Linda Barnes: Snapshot (USA 2015)

From the Publisher:
The award-winning author's Boston PI returns in a mystery "destined to secure Barnes' position in the hotshot ranks of detective fiction" (Arizona Republic).

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 sorting through her junk mail when she finds a snapshot of a newborn baby she has never seen before. One week later, another arrives showing the same child one year older. The next week, a third arrives. As the deliveries continue, Carlotta becomes obsessed with this unnamed little girl and is drawn into one of the most dangerous assignments of her career.

The girl was named Rebecca and she died of leukemia at the age of seven. Her grief-stricken mother has never been able to accept what happened, so she hires Carlotta to investigate the highly regarded hospital where someone on staff seems to have forgotten the most important lesson of a doctor's training: Do no harm.

Snapshot is the 5th book in the Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Linda Barnes: Snapshot. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781504014465 (July, 2015), eBook, 0.56 MB (ca. 398 p.), $7.99.

Linda Barnes: Snapshot (USA 2005)

From the Publisher:
Every Friday a child's snapshot arrives at the Boston office of P.I. Carlotta Carlyle. There's no note. No return address. Just pictures of the child as a newborn, as a toddler, as a preschooler. Maybe Carlotta should have tossed them all in the trash. Maybe then she wouldn't have gotten mixed up again... in murder.

Discovering what happened to the child in the photos draws Carlotta into a shattered picture of private lives sadly out of focus-and big shots mixed up with deadly conspiracy that stretches from a New England hospital to the Third World. And when she finds her own "little sister" from the Boston Big Sisters program in a different kind of danger, the truth jumps out in harsh black and white. In a world filled with killers and innocence, Carlotta Carlyle may be the only avenging angel left...

Linda Barnes: Snapshot. In a case of murder and deceit, one picture tells the truth. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. St. Martin's Press, ISBN: 0312932677 (June, 2005), 386 p., $6.99.

Linda Barnes: Snapshot (UK 1994)

From the Publisher:
Carlotta Carlyle's garbage had been stolen. Two full wheelie-bins, jammed into the trunk of a midnight-raiding Pontiac Firebird.
Which was why she didn't throw out the snapshot of the newborn baby. No letter, nothing written on the back, posted from a place where she knew no one. Maybe the start of some junk mail, teaser ad campaign.

Then, next week, a second photograph. A one-year-old. The third, fourth, fifth. All the same little girl. Only after the sixth did she get the psychiatrist's call.

One of his patients, the mother of a six-year-old who had died suddenly in hospital, of an illness with a 95% recovery rate. A grieving mother who wanted an investigation into one of the most prestigious medical facilities in Boston.

Linda Barnes: Snapshot. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. Coronet, ISBN: 0340608234 (May, 1994), 325 p., £4.99.

Linda Barnes: Snapshot (USA 1994)

From the Publisher:
Every Friday a child's snapshot arrives at the Boston office of P.I. Carlotta Carlyle. There's no note. No return address. Just pictures of the child as a newborn, as a toddler, as a preschooler. Maybe Carlotta should have tossed them all in the trash. Maybe then she wouldn't have gotten mixed up again... in murder.

Discovering what happened to the child in the photos draws Carlotta into a shattered picture of private lives sadly out of focus-and big shots mixed up with deadly conspiracy that stretches from a New England hospital to the Third World. And when she finds her own "little sister" from the Boston Big Sisters program in a different kind of danger, the truth jumps out in harsh black and white. In a world filled with killers and innocence, Carlotta Carlyle may be the only avenging angel left...

Linda Barnes: Snapshot. A Carlotta Carlyle Novel. Dell Publishing, ISBN: 0440212200 (March, 1994), 386 p., $4.99.

Linda Barnes: Snapshot (USA 1993)

From the Publisher:
When Carlotta Carlyle, Boston PI, receives a snapshot of a newborn baby in the mail, her first impulse is to throw it away. But since her garbage has been mysteriously stolen, she's holding on to anything out of the ordinary. As the next few weeks bring more photographs of the same child, Carlotta is intrigued but still in the dark. A last eerie picture and a phone call enlighten her: Six-year-old Rebecca Woodrow died of leukemia, a strain with a ninetyfive percent cure rate. Her distraught mother, Emily, wants to know why.

Snapshot, Linda Barnes's fifth work featuring Carlyle, is a novel of obsession. Tormented by the death of her young child, Emily Woodrow desperately needs answers before she can get on with her life. On a more personal level, Paolina Fuentes, Carlotta's eleven-year-old "little sister" from the Boston Big Sisters organization, also seems obsessed. Carlotta is shocked to find Paolina keeping company with a much older street thug, apparently determined to find the father who abandoned her before she was born.

Never one to back down from a tough situation, Carlotta agrees to help out both Emily and Paolina. Soon the P.I. is plunged into a deadly conspiracy that threatens to rock the foundation of one of Boston's finest hospitals. Now it's up to Carlotta to make a clear image emerge from a series of blurred family snapshots, outsmart the forces of hypocrisy and corruption... and heal old wounds in the process.

Linda Barnes: Snapshot. A Carlotta Carlyle Novel. Delacorte Press, ISBN: 0385306121 (June, 1993), 325 p., $19.95.