Linda Barnes Books in Order

Actor and former investigator Michael Spraggue joins a Boston theater’s production of Dracula, where unsettling pranks turn dangerous. Asked to investigate backstage disturbances, he confronts competing ambitions and threats that could make the play’s bloodshed real.

Michael Spraggue’s film work is interrupted when trouble strikes the Napa Valley winery he owns with Kate Holloway. A missing winemaker and a corpse leave Kate under suspicion, forcing Michael to investigate before the harvest.

Senator Brian Donagher’s reelection campaign and Boston Marathon plans attract death threats. When an old friend serving as his bodyguard asks for help, Michael Spraggue investigates a political assignment that soon erupts into gunfire.

Michael Spraggue travels to New Orleans after his aunt’s longtime cook, Dora Levoyer, becomes a murder suspect. Her former husband’s stabbing pulls Michael into a world of concealed identities, local intrigue, and dangerous family history.

Former Boston police officer Carlotta Carlyle takes a missing-person case from an elderly woman seeking her brother, an Irish cabdriver. An attack on her client complicates the search, drawing Carlotta toward organized crime and federal investigators.

Carlotta Carlyle investigates two disappearances: a schoolgirl has vanished, and a crucial witness could clear a police lieutenant accused of brutality. Searching Boston’s Combat Zone, she follows the distinctive tattoo that may identify the missing witness.

A woman’s request for identification papers draws Carlotta Carlyle into a disturbing murder investigation. As the woman disappears and Carlotta’s young friend Paolina keeps secrets, the detective confronts the dangers facing undocumented immigrants in Boston.

A chance reunion with blues singer Dee Willis brings Carlotta Carlyle a job locating a former bassist who claims Dee stole his songs. Murder and blackmail complicate a case entangled with Carlotta’s own musical past.

Anonymous photographs of a little girl intrigue Carlotta Carlyle until the child’s grieving mother hires her. Investigating a seven-year-old’s death from leukemia, Carlotta questions a respected hospital while trouble involving her young friend Paolina adds pressure.

Robberies against Boston cabdrivers threaten the company where Carlotta Carlyle works part-time. Hired to investigate, she acquires a computer and considers upgrading her weapon, then faces escalating violence that strikes people close to her.

New manuscript pages suggest that literary prodigy Thea Janis, presumed murdered twenty-four years earlier, might still be alive. Carlotta Carlyle investigates their origin as blackmail threatens Thea’s influential family during a fiercely contested political campaign.

Carlotta Carlyle helps an elderly recluse secure her apartment, only to find the woman murdered soon afterward. Questions about inheritance, property development, and a past robbery turn the favor into an investigation that attracts an arsonist.

Carlotta Carlyle goes undercover to investigate possible fraud involving Boston’s enormous construction project, the Big Dig. Working inside a contractor’s operation, she discovers that pursuing corruption can expose her to threats far beyond ordinary financial wrongdoing.

A Harvard professor hires Carlotta Carlyle to stop blackmail over his affair with a student who has died. Recovering the compromising letters proves only the beginning as further violence draws her toward university secrets and fraud.

When her young friend Paolina disappears, Carlotta Carlyle follows her trail from Boston to Colombia. Paolina’s search for the father she believes is a powerful druglord leads both of them into a dangerous criminal world.

Troubled by her lover’s disappearance, Carlotta Carlyle accepts a bride-to-be’s request to investigate suspected infidelity. When the client dies and her identity proves false, Carlotta becomes a murder suspect and must untangle a deeply personal deception.

Moonlighting as a Boston cabdriver, private investigator Carlotta Carlyle is robbed at gunpoint while waiting for a fare. With little help forthcoming from the police, she pursues the thief herself and investigates the peculiar crime.

A blues singer offers Carlotta Carlyle a treasured guitar once owned by Reverend Gary Davis in exchange for help. The private investigator must locate and stop a stalker whose unwanted attention has become increasingly threatening.

Carlotta Carlyle expects a pleasant afternoon watching baseball at Fenway Park. An encounter with a petty thief from her police days instead sends the Boston private investigator into a chase that interrupts the game with dangerous complications.

After her interviewing partner dies, shy ghostwriter Em Moore tries to finish their biography of a reclusive film director. Staying near his Cape Cod home, she confronts family secrets as police question the accident that killed Teddy.

Three short mysteries follow Boston private investigator Carlotta Carlyle through an unusual cab robbery, a blues singer’s stalker problem, and trouble at Fenway Park. The collection includes Lucky Penny, Miss Gibson, and Stealing First.