Linda Barnes: Hardware (USA 2015)

From the Publisher:
Private investigator Carlotta Carlyle's moonlighting job as a taxi driver turns into the most dangerous, high-octane case of her career
Six-foot-tall, redheaded ex-cop and Boston-based private eye Carlotta Carlyle is "the genuine article: a straightforward, funny, thoroughly American mystery heroine" (New York Post).

When Carlotta can't sleep -- or when money gets tight -- she drives a cab. It's always been a dangerous way to make a living, but lately it's become truly terrifying. In the last two months, nine cabbies have been savagely beaten and robbed, and every time Carlotta gets behind the wheel, she knows that she could be next.

How then can she refuse when a rival taxi company hires her to investigate the assaults? Thinking she will be making the world a safer place for cab drivers, Carlotta doesn't suspect that this new case will push her even closer to the edge. The company she works for is co-owned by Sam Gianelli, her sometime lover and a mob-connected businessman whose family knows how to get tough. Drawn into a tangled conspiracy of mafia secrets and high-tech espionage, Carlotta will have to drive faster than ever to stay alive.

Hardware is the 6th book in the Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Linda Barnes: Hardware. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781504014472 (July, 2015), 1.26 MB (ca. 372 p.), $7.99.

Linda Barnes: Hardware (USA 2005)

From the Publisher:
In her sixth spellbinding adventure, Carlotta Carlyle, the 6'1" redheaded P.I. from Boston, takes on a case that draws her into the mysterious shadova and of computer technology, where information is cheap, and privacy may be a thing of the past. Part-time cabbie Carlotta is entering the modern age of investigation. With the help of her sometime lover, mafioso, and computer-hobbyist Sam Gianelli, she invests in her first "hardware," a cheap personal computer. And at the urging of her ex-boss, Boston Police Lt. Mooney, who decries the stopping power of her .38 S&W, she decides to upgrade her arsenal. Both types of hardware come in handy when Carlotta is hired by Gloria, owner of G&W Cab, to investigate the brutal robberies that are causing her cabbies to quit in record numbers, and the violence and unanswered questions escalate. An explosion rocks G&W, killing Gloria's brother and seriously wounding co-owner Sam Gianelli. Is someone out to bankrupt G&W to acquire its invaluable cab medallions? Is the company a pawn in a Mafia vendetta, with Sam, the underboss's son, the target? And who put that tiny microphone near G&W's bathroom? Aided by a mysterious databank expert, Carlotta learns far more than she thought possible about "private" transactions. And she finds herself digging into Sam's past, exposing secrets he's kept hidden for years -- secrets that begin to pull them further apart. As the investigation reaches its climax, Carlotta realizes, almost too late, that the mob may be just a fall guy in a very intimate crime.

Linda Barnes: Hardware. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. St. Martin's Press, ISBN: 0312932650 (August, 2005), 382 p., $6.99.

Linda Barnes: Hardware (USA 1995)

From the Publisher:
A miniature microphone dangles in the back room of a Boston taxi garage. Violence has cabdrivers scared for their lives. A man who deals in stolen computers hides a secret that reaches back through the fires of war...

For P.l. Carlotta Carlyle, the information superhighway is at her door, rattling like the cough of an assault weapon, grinning like a lover, clinging like a lie. The lie comes from Sam Gianelli, co-owner of the taxi company where she moonlights as a cabbie. The lover is a doctor down the block, and the assault weapon sends Carlotta sprawling to the pavement of a Boston slum.

Trying to find out who is brutally attacking cabbies, Carlotta is plunged into a seething mystery that will take more than her new computer to unravel. It will take the kind of hardware that shoots bullets -- and the kind of heart that can learn to love again...

Linda Barnes: Hardware. A Carlotta Carlyle Novel. Delacorte Press, ISBN: 0440212235 (March, 1996), 378 p., $5.99.

Linda Barnes: Hardware (UK 1995)

From the Publisher:
Carlotta Carlyle is entering the modern age. She's investing in a personal computer, and upgrading her gun. Both come in handy when Carlotta is plunged into a series of seemingly unrelated events. Gloria, the owner of the Green & White cab company, hires Carlotta to investigate the violent robberies that are causing her cabbies to quit in record numbers. Then an explosion rocks G&W, killing Gloria's brother and seriously wounding Sam Gianelli, the co-owner and Carlotta's occasional lover.

Is someone out to bankrupt G&W in order to acquire its invaluable cab medallions? Is the cab company a pawn in a Mafia vendetta, with Sam the target?

As the number of unanswered questions begins to mount, Carlotta finds herself digging into Sam's past, exposing secrets he'd kept hidden for years - secrets that begin to pull them further and further apart. And Carlotta realises, almost too late, that the mob may just be a fall guy in a very intimate crime.

Linda Barnes: Hardware. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. Coronet, ISBN: 0340640219 (October, 1995), 261 p., £5.99.

Linda Barnes: Hardware (USA 1995)

From the Publisher:
When Boston PI. Carlotta Carlyle decides to join the computer age and take her business online, she quickly learns that information is cheap and access can be deadly. Accustomed as she is to Boston's mean streets, cruising them regularly while moonlighting for the Green & White Cab Company, survival takes on a whole new meaning when Carlotta is hired to investigate a series of Vicious attacks on cabbies. Her bosses, wheelchair bound Gloria, the soul queen of cab dispatchers, and Sam Gianelli, Carlotta' on-again, off-again lover, are sending mixed messages. Not so her exboss: Lieutenant Mooney of the Boston police urges her to trade in her old .38 revolver for some high-tech hardware.

Before it's too late.
The questions -- and violence -- escalate when Sam reluctantly introduces Carlota to his childhood friend, "Frank" a codebusting data-bank genius who offers her the computer deal of a lifetime. But who is "Frank"? What dark history do he and Sam share?

In Hardware, Linda Barnes's sixth Carlotta Cariyle novel, betrayal is an integral part of the program. As Carlotta realizes that nothing is private if you push the right buttons -- and digs into Sam's past to discover that he's kept love alive with lies -- rapidly unraveling secrets push her to the cutting edge of crime and heartbreak, where she finds her toughest assignment yet: to pick up the pieces of lives she holds dear and put them together again.

Linda Barnes: Hardware. A Carlotta Carlyle Novel. Delacorte Press, ISBN: 038530613X (March, 1995), 338 p., $19.95.