Howard Drew Novels Series

Fans of iconic LAPD homicide Detective Harry Bosch will feel right at home reading the adventures of homicide Detective Howard "Howie" Drew. Don't miss Omerta, the first book in a brand new police procedural series set in the City of Angels.   For a homicide detective, a day on the job means hunting killers while trying not to get killed. If you're a homicide detective in Los Angeles, it also means dealing with the most overwrought, desperate, and deluded criminals anywhere. When you're a brand new homicide detective spending your days and nights in the gritty underbelly of the city that never sleeps with a tetchy veteran murder cop for a partner, you must keep your cool and your wits about you when the bodies start hitting the floor.   Putting the pieces together when someone shoots to death execution-style a semi-famous Hollywood screenwriter with mob ties is Howard Drew, recently promoted to Detective II and transferred into West Bureau homicide. Just when Drew and his veteran murder cop partner and mentor Detective Rudy Ortega think they are making progress in solving the murder, the leads dry up and the case goes cold. But on the mean streets of LA, there are always plenty more murders to investigate.   Drew and Ortega quickly pivot to investigating the rape-murder of a twenty-two-year-old stripper and aspiring actress. They spend their days chasing down leads in West LA while at the same time battling the inefficient LAPD bureaucracy and trying to coax the support they need to solve cases from the department's overworked and understaffed Scientific Investigation Division. From their squad room at West Bureau, they see the glamour city for what it is: a sprawling metropolis where the tedious is dangerous and the dangerous is tedious.

Howard Drew, an unrelenting LAPD homicide detective assigned to the Open-Unsolved Unit, investigates the murders of victims long dead. He prowls moral fault lines and assumes the perspectives of his victims and their killers. Drew waits, poised to listen when guilty people divulge information and tired people fold and betray their secrets. Drew also listens to the chorus of forgotten voices and speaks for them because the collective dead demand it.   In 2000, a friend discovered Anastasia Stepanchikov, a pretty 29-year-old prostitute from the Ukraine, beaten and shot to death inside her luxury Studio City apartment. Police speculated at the time that Russian organized crime may have been involved. Despite an exhaustive investigation by detectives of LAPD's Homicide Special Section, they never identified the killer or brought them to justice. The leads dried up, and the case went cold.   Twenty-one years later, Detective Howard Drew and his partner in the Robbery-Homicide Division's Open-Unsolved Unit reopen the investigation when they receive a DNA cold hit. Unsolved homicides tend to remain unsolved—twenty-one-year-old riddles deepen with the passage of time, the death and disappearance of witnesses, and the blurring of consciousness.   To find the killer, Drew and his partner must dust off the murder book and absorb every detail of the original investigation with an eye towards solving the cold case and assessing the original investigator's failure to do so. The detectives who worked the case all those years ago seem to have done a decent job, but something doesn't fit. Circumstances raise the stakes when Drew comes to realize he has taken on a politically charged case when the DNA match points to a powerful figure in Los Angeles. The original investigators may have missed a clue, or worse yet, turned a blind eye back in 2000 that could have led them to the killer and cleared the case twenty-one years earlier.

Hamstrung by the fallout from the pandemic and budget cuts thanks to the defund the police movement, the LAPD's elite Homicide Special Section gets caught short-handed when a North Hollywood murder involving a celebrity actor goes down. The Robbery-Homicide Division commander pulls Detective Howard Drew and his partner Amy Li from Open-Unsolved to spearhead the high-profile investigation.   Temporary assignment to Homicide Special puts Howard squarely into the midst of a media firestorm when he takes the lead on the murder investigation after someone shoots to death the wife of a famous Hollywood actor outside a popular Studio City restaurant. It's been a while since Drew and his partner at Open-Unsolved have caught a fresh kill, but Howard is determined to make the most of the unexpected opportunity. But the moment he arrives at the scene, Howard quickly discovers something about the case doesn't add up. The actor gives his statement, but the evidence tells an entirely different story. As the pressure from the tenth floor of LAPD headquarters mounts, demanding a quick resolution of the case, Drew wonders why the brass chose him to lead the investigation. Then, just when he thinks he's building momentum on the case, things go sideways when an old nemesis in the command staff blind sides him. At odds with his superiors, and distracted by a simmering romance that starts to boil over in the middle of the investigation, Howard is as off balance as he's ever been. Running on instinct and his commitment to getting justice for every victim, and with everything to lose, Drew must prove himself not just by clearing the case by arrest, but by surviving it.

When a mother and her young daughter are found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in a car parked at an overlook off a Hollywood freeway, it appears they are victims of a culturally driven parent-child suicide. LAPD Detective Howard Drew faces his first real test as a new lead homicide investigator as he follows a twisted trail of clues to find the truth in his most challenging case yet.   The Pendulum is the second novel featuring Detective Howard Drew in a new fast-paced police procedural series set in Los Angeles that crime fiction fans won't want to miss.   When a 3 A.M. callout sends West Bureau homicide Detective Howard Drew to an overlook above Hollywood Bowl, he finds an Asian woman and her six-year-old daughter dead inside a vehicle with a garden hose running from the exhaust pipe into a rear window. The initial evidence points to the cultural practice called oyako shinju in Japan, a ritual child-parent suicide committed after the woman was shamed by her husband's adultery.      And as the truth emerges, it becomes more and more apparent that things may not be as they appear. Drew and his new partner, Detective Cici Ruiz, suspect they are being misled by someone very deceptive… very cunning… and very deadly who staged the scene to look like oyako shinju. As the detectives dig to uncover the truth, the pendulum of opinion swings back and forth. Was it child-parent suicide? Or was it a double-homicide staged to throw the homicide investigators off track? Crime fiction author Larry Darter has created a dark, fast-paced suspense thriller filled with stark realism that cuts to the very core of the crimes real life LAPD homicide detectives face. Once you start reading, there's no turning back.