Les Roberts Books In Order

Pepper Pike

P.I. Milan Jacovich is a private investigator with a master’s degree, an ex wife, a penchant for Kolbasa sandwiches, and a habit for finding trouble. What begins as a simple bodyguard job turns into the mysterious disappearance of advertising hotshot, Richard Amber. Now Jacovich is following a trail that leads from posh private gun clubs to sleek corporate offices, political scandal and into the heart of the Midwest Mob. And then along comes Mary, Amber’s former mistress, who touches chords in Milan Jacovich he had thought were forever silenced. As he is drawn deeper and deeper into this case, he uncovers a brutal torture killing, and discovers that someone wants him off the case and murder seems to be the easiest way.

Full Cleveland

2 in the Milan Jacovich mystery series…
Polyester leisure suit, white patent leather shoes, matching white belt that 1970s fashion statement was once unkindly dubbed the Full Cleveland. And no one wears it with more flair and panache than Buddy Bustamente. Buddy he was medium sized if you happened to be talking about Cape buffaloes is the hulking flunky assigned by mob kingpin Victor Gaimari to shadow Cleveland private eye Milan Jacovich it’s pronounced MY lan YOCK ovich. Milan has been hired to find the perpetrator of a low level scam who is selling local businessmen ads in a magazine that doesn t exist. But the modest amount of money involved hardly seems worth the string of bodies he soon turns up. And why does it interest a mobster like Victor and his sugar addict bird dog, Buddy?Milan starts liking Buddy in spite of himself. But he s not easily fooled; Buddy is a recent ex con, and Milan knows that behind the childlike fa ade and dubious fashion, he is potentially lethal.

Deep Shaker

A possible drug running operation in a staid, old fashioned, middle class Cleveland neighborhood soon has Milan Jacovich racing against time to save an old friend and the city itself. K. PW.

The Cleveland Connection

4 in the Milan Jacovich mystery series…
Private investigator Milan Jacovich it’s pronounced MY lan YOCK ovich is Slovenian American, but he’s familiar with the varied ethnic groups that make up the city of Cleveland. An elderly Serbian man has gone missing, and when his granddaughter suspects foul play, Milan agrees to take up the search. In the meantime, Milan’s good friend, Plain Dealer reporter Ed Stahl, has written a column critical of the gangster element on Cleveland’s Murray Hill, and is now being threatened and harassed, which brings Milan into direct conflict with a millionaire garbage hauler and an out of town muscle punk named Nello Trinetti. The Serbs and the Slovenians traditionally don’t get along too well, but Milan makes inroads into Cleveland’s Serbian community after a shocking murder, eventually coming face to face with its unofficial mayor, Lazo Samarzic, an angry and militant man who runs a produce stand in the historic old West Side Market. Hatreds that have simmered for fifty years eventually explode as Milan Jacovich takes on one of his most challenging cases.

The Lake Effect

Paying back a favor to the mob, private eye Milan Jacovich reluctantly accepts a job guarding a mayoral candidate, and when he learns of some unethical practices behind the campaign, he becomes a killer’s target.

The Duke Of Cleveland

When a young, rather feckless heiress hires Milan Jacovich to find her middle aged lover not because she wants him back but because he owes her $18,000 he’s thrust among artists and would be artists who frequent the Coventry section of Cleveland Heights. The man Milan is searching for is a potter, and when Milan talks to those who know him, it becomes very clear that his young girlfriend is not alone in caring whether she ever sees him again. Milan also learns that the guy is a con man, a dreamer of big dreams and a maker of deals, and one who has surprising contacts among collectors one of them being Milan’s nemesis, the suave Victor Gaimari. Gaimari is one of the new breed of mobsters who has put aside Borsalino hats and shiny silk suits for a college education and a million dollar vocabulary. With such a mixed crew of players, danger isn’t far behind, and Milan discovers ominous use can be made of a potter’s kiln besides firing clay pots…
AUTHORBIO: LES ROBERTS is also the author of the Saxon private eye series. The Duke Of Cleveland is his twelfth novel since winning the first St. Martin’s First Private Eye novel contest with An Infinite Number of Monkeys in 1986. The affection between Roberts and the Ohio city is mutual: a few years ago he abandoned Los Angeles and now makes his home in Cleveland Heights.

