial control. As a pair of beautiful operatives compete to seduce and manipulate him, Harry fights to stay alive and figure out who, if anyone, he can trust.

Studio executive Eli Hebron and ambitious actress Glad Divine fall into a complicated love affair just as someone begins sabotaging the finances of Eli's inherited film company. Their romance plays out against backroom Hollywood deals, jealous rivals, and a shadowy enemy bent on destroying Magna Pictures.

Numismatist Mary Lou Bateson lands a dream assignment cataloguing a millionaire's legendary coin collection, only to panic when its crown jewel vanishes in transit. To clear her name, she digs into the Havistock family's decadent private life, where theft, blackmail, and murder mingle behind society manners.

This volume introduces Wall Street investigator Timothy Cone in three linked cases. Following the trail of a dead colleague, he exposes a real estate empire built on murder, a fertility clinic with horrifying side projects, and an investment house that launders drug money through respectable fronts.

A collection of early hard boiled stories featuring insurance investigator Wolf Lannihan. Whether exposing a teenager who poisoned her father, a murderous art forger, or a seductive blackmailer, Wolf relies on grim persistence, fast fists, and a nose for scams that always seem to end in blood.

Timothy Cone returns in three more Wall Street investigations that mix finance with lethal risk. He tracks insider trading tied to a mobbed up garbage business, probes the limo assassination of a hated CEO, and unravels a suspicious boom in a Chinese food stock that leads straight to organized crime.

In Washington, a wild eyed faith healer known as Brother Kristos gains a following that reaches all the way to the troubled First Family. Former White House aide John Tollinger is tasked with exposing the charismatic preacher before his influence and a string of suspicious deaths spark a national crisis.

Hollywood superstar Marilyn Taylor donates her eggs to help an infertile friend, then has her own tubes tied, assuming her childbearing days are over. When a lab worker steals the frozen ova, the bizarre hostage turns into an international prize that draws in crooks, governments, a priest, and a determined New York cop.

By the book FBI agent Rita Sullivan goes undercover in Florida to nail charming con man David Rathbone, architect of elaborate Ponzi schemes. Living in his glittering world of polo matches and pleasure cruises, she has to fake desire, then sort out what part of her attraction is real.

Privileged investigator Archy McNally is hired to recover a set of rare stamps stolen from a Palm Beach grande dame. What begins as discreet snooping among the rich quickly spirals into blackmail, murder, and revelations uncomfortably close to home.

Claims adjuster Dora Conti is sent to evaluate a three million dollar policy after New York jeweler Lewis Starrett is stabbed on the street. Investigating his family uncovers drugs, adultery, and a controlling preacher, while Dora's own attraction to the cop on the case threatens her settled life.

A routine job retrieving a kidnapped, bad tempered Persian cat seems beneath Archy McNally's talents. When the cat's wealthy owner is found murdered, he uncovers a disturbing connection between pet theft and human greed in Palm Beach high society.

Two ambitious chemists create experimental hormones that can subtly shape desire and mood, testing them first on the people around them. As a neglected wife, her philandering husband, and assorted lovers fall under the drug's sway, jealousy and obsession twist scientific curiosity into something far more dangerous.

Archy is asked to investigate the past of a beautiful young woman engaged to a client's son. As bodies begin to fall around her and she turns her charms on Archy, he must stage an elaborate con to reveal a killer.

When a Palm Beach patriarch suspects his grasping relatives of quietly looting the family estate, he hires Archy McNally to identify the thief. After the old man is murdered, Archy must navigate a nest of seductive suspects and missing masterpieces.

Archy looks into an odd request from a funeral home funneling hundreds of Florida corpses to northern cities. The deeper he digs into the shipping records, the more he suspects a grisly profit scheme hiding behind polite mortuary doors.

A nervous owner of a Palm Beach bird shop hires Archy after someone mutilates a photograph and kills his prized parrot. When the man himself is stabbed in his sleep, Archy follows a trail of jealousy and old grievances through the exotic pet trade.

Archy is drawn into a family feud when a wealthy widow agrees to buy a supposedly priceless Fabergé egg. Her suspicious children fear a swindle, and as rival heirs flirt and scheme, Archy races to expose fraud before greed turns deadly.

Spanning two decades in South Florida, this family saga follows publishing tycoon Emmet Folsby, his ailing wife, and their fiercely competitive children. As affairs, betrayals, and sexual secrets pile up, a seemingly loyal friend quietly manipulates the clan toward a shocking reckoning.

A socialite calmly admits she shot her tennis pro husband in bed with another woman and hires Archy only to protect her glamorous daughter from scandal. Contradictory stories and a lurking blackmailer convince him the open and shut case hides something darker.

Archy is starstruck when an aging Hollywood legend arrives in Palm Beach with a rich new husband and a blackmailer on her trail. To protect a long buried scandalous film, he untangles old studio secrets and fresh motives for murder.

Romance novelist Sabrina Wright asks Archy to track down her husband and adopted daughter, both missing in Palm Beach. As three powerful men step forward claiming to be the girl's real father, family lies, paternity secrets, and murder collide.

Archy reluctantly agrees to recover a compromising diary for a nervous client who fears her former lover will publish it. After the handoff ends with Archy unconscious, the cash and diary missing, and a corpse in the motel room, he must clear his own name.

During a glamorous charity tennis event, a social climber drops dead on court and almost everyone in Palm Beach has a theory. Hired by three different clients with competing agendas, Archy sorts gossip from fact to pinpoint who turned sport into homicide.

In a sprawling hedge maze built as a tourist attraction, a man is stabbed to death in front of a crowd, yet no one sees the killer. Archy must work out how the murder was staged and who benefitted from the perfect illusion.