Linda Barnes: The Snake Tattoo (USA 2015)

From the Publisher:
Hailed by Sue Grafton as "a true original," ex-cop turned private eye Carlotta Carlyle risks her neck in Boston's Combat Zone for two very different clients

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).

Carlotta Carlyle is halfway through a pizza when her former boss, Lieutenant Mooney of the Boston Police, shows up at her door needing help even more than Carlotta needs a case. In a Combat Zone bar, Mooney got into a scrap with a stranger over a woman. Now the stranger is comatose, the woman has vanished, and Mooney has been suspended. He wants Carlotta to find the blond hooker with a snake tattoo who witnessed the brawl, and who can exonerate him.

Doing surveillance in the Zone, Carlotta gets a second case. A ritzy prep school kid with a bloody lip hires her to find his missing girlfriend. Drawn into two different yet equally dangerous worlds where dead bodies are showing up, Carlotta has only two weeks to save the most honest cop in Boston from going to jail, and to find a girl whose privileged parents don't seem to care that she's run away.

The Snake Tattoo was named an outstanding book of the year by the London Times.

The Snake Tattoo is the 2nd book in the Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Linda Barnes: The Snake Tattoo. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781504014274 (July, 2015), eBook, 1.19 MB (ca. 286 p.), $7.99.

Linda Barnes: The Snake Tattoo (USA 2004)

From the Publisher:
SEE NO EVIL...
Carlotta Carlyle, ex-cop, struggling private eye, and 6'1" of long tall redhead, takes any case that walks through the door. This time the door opens twice. First in is her old partner, Lieutenant Mooney of the Boston police, unfairly charged with brutality, suspended, and desperate. The witness who can clear him is a hooker with a snake tattoo... and she's vanished.

OR DARE TO FACE IT...
The second client is a teenager with a missing wallet and a split lip. He's been roughed up on the Boston streets while searching for his runaway girlfriend. He's too young to be a client, and Carlotta should have turned him down. Shoulda, woulda, coulda... didn't.

WITH EYES WIDE OPEN.
Both investigation send Carlotta into Boston's Combat Zone and the dark alleys of the human heart. Hookers don't disappear and kids don't take off with good reason. Now Carlotta is coming face to face with the evil that men do, and what is she going to do about it? Tackle it head on...

Linda Barnes: The Snake Tattoo. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. St. Martin's Minotaur, ISBN: 0312993552 (Febuary, 2004), 303 p., $6.99.

Linda Barnes: The Snake Tattoo (UK 1993)

From the Publisher:
Find the woman with the snake tattoo. A hooker, she'd witnessed the barroom fight that had ended with one man in a coma and Lieutenant Mooney of the Boston Police Department suspended from duty.

Carlotta Carlyle owed it to her long-time friend and mentor, Mooney. Then there was the second job: a poor little rich runaway who'd gone for a walk on the wild side. Which was why Carlotta was cruising the red light district by night, and by day prowling round a very expensive private school with a reputation to protect.

Two can-of-worms jobs for a private eye who, like anyone with the builders in, was fleeing the chaos at home.

Linda Barnes: The Snake Tattoo. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. Coronet, ISBN: 0340535385 (October, 1993 / 4th printing, undated), 290 p., £4.99.

Linda Barnes: The Snake Tattoo (USA 1990)

From the Publisher:
"The leading lady is the genuine artide: a straightforward, funny, thoroughly American mystery-heroine." NEW YORK POST
When Carlotta's cop friend Joe Mooney goes up on charges for an off- duty bar brawl, the only witness he can remember is a lady with a snake tattoo on her leg. But she's long gone. So he asks Carlotta to find her.

An ex-cop herself, Carlotta stakes out Boston's infamous Combat Zone with a'lead on a hooker she once knew with a thing for washable tattoos. While Carlotta's trying to keep warm in the cab she drives part-time, a nervous young preppy hops in, wanting a ride back to his safe and secure suburb. He's been looking for someone too-Valerie, a missing teenager whom nobody seems to miss.

Suddenly, Carlotta finds herself playing double duty-on the lookout for a streetwise hooker and a privileged teenager, and discovering that on the streets of Boston, two very different lives can take the same wrong turn...

"As usual, the characters are 'ight on target." THE DENVER POST

Linda Barnes: The Snake Tattoo. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. Fawcett Crest, ISBN: 0449217590 (May, 1990), 193 p., $3.95.

Linda Barnes: The Snake Tattoo (USA 1989)

From the Publisher:
A runaway girl from a wealthy suburb and a fifty-buck hooker shouldn't have much in common. But Valerie, a fourteen-year-old student at the Emerson, one of Massachusetts' finest private academies, and Janine, a tattooed lady of the night, are missing. And Carlotta Carlyle, a private investigator and part time cab driver, has been hired to find them both.

Lieutenant Mooney, her old friend and former boss at the Boston Police Department, has first claim on Carlotta's time. Temporarily on suspension, Mooney needs Janine's testimony to clear his name in an internal police investigation. In addition to facing a brutality charge, he's contending with a hostile press that's starting to link him to a payoff scandal in the Zone.

While searching the Zone for Janine, Carlotta meets Jerry Toland, an Emerson student who doesn't believe Valerie ran away on her own. He hires Carlotta to track her down, a task made more difficult by Valerie's parents -- a dithering mother who seems reluctant to talk about her daughter, and a busy stockbroker father who seems to think a teacher at the Emerson might be involved.

The dual search takes Carlotta from the plush lawns of Lincoln, where money is no object, to some of the sleazier streets of Boston, where money is the only object -- and reveals corruption at the heart of each.

Deftly plotted, informed by Barnes' superb knowledge of the cultural byways of Boston's inhabitants, and filled with sharply edged characters who spring off the page, Carlotta's latest adventures confirm this series as a major hit.

Linda Barnes: The Snake Tattoo. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. St. Martin's Minotaur, ISBN: 0312026439 (Febuary, 1989), 290 p., $17.95.