Books like Kickback by Garry Disher

When the first snow falls in Oslo, a missing‑mothers investigation leads Inspector Harry Hole into a deadly serial‑killer game that threatens to unhinge him.

A suspenseful thriller by Lois Duncan that blends witchcraft and hard‑boiled detective stakes against the backdrop of California and New Mexico. As secrets unravel, the tension mounts in a chilling landscape of coastal glamour and desert mystery.

James Sallis’s hard‑boiled crime thriller Drive follows a relentless driver‑turned‑private‑investigator in the underbelly of Los Angeles and Phoenix, where auto stunts and danger collide.

A quiet Cornish island luxury retreat is rocked by a series of murders, compelling Detective Commander Adam Dalgliesh to navigate a tangled web of secrets, personal doubts, and a team in turmoil.

TRAVIS MCGEE #1

Ex-cop Dennis Milne faces his past in Manila, hunting a new target while a determined detective hunts him for the death of her lover. High‑stakes chases and double‑edged motives collide in this gritty thriller.

When a Swedish literary critic is found tortured to death in a closet at Newark International Airport, the police realize that the murderer made off with the victim's ticket and boarded a flight to Stockholm. With no clear motive in sight, Detectives Paul Hjelm and Kerstin Holm of Intercrime's A-Unit learn that the method of torture used was not only a highly specialized means of extracting information secretly developed during the Vietnam War-- allowing the victim to whisper, but not to scream-- but also that it was the modus operandi of an allegedly deceased homicidal maniac known only as the Kentucky Killer.

Travis McGee: The Turquoise Lament

Travis McGee #13

Kate Brannigan, a spirited Manchester private investigator, tackles the strange disappearance of conservatories while navigating crooked land deals, mortgage scams, and murder plots.

Shyster real estate developers in Florida

Travis McGee #21

Travis McGee #18

A purple place for dying is a private investigation novel by John D. MacDonald featuring Travis McGee.

Travis McGee, Florida’s renowned private investigator, tracks a murder victim’s trail to Mexico, confronting dangerous drug smugglers while racing another killer who will stop at nothing to silence him.

"Michel Hartog, a sometime architect, is a powerful businessman and famous philanthropist whose immense fortune has just grown that much greater following the death of his brother in an accident. Peter is his orphaned nephew--a spoiled brat. Julie is in an insane asylum. Thompson is a hired gunman with an ulcerated gut. Michel, known for his kindly interest in the disadvantaged, hires Julie to look after Peter. And he hires Thompson to kill them. Julie and Peter escape. Thompson, gut groaning, pursues. Hunter and hunted make their way across France to the remote mountain estate to which Michel has retreated. Bullets fly. Bodies accumulate. The craziness is just getting started. Like Jean-Patrick Manchette's celebrated Fatale, The Mad and the Bad is a clear-eyed, cold-blooded, pitch-perfect work of creative destruction"--

Travis McGee #12