Timothy Hallinan Books in Order

This illustrated Christmas companion presents Dickens's story of Ebenezer Scrooge with photographs from the television adaptation starring George C. Scott. Recipes and material on traditional holiday celebrations extend the tale into its festive setting.

Hired to follow a record-company employee, Los Angeles private investigator Simeon Grist becomes personally invested when she is murdered. Discovering that his client was an impostor, he follows the case toward a wealthy religious organization.

Simeon Grist searches Los Angeles for a young Kansas runaway who hoped to become a star. With help from his teenage godchild, he uncovers a network exploiting children, involving a talent agency and a corrupt police officer.

After intervening when television star Toby Vane assaults a woman, Simeon Grist is hired to keep the actor out of trouble until a syndication deal closes. Another woman's murder raises questions about Vane's violent past.

When a disoriented millionaire becomes a victim of a killer burning homeless people, his daughter hires Simeon Grist to investigate. Cryptic messages and references to fire draw the detective toward a murderer with a personal connection.

The kidnapping of a friend's children draws Simeon Grist into Los Angeles's Chinatown, where the parents fear involving police. A body at the scene and threats from hired gunmen lead him toward a human-trafficking network.

Asked to speak with retired actor Max Grover, Simeon Grist is drawn into a murder inquiry when Grover is killed. A hostile police investigator complicates his pursuit of a methodical killer targeting gay men.

Settling into family life in Bangkok, travel writer Poke Rafferty takes in a troubled street child and accepts two investigative jobs. A missing uncle and a blackmailing thief draw him toward interconnected dangers threatening his loved ones.

Just as Poke Rafferty prepares to marry Rose, encounters with mysterious strangers disrupt their Bangkok life. A death and mounting threats pull him into a web of ex-spies, criminals, and corrupt police, endangering his family.

A poker game gives Poke Rafferty permission to write the biography of billionaire Pan, whose rise conceals an underworld past. In Bangkok, powerful opponents threaten Rafferty and his family to prevent his investigation from proceeding.

Burglar Junior Bender is blackmailed into finding whoever is sabotaging a crime boss's pornographic film. The proposed star is a vulnerable former child actress, leaving Junior torn between protecting her and satisfying a dangerous employer.

A man Rose believed dead returns to Bangkok, threatening her marriage to Poke Rafferty and their family. Confronting his predatory interest forces Rose to revisit her journey from rural childhood to life as a dancer.

Junior Bender is pressured to clear an aging music mogul accused of murdering a tabloid journalist. While the victim's widow complicates his investigation, Junior also searches for his landlady's missing daughter and navigates upheaval in his family.

Edited by Timothy Hallinan, this collection brings together twenty-one writers describing how they develop plots and turn ideas into fiction. Essays and examples offer differing approaches grounded in the contributors' experience of writing novels.

A stranger dies in Poke Rafferty's arms on a Bangkok sidewalk, leaving cryptic final words. Interrogation, a ransacked home, and surveillance turn Rafferty into a fugitive confronting dangers connected to the war on terror.

Crime boss Irwin Dressler orders Junior Bender to investigate the scandal that destroyed actress Dolores La Marr's career decades earlier. Junior's doubts about solving an old injustice give way to the discovery of still-dangerous vendettas.

When Miaow helps her boyfriend buy a stolen phone, photographs of two murdered police officers place Poke Rafferty's family in danger. Investigating the deaths exposes a conspiracy reaching high into Bangkok's law-enforcement hierarchy.

A stolen list reveals the intermediaries in a murder-for-hire chain, and its members begin dying. Junior Bender investigates after his mentor Herbie Mott is murdered, uncovering disturbing secrets behind the man who taught him burglary.

Stranger Arthur Varney uses Bangkok's Expat Bar regulars to get close to Poke Rafferty, demanding money and someone Poke refuses to surrender. As threats intensify, the aging expatriates discover they may still be able to help.

Days before Christmas, a Russian mobster forces Junior Bender to investigate shoplifting at his failing mall. When people begin dying, Junior realizes theft is only part of the danger and confronts painful memories of the holiday.

Stealing a rare stamp from a professional killer sends Junior Bender into an escalating chain of blackmail and forced burglaries. His next target is the fortified home of a ruthless Hollywood mogul known as King Maybe.

When his daughter's friend reports his father missing, Poke Rafferty discovers killers draining the man's accounts before disposing of their victims. With the money running out, Rafferty races through Bangkok to find him alive.

Private investigator Simeon Grist discovers he is a fictional character whose out-of-print books are being forgotten. When one of his remaining readers is murdered, he risks entering the real world to investigate and confront his creator.

Desperate for money, Junior Bender accepts an unusually lucrative commission to steal a doll from a dead recluse's house. Rival pursuers and a friend's murder turn the burglary into a search for his mysterious employer.

The arrival of a baby unsettles Poke Rafferty's Bangkok household as his adopted daughter questions her place in the family. Searching for a missing expatriate brings another upheaval when someone from his past unexpectedly returns.

Mobster Irwin Dressler hires Junior Bender to uncover theft hidden within a nostalgia rock tour. Near-fatal accidents, feuding musicians, and his teenage daughter's interest in crime complicate a weekend investigation among aging performers and dangerous associates.