Carlotta Carlyle
1 primary work • 3 total works
Book 9
Carlotta Carlyle, the six-foot-tall redhead private investigator, thought that working undercover searching out fraud on Boston's Big Dig would be a challenging assignment. After all, the Big Dig, the creation of a central artery highway through downtown Boston, is a USD 14 billion project, the largest urban construction undertaking in modern history. But playing a mild-mannered secretary working out of a construction trailer is not quite the thrill ride she had in mind, so Carlotta starts moonlighting, taking on a missing person case. The mysterious death of a construction worker stirs up a storm of events and soon enough Carlotta is in over her head, grasping at the edges of a vast conspiracy that threatens to make this investigation her last.
When six-foot redhead ex-cop and Boston-based private investigator Carlotta Carlyle agrees to help an elderly recluse burglar-proof her apartment, the last thing she expected was that the woman would turn up dead. Now Carlotta must find out why the eccentric yet seemingly harmless Valentine Phipps isolated herself - and needed protection.Who would want to hurt Valentine? What was she hiding behind closed doors? Is there a connection between her murder and an age-old mystery that the city's top brass - and its real-estate moguls - want to keep buried? But the most troubling question of all involves the victim's home health aide, Gwen: Why did she introduce Valentine to Carlotta in the first place? The race to catch one of Boston's most ruthless and ambiguous criminals has just begun.
Harvard professor Wilson Chaney's position in life is hanging by a thread; his marriage, his reputation, not to mention his tenure at Harvard are in the hands of a blackmaller, someone willing to sell his secrets at very high prices. His enviable life could disappear into thin air should his indiscretions with a young, white student become public knowledge. So he hires Carlotta Carlyle to track down the blackmailer and put a stop to the scheme. Can she do it? Of course, but should she? The professor, while not a criminal, doesn't inspire much loyalty, and when a suspicious death becomes part of the backstory her sixth sense warns her the case might be dangerous.