Jonathan Valin: 11 books

Stoner is a private eye in the classic tradition: a loner with a history of failed relationships with women and all-too-successful relationships with bottles of scotch. He's unable to look away from the world's corruption-and unable to avoid trying to do something about it. His latest hopeless...

Sheltered but precocious Robbie Segal has run away from home, a small brick house on an unexceptional street. Her desperate mother has asked Harry Stoner to find her. What begins as an ordinary missing-persons case, a case that should be settled without any violence at all, suddenly changes in an...

Cincinnati Cougars' Billy Parks was All-Pro ... and missing. Harry Stoner's job was to find him and get him into shape for the season. But Billy's photo told Stoner he didn't like the man ... or the shape he was in. The eye revealed a killer mentality-a player who crushed, mangled, and sacked with...

She was perfect. She smelled of toothpaste, talc, and something sweeter than lilacs. And in that crazy season of autumn, when Cincinnati was ablaze in the blood-red color of fall, Kate Davis made Harry Stoner feel old, and a little in love too. But for Harry Stoner those were only two more reasons...

The professor was an eccentric old bird, and his daughter was a delicate flower. So how could Harry Stoner suspect the snake pit of hatred and greed he was walking into that winter day when he agreed to find a missing document for Professor Daryl Lovingwell? Following Sarah Lovingwell to a...

Detective Harry Stoner has seen better days. It's the middle of January and business is slower than a crawl. Curled up in his office with a paperback mystery, a little classical music on the radio, and a bottle of Scotch, Harry's ready to cut his losses and hibernate until spring. The only problem...

Detective Harry Stoner has seen too much of the seamy side of life not to notice the tarnish on Los Angeles' glitter or the gritty reality behind the never-never land of television's biggest daytime soaps. A detergent manufacturer, already begrimed by scandal and rumor, doesn't want his image further...

To PI Harry Stoner, Ira Lessing had everything to live for: money, a beautiful wife, good friends, and a reputation that would do credit to a saint. But Lessing disappeared one hot July night, and Stoner knew in his gut that the man was dead. Years on the street had taught Stoner that no man is what...

A phone ringing after midnight means trouble, especially in private eye Harry Stoner's business. This time the 1:30 call is trouble, all right. A motel clerk wants somebody to pick up the loser registered as Harry Stoner who just tried to kill himself. When the real Stoner gets to the Encantada Motel,...

Clients never tell the whole story. Harry Stoner had taken a snowy drive to Cincinnati psychiatrist Phil Pearson's mansion to hear the tale of daughter Kirsten-emotionally disturbed and missing. But the doctor left out the parts about his first wife's suicide and his second wife's bedroom eyes that...

Mason Greenleaf-good teacher, good friend, fond lover-vanishes from his Mount Adams home one hot summer afternoon, leaving a haunting mystery behind him. For his fellow teachers, former students, and friends, his disappearance is inexplicable and tragic. For his lover, Cindy Dorn, it is a cruel blow...