Private detective Cape Weathers dislikes politicians, policemen, and people telling him what to do. That's why he's not on the force. He loves to solve crimes, though, and in a city like San Francisco, they're not hard to come by.
With the help of his friend Sally Mei, an assassin trained by the Chinese Triads, Cape weathers a storm of petty thieves, mobsters, drug cartels, and law enforcement officers that dead his name just as much as the criminals do.
But hey, Cape didn't go into this line of work to make friends.
In 2007, Tim Maleeny captured readers' attention and kept them on the edge of their seats with his Cape Weathers series, equal parts campy action movie and enthralling mystery.
The first installment, Stealing the Dragon, was published to wide acclaim, winning the praise of genre titans like New York Times best-selling author Lee Child, who called it “tough, original, compelling.”
Maleeny has since published four more installments in the series, with the latest released by Poisoned Pen Press in November 2023.
Here is every book in Tim Maleeny's Cape Weathers Mystery series.
Stealing the Dragon
In the first installment of the series, we are introduced to detective Cape Weathers, a San Francisco detective whose week just got a lot more interesting.
When a container ship filled with Chinese refugees runs aground on Alcatraz, the whole crew murdered, Cape knows there’s only one person who could have done it: assassin and defected Chinese Triad Sally Mei.
Unfortunately, Sally is nowhere to be found, and Cape gets roped into the fiasco instead, with both the Triads and the FBI on his tail. At the center of it all is an ancient talisman that disappeared from Hong Kong and is rumored to have landed in San Francisco.
Enlisting the help of an eccentric and dysfunctional cast of characters, Cape must put the messy pieces of the puzzle together if he wants to avoid jail—or worse, depending on who gets to him first.
Beating the Babushka
After a movie producer flings himself from the Golden Gate Bridge in an apparent suicide, his disbelieving colleague, Grace, hires private detective Cape Weathers to investigate.
With the help of assassin Sally Mei and a few of their less-than-savory friends, Cape Weathers takes on the Russian mob, a prominent movie studio, and an uncooperative police department to get to the bottom of the case.
If only this pesky sniper would get off their backs…
Greasing the Pinata
The spirited third installment of the Cape Weathers Mysteries takes Cape and Sally to Mexico, where a U.S. senator and his son turn up dead on a golf course, body parts missing.
Cape is first compelled to ignore the case, fueled by his disdain for politicians, but he changes his tune when it seems like his client, the daughter of the murdered senator, will be the next victim.
To solve the case and keep her safe, Cape takes on the mob, the DEA, the local police, and one too many shots of tequila.
Boxing the Octopus
It starts a simple manhunt: find Vera Young’s allegedly innocent boyfriend, suspected of robbery, before the police can. Cape has been on crazier cases before, though it might be extra difficult on account of Vera’s boyfriend probably being dead.
Before long, though, Cape finds himself enmeshed in the criminal conspiracy of money laundering, illegal drug testing, and a network of corporations dangerously determined to protect their stock price.
It’s Cape versus the sprawling San Francisco underworld in the riveting fourth installment of Maleeny’s series.
Hanging the Devil
Eleven-year-old Grace has no business being in the back alleys of Chinatown at night, but that’s where Sally Mei finds her, distraught and claiming a ghost had just killed her uncle in order to steal a priceless statue from the Asian Art Museum.
Sally can teach Grace basic combat skills, but she knows there’s only one person who can track down the “ghost” and live to tell the tale: private detective Cape Weathers.
The pair enlist their usual band of lovably unscrupulous allies to set a trap for the so-called ghost before he strikes again.
