8 Mysteries and Thrillers in the Sunshine State 

Some people retire to Florida while others flee to the skeletons of their past. That’s what Max Freeman, ex-Philadelphia cop, is doing, living on the edge of the Everglades.

After an incident that resulted in the shooting death of a child, Max left his old life behind for rural Florida. But when he finds the body of a child near his home, the police suspect that he was behind the girl’s death.

Now he can’t hide anymore but must confront his past to protect his future. It’s the first of seven books in the Max Freeman series.

It’s a private investigator novel written by a PI herself! Lupe Solano may have had a comfy childhood as the daughter of a wealthy Miamian, but she’s decided to take the hard road into the life of a private investigator.

She’s been hired by a wealthy couple to find the birth mother of the couple’s illegally adopted daughter who needs a transplant. But tracking down the mother turns out to be a lot harder than expected and time is running out for the child.

It’s the first in seven Lupe Solano novels.

Claire Britten has a gift: she’s an ace forensic psychologist who can get to the bottom of practically any mysterious death that comes across her. She’s the expert that lawyers don’t want to see in the courtroom, but she’s also dealing with neurological disorders that make every day a challenge.

After winning a case against attorney Nick Marwood, she’s ready to celebrate their victory until someone shoots her and her client just outside the courtroom. Nick saves her life and gives her an interesting proposition: help him solve strange deaths.

She’s intrigued both by the case and this lawyer and they go to St. Augustine, Florida to solve a suspicious death.

However, it’s soon clear that Nick may not have been fully honest with all the details of the case and the case is going to take much more of a toll on Claire than expected.

Maybe even her life. It’s the first of six books in the South Shores domestic suspense series. 

Emeralds and Everglades. It sounds like a match made in heaven. But model Ashley Dane has learned that it is anything but. The photographer had other ideas for the shoot.

So, when she flees the unwanted advances, she ends up stumbling into something worse: a murder. Eric Hawk is also on the run; the man who killed his wife is now after him. When Eric and Ashley bump into each other, sparks fly.

One minute they hate each other; the next they can’t keep their hands off each other. Can the two of them find a way to escape the mortal peril they are in? It’s the third in the Angel Hawk series.

It’s 1974, and former Brooklynite Foggy Moskowitz has left the wild world of stealing cars behind him. Now, he’s found work as a  Child Protective Services investigator in Florida.

Everyone has their own particular flavor of redemption. He’s been given a particularly fraught case: find a missing infant, who needs medicine within three hours, or the child will die. The infant was born to a mother addicted to drugs.

The clock is ticking, and Moskowitz tracks the child to the Seminole Tribe, leading Foggy to question everything he understood about the case.

Will he get to the child in time? Will he be able to figure out what is really going on? It’s the first in the four-book Foggy Moskowitz series.

Distinguishing yourself from your father is hard enough; worse yet, when they had a dirty track record. All John Deal wants to do is move forward and revive the family’s fortunes in Miami.

He gets a shot to start on a new path when his company gets a job on a major construction project. But not everything is above board.

A mysterious man claiming to have government ties says that John’s dad had previously agreed to spy on the local mob, which eventually led to his father’s death; now the Feds want him to take up his father’s former mantle.

Can John get the business on track without making the same mistakes as his dad? It’s the sixth book in the eight-book John Deal series.

It can be hard to keep track of fiction and real life as a writer. But it’s a lot harder when you are bedridden due to an accident and forced to rely on a nurse and an assistant for everything.

That’s novelist Gerry Anderson’s situation. He’s stuck in bed in a place new to him, and he’s having strange visions and dreams.

Most notably, Aubrey, the protagonist of his bestselling novel Dream Girl, keeps calling him and telling him that he has wronged her.

Except he made Aubrey up. Is he really just off the charts due to his medications or is something nefarious going on? 

Miriam Quinones-Smith is finding her footing after she and her family move to Coral Shores, Miami to be closer to his family. Now at loose ends, she’s trying to fit into new life, mother to a toddler, and fending off her racist mother-in-law.

So, when her BFF Alma suggests that Miriam apply to do cooking demonstrations on a Spanish-language morning TV show, she gives it a try. After all, her Ph.D. in food anthropology has got to be worth something?

But things take a sharp turn when Miriam attends a Women’s Club luncheon, and a woman at her table dies at the table. At first, everyone is willing to write-it off as a former addict dying from drug addiction, but a second death makes Miriam think that something else may be at work.

Can she manage to solve the case, wrangle her son, and delight viewers on TV without losing her own life? You’ll have to stay tuned to find out. It’s the first in the four (so far) book Caribbean Kitchen Mystery series.