Les Roberts Books in Order

In the first Saxon mystery, an actor who also works as a private eye starts asking questions after the suspicious death of a Hollywood acquaintance. Roberts mixes show-business wit with classic detective tension from the start.

When an acquaintance dies in an explosion, actor and private eye Saxon refuses to let the matter drop. His search runs from television boardrooms to seedy Los Angeles bars, where ambition and danger keep colliding.

Milan gets a late-night call from a powerful ad executive asking for bodyguard help, but when he arrives the man is gone. The search for the missing client becomes his first trip through Cleveland's rich enclaves, mean streets, and mob shadows.

Another Hollywood job pulls Saxon into a case built on bait, manipulation, and people chasing what they should know better than to trust. What starts simply does not stay simple for long.

Milan is hired to find the swindler behind a low-rent ad scam, but the small money does not match the rising body count. Mob interest in the scheme means he is in deeper trouble than he expected.

Saxon takes on another Los Angeles case where slick promises, bad motives, and hard truth do not line up neatly. Roberts uses the con game atmosphere to build a smart, fast-moving mystery with a classic private eye feel.

A worried father asks Milan to find out whether his son is dealing drugs, and loyalty makes it hard to refuse. The search leads into Cleveland's drug trade, brushes up against the mob, and ends in brutal murder.

The death of a boyhood friend sends actor and private eye Saxon back to his hometown of Chicago. What begins as a personal trip becomes a search for the truth behind a death that may not have been accidental.

An elderly Serbian immigrant disappears, and Milan agrees to look for him despite long-standing ethnic tensions in the community. Threats against a reporter and old hatreds push the case toward violence.

Because he owes a favor to mobster Victor Gaimari, Milan ends up watching over a suburban mayoral election. Before long he realizes the race is tied to bigger stakes than city hall politics, and the weather is not the only thing turning ugly.

When a washed-up comic's mail-order bride empties his house and disappears, Saxon agrees to track her down. The search pulls him and his adopted son Marvel into a scam that is nastier, and more dangerous, than it first looks.

A wealthy young heiress hires Milan to find an artist boyfriend who vanished with her money. What looks like a small embarrassment soon opens into the rougher side of the art world, where truth and beauty do not travel together.

A television anchor is murdered, and Milan is asked to help clear the executive who was secretly involved with her. The case takes him inside a Cleveland TV station full of ambition, scandal, and dangerous lies.

A young Cleveland lawyer is murdered on a Caribbean island, and his sister hires Milan to learn what the local police cannot. The trail runs from a beachside killing back to Cleveland, where the victim left plenty of loose ends behind.

Milan is hired to babysit a spoiled Hollywood star during a film shoot in Cleveland. He quits in disgust, only to be dragged back in when the actor is murdered and the production turns into a magnet for trouble.

A freshman is publicly accused of date rape by an anonymous campus group, and his former principal asks Milan to find out what really happened. The investigation turns ugly fast and ends in murder.

Milan is rattled when an elderly Native American man spends hours watching his apartment, then turns up murdered the next day. A second case involving a toy company accountant and a local mobster soon collides with the first.

This standalone thriller shows Roberts in a leaner, faster mode, building tension through confusion, pressure, and shifting loyalties. The story moves quickly and keeps its focus on danger closing in from several directions at once.

When a young executive's body is found below the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge, the police call it suicide. Her father is not convinced, and Milan's search through friends, lovers, and online secrets uncovers a much darker crime.

A wealthy judge hires Milan after an Irish con man plays on her community ties and disappears. Then the swindler turns up dead, and Milan has to untangle local loyalties, old flames, and an Irish godfather with IRA connections.

Roberts's first crime-story collection gathers ten shorter pieces that move between suspense, humor, and sharper emotional turns. It is a good way to see how his voice works when he has less space and wastes none of it.

Part memoir and part love letter, this book tells how Les Roberts came to Cleveland and turned the city into the heart of his fiction. It is full of local places, local characters, and the writing life behind Milan Jacovich.

Milan reluctantly goes to his fortieth high school reunion and winds up with a murder on his hands. Investigating old classmates means digging into buried grudges, fresh lies, and more than one life that did not turn out as advertised.

On Christmas Eve, out-of-work Ed Podolak comes to Cleveland nearly broke and desperate to provide for his family. One bad decision, stealing from a street-corner Santa's kettle, sets off a holiday story about guilt, grace, and second chances.

A routine missing-person case turns nasty when Milan finds a stash of voyeuristic videos and a possible link to organized crime. It is also the book that brings Kevin O'Bannion into Milan's world, for better and worse.

In 1985, Vietnam veteran Dominick Candiotti returns to Youngstown after his priest brother's apparent suicide. His search for the truth leads into a city soaked with mob influence, grief, and a fierce desire for revenge.

A flashy Cleveland councilman says someone is trying to kill him and hires Milan to find out who. What looks like a grubby political job soon turns into a deeper investigation into bribes, sex, and city hall corruption.

The sudden death of a wealthy client sends Milan and K.O. behind the scenes at a harness racing track. Rivalries, money, and possible mob ties make the suspect list long, and the danger grows with every lap.

Dominick Candiotti is a professional assassin who decides he wants out of the shadowy agency that employs him. His boss answers by sending killers after him, turning Dominick's escape into a hard, fast chase across several cities.

When Tobe Blaine is sent to investigate a pair of murders in rural Ashtabula County, Milan tags along and quickly finds a town that does not welcome outsiders. Local prejudice, buried secrets, and a nearby prison make the case far uglier than it first appears.

Milan and K.O. are hired to help with security at a big motivational speakers convention in downtown Cleveland. When the event's biggest star is found murdered, Milan has to sort through egos, grudges, and one very public mess.

Former Irish mob hitman Brock Sheehan has settled into a quiet life until his nephew becomes a murder suspect after a clash with a disgraced basketball star tied to dogfighting. Helping family pulls Brock back into violence, old feelings, and Cleveland trouble.

Jericho Paich is arrested by a Cleveland cop and forced to work as an unpaid confidential informant in drug cases. With nowhere else to turn, he asks ex-Marine Laird Janiver for help, and the two step into a dangerous web of drugs, memory, and old wounds.

After seven years in prison for the involuntary manslaughter of his wife, novelist Russell Reinhart returns to Chicago with money, freedom, and nobody to trust. Then a missing former lover draws him into a new investigation with a billionaire and his muscle standing in the way.

Sierra Bravo is the new police chief in an upscale California beach town where a disturbing incident involving an eleven-year-old girl opens into a larger investigation. The case forces her to confront powerful people and parts of her own past.