Collision Bend

Shock waves ride through the city of Cleveland when up and coming local television reporter Virginia Carville is found strangled to death in her home. Even more surprising is when Mary Soderberg, the station’s top sales executive, implores P.I. Milan Jacovich a former boyfriend whom Mary dumped for her current love, Steve Cirini to clear Cirini as the chief murder suspect. Swallowing his pride, Jacovich goes behind the scenes to uncover all the scandal and intrigue of big city television and the dark secrets of an ambitious newscaster. Yet he’s no closer to solving the murder until he comes across an unmarked computer disk with a curious code, and a lucky guess sends him in the right direction. But as Jacovich comes nearer to the truth, he comes closer to making the evening news as a murder victim…

The Cleveland Local

A vacation to die forWhen hot shot Cleveland real estate attorney Joel Kerner Jr. is killed on a Caribbean holiday, only his angry sister Patrice thinks it’s more than a botched robbery. The island police have nothing and the Cleveland cops don’t have the jurisdiction to track it down. So when burly P.I. Milan Jacovich is hired to swim through the mire, he’s on his own. Distracted by family feuds and nasty business dealings, Milan discovers that Kerner’s father is a very famous and very rich union attorney who has made some powerful and angry enemies in Cleveland. Milan, a tough ex football player, is not easy to push around, but when he’s stabbed, beaten, and almost burned to death, no one is safe from his suspicions until insider news of the an investment gone wrong sends him knocking on the right door. Unfortunately, there’s a catch, and Milan is dangerously close to getting tangled in a barbed wire net.

A Shoot in Cleveland

The death of a ladykiller…
Who killed the superstar? P.I. Milan Jacovich, still grieving from the death of his oldest friend, is obligated to find out. After all, he’d been hired to ‘babysit’ twenty something Hollywood hunk Darren Anderson while his film was shooting in Cleveland to keep the kid out of trouble and act as his bodyguard. But when Milan, fed up with his uncontrollable charge, walked out in disgust, the brat packer managed to get himself shot to death. Following the trail of a studly superstar isn’t easy. Everyone wants a piece of him, hot or cold. As Milan unearths the nasty facts of Darren’s life and death, it’s clear he’ll have to rekindle an old acquaintance with Cleveland’s suave Mafia mogul to get to the bottom line of this production. He’s already stepped on a lot of toes. And the burly P.I. is right in the line of fire…

The Best-Kept Secret

Since winning the St. Martin’s Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best First Novel Contest, Les Roberts’ books have grown with astonishing popularity. In his eleventh mystery, Roberts once again displays his deft hand at creating an engaging plot set in a Cleveland alive with everything from its ethnic neighborhoods and its flavorful food to a believable cast of characters. When Jason Crowell, a freshman at nearby Sherman College is accused of the rape of a fellow coed, Milan is called upon to investigate. A group calling themselves the ‘Women Warriors’ has posted signs all over campus unjustly accusing Jason of the crime. However, Milan finds right off that several things are very wrong with the case. First, no one seems to know who these women are or who the victim is. Second, he learns that Jason prefers men to women, and has always exemplified only the best behavior and a quiet, easy demeanor. The vindictive sexual harassment counselor wants to press charges, and the dean of the school wants to suspend Jason. It is up to Milan and his infallible sixth sense to prove Jason’s innocence before the student’s whole life is destroyed. But when the one woman who knows the truth is murdered, the Slovenian shamus must really put his sleuthing skills to the ultimate test before an innocent young man is unceremoniously crucified.

The Indian Sign

FOR MILAN JACOVICH, P.I., CORPORATE SPYING IS ROUTINE. BUT A CHILD IN JEOPARDY MEANS A HUNT TO THE FINISH. A security leak at a toy company and a kidnapped Native American child from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula lead Milan Jacovich into different worlds. The first case opens up a corporate sewer that forces the seasoned P.I. to test his ethics as never before. But the second he takes without pay. The case of the infant stolen from the poverty stricken Odawa tribe family tears at his Slovenian heart. And he can’t shake the memory of the ancient Odawa man sitting on a bench opposite his window, coated with a ghostly snowfall from early morning through the night…
When the man is found murdered and floating in the Cuyahoga River, Jacovich goes into gear. Fighting the brutal, bitter February winds, he uncovers a corporate swindle laced with pure revenge and a deepening ring of evil that needs the best he’s got to find a missing baby. But the only thing he hasn’t got is time. AUTHORBIO: LES ROBERTS, a native Chicagoan, lives in his adopted hometown of Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He moved there from Hollywood, where, among other things, he was the producer of The Hollywood Squares. Past president of the Private Eye Writers of America, Roberts won the initial St. Martin’s Press/PWA Best First Private Eye Novel Contest in 1986.

