The Harker Case: A Disgraced Detective's First Private Job (The Cole Harker Investigations) - Softcover

Cross, R.P.

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798161744000

Publisher: Independently published, 2026

Synopsis

Cole Harker used to be the detective other cops called when the case had gone cold.

Then he saw something he was not supposed to see.

Now his badge sits in a desk drawer, and Cole lives above a dry cleaner in Millhaven, answering the phone on the second ring so no one knows he has been waiting for it to ring at all.

When Carol Marsh walks into his office with a photograph of her dead son and a box of his belongings, she is not looking for sympathy. She is looking for answers.

The official ruling says overdose.

The crime scene says otherwise.

Cole takes the case because it is the right one, and because no one else in town is willing to touch it.

What follows is a slow-burn investigation through the streets Cole used to patrol: the diner on Fourth, the gym, the bus depot on Canal, and the river bridge at dusk. He works the way he always worked: public records, door knocks, old instincts, and a legal pad slowly filling with names that do not want to be written down.

The deeper Cole digs, the more the case points toward people with something to hide. People with power. People with reasons to keep a young man’s death quiet.

And the closer he gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes that someone wants him to walk away.

The Harker Case is the first book in the Cole Harker Investigations, a gritty detective series for readers who like their private investigators human, fallible, and outgunned.

Each book resolves its central mystery, while the personal threads, the lost badge, the slow rebuild, and the people Cole is learning to trust again, continue across the series.

Perfect for fans of private investigator mysteries, cold case crime fiction, police procedurals, hardboiled detectives, and slow-burn crime thrillers.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798161744000
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224