The Dutch

Milan Jacovich, Cleveland’s most popular private investigator, specializes in industrial security, but when another type of case comes up that is too good to resist he will agree to work on it. That is exactly what happens when Professor Carnine walks into his office in this 12th addition to the series. Milan recognizes Dr. Carnine’s name, but can’t remember from where until Dr. Carnine explains. His daughter’s body was found under a local bridge. The police agreed that 30 year old Ellen Carnine committed suicide, or in street parlance ‘did The Dutch.’ However, Dr. Carnine cannot accept that answer and wants Milan to find out what could have driven his daughter, somewhat of a recluse, to take her own life? He is filled with guilt that maybe there was something about his daughter he should have known, that maybe there was a way he could have helped her. Reluctantly, Milan agrees to take the case knowing that the outcome will not be happy for anyone. Milan finds that Ellen spent most of her time on the computer either working or on the Internet and that she was appreciated by her bosses, a pair of young Cleveland entrepreneurs who made movies. But interviews with her few friends lead him to see her as an independent person who got satisfaction from her work and had accepted the fact that she was seriously overweight and physically unattractive. Digging further, Milan comes upon upsetting small clues that shout ‘murder’ to him, and suspicions about what her employers were actually up to grow. His investigation begins to take a different, and eventually dangerous, direction until he uncovers the horrific truth behind Ellen’s death.

The Irish Sports Pages

13 in the Milan Jacovich mystery series…
‘ A roller coaster ride of a mystery…
Roberts speeds the reader through an investigation offering plenty of delicious twists and turns without ever compromising credibility.’ Publishers Weekly’Typically entertaining: plotting, characterization, and setting dovetail into an excellent reading experience for mystery fans. Jacovich is tough and intelligent and possesses enough self awareness to make him very good company indeed. Heartily recommended.’ BooklistA slick con man, posing as a recent immigrant from County Mayo all alone in America, is preying on the clannish loyalties of the Irish community in Cleveland for gifts, money, and other less tangible treats. When Common Pleas Judge Maureen Hartigan realizes she’s been bamboozled, she and her daughter, Cathleen, hire private eye Milan Jacovich it’s pronounced MY lan YOCK ovitch to chase down the swindler. But the con man turns up dead in a ska*nky motel room, and Milan finds himself tangled in the world of the local Irish godfather, Con McCardle, who is connected with the IRA. Milan also finds himself once again face to face with Cathleen Hartigan, an old flame that never quite kindled. Their own feelings clash with the more urgent need to solve a murder. Milan learns a lot about Irish customs and cultures including ‘The Irish Sports Pages.’

King of the Holly Hop

14 in the Milan Jacovich mystery series…

Going to your high school reunion is never fun. But this time, it’s murder.
When Cleveland private eye Milan Jacovich reluctantly attends the fortieth reunion of his St. Clair High School graduating class, he gets a rude surprise: one of his classmates is found shot dead and another quickly becomes the main suspect.
The suspect, successful playwright Tommy Wiggins, draws Milan into the case and puts him in a very awkward position. Investigating his former schoolmates is an uncomfortable task for Milan, as he soon discovers the dark secrets of people he only thought he knew.
The deceased Dr. Phil Kohn, it turns out, was a cad who managed to make more than a few enemies during his abbreviated life. But did a forty year old grudge really lead to his death? Or was it something more recent a jealous spouse, a shady business partner?
Milan’s hunt for the real killer leads him through the oddly intertwined worlds of Cleveland’s medical community, organized crime, polite suburban society, and hard core drug dealers.
It’s a tough investigation in which Milan could lose many friends and, if he’s not careful, his life.
In the fourteenth book of his Milan Jacovich series, Les Roberts once again delivers a dose of real Cleveland characters and settings that bring the city to life on the page.

The Scent of Spiced Orange and Other Stories

This work constitutes Les Roberts’ first collection of crime stories.

We’ll Always Have Cleveland

When novelist and television producer Les Roberts arrived in Cleveland from Los Angeles for a short term consulting job in 1986, he wasn’t entirely prepared. It was January, and he’d brought no overcoat, no boots. That chilly Northeast Ohio surprise wasn’t all he was unprepared for. He never dreamed that, just months later, he’d find himself so completely won over by the place that he’d give up the glitz of Hollywood and put down roots in this rustbelt city. It took only a few weeks in Cleveland to convince Roberts that the city was a ripe setting for his next private eye novel. Then, a chance meeting on an airplane led him to the inspiration for his new character: Milan Jacovich pronounced My lan Yock o vitch, a tough Slovenian American sleuth with a master’s degree and a taste for klobasa sandwiches and cold Stroh’s beer. The combination proved very successful. Thirteen Milan Jacovich novels resulted, and with each book Roberts drew more heavily on real Cleveland places and people for the authentic local flavor of his stories. From the upscale Heights to the industrial Flats, from shiny new Jacobs Field to the aging ethnic neighborhoods, Roberts and Jacovich covered the town. They saw where the deals were made Johnny’s Bar, Little Italy, the good times were had The Velvet Tango Room, Vuk’s Tavern, and the bodies were found all over the place!. In this memoir, Roberts tells how he discovered the heart and soul of a city while fictionalizing it for a series of novels. He writes about his favorite locations and his favorite people and at least one person who was not happy to find himself in a novel. It will appeal to fans of the series, fans of the city, and aspiring novelists who want to learn how one writer took a city and made it his own through fiction.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 1

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 2

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 3

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 4

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories 5

More than 200,000 words of great crime and suspense fictionEach year, Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, editors of The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories, have reached farther past the boundaries of the United States to find the very best suspense from the world over. In this third volume of their series they have included stories from Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom as well as, of course, a number of fine stories from the U.S.A. Among these tales are winners of the Edgar Award, the Silver Dagger Award of the British Crime Writers, and other major awards in the field. In addition, here are reports on the field of mystery and crime writing from correspondents in the U.S. Jon L. Breen, England Maxim Jakubowski, Canada Edo Van Belkom, Australia David Honeybone, and Germany Thomas Woertche. Altogether, with nearly 250,000 words of the best short suspense published in 2001, this bounteous volume is, as the Wall Street Journal said of the previous year s compilation, the best value for money of any such anthology. The A to Z of the authors should excite the interest of any mystery reader:Robert Barnard Lawrence Block Jon L. Breen Wolfgang Burger Lillian Stewart Carl Margaret Coel Max Allan Collins Bill Crider Jeffery Deaver Brendan DuBois Susanna Gregory Joseph Hansen Carolyn G. Hart Lauren Henderson Edward D. Hoch Clark Howard Tatjana Kruse Paul Lascaux Dick Lochte Peter Lovesey Mary Jane Maffini Ed McBain Val McDermid Marcia Muller Joyce Carol Oates Anne Perry Nancy Pickard Bill Pronzini Ruth Rendell S. J. Rozan Billie Rubin Kristine Kathryn Rusch Stephan Rykena David B. Silva Nancy Springer Jac. Toes John Vermeulen Donald E. Westlake Carolyn Wheat.

Murder on Route 66

Today’s best mystery writers take to the road with a brand new collection of stories featuring the great American highway, Route 66. Take a ride on the wild side with: David August Eleanor Taylor Bland Barbara D’Amato Michael Allen Dymmoch Earlene Fowler Carolyn Hart J.A. Jance Charles Knief John Lutz Doris R. Meredith Gary Phillips Les Roberts Lillian M. Roberts Judith Van Gieson Carolyn Wheat All new stories by Earlene Fowler, Carolyn Hart, J.A. Jance, John Lutz and others

The Shamus Game

From the Private Eye Writers of America comes this collection of all new stories by an all star lineup of Shamus Award winners and their literary PIs. Includes stories by: Jeremiah Healy Loren D. Estleman Max Allan Collins Jerry Kennealy John Lutz Parnell Hall Edward D. Hoch Gary Phillips Rick Riordan Les Roberts Christine Matthews S. J. Rozan Terence Faherty Bill Pronzoni