The Impossible Detective by Bob Reiss is a fast-paced mystery that brings vintage noir back into the spotlight with a modern edge.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover an excerpt from The Impossible Detective by Bob Reiss, which releases on January 20th 2026.
Nobody believes her. But when killers target Abani, Mark discovers a threat of impossible power—one that can hide, lie, steal, and kill more destructively than any criminal he’s ever faced.
A gripping murder mystery that raises chilling questions about what would happen if technology had the power to choose evil.
ONE
Artificial intelligence? I’ll tell you about artificial intelligence. Look at Congress. Look at the mayor. Look at half the reprobates who show up at my office. There’s plenty of artificial intelligence walking around on two legs these days. Who needs a machine to achieve it?
I was being chewed out by the country’s third richest man when I spotted the kid again, out on Edgar Allan Poe Street in New York City, across from my brownstone. From three stories up, the figure looked eleven or twelve years old. A blue hoodie hid the face. Pink sneakers. Pink knapsack. Pink fingernail polish, so probably a girl, but you never know. I’d first spotted her at eight this morning, peering over the concrete wall separating my rear garden from the co-op on Eighty-Fifth Street. Then again, two hours later, pacing, caught on the security camera mounted over my front door. She’s scared, I thought, watching her freeze between two parked cars, looking left, right, left, as if afraid to move. She took a single step forward and yanked her foot back. A car shot past. She dashed across the street.
My business makes me a student of fright. People who show up here tend to be driven by panic. Sometimes they try to hide it. Or they burst into tears. Sometimes they curse or bluster with rage. But it boils down to fright. I think of the leather recliner on the far side of my desk, where the country’s third richest man now sat, as the scare chair.
The kid was now on my front step, looking up on the security monitor. My client drew my attention back by banging his skinny fist on my blotter, crying “ouch,” and pulling it back. The third wealthiest man in the US had a beanpole body, a mop of wild red hair, a MORDOR FUN RUN T-shirt. He sat beneath an old film poster from 1949, The Falcon Returns, in which the actor who played my grandfather aimed a pistol at Nazi thugs while cradling an unconscious slinky nightclub singer in his other arm.
Grandfather was the true Falcon in real life—the suave, rich private investigator upon whom those old films were based. And the client sitting across from me now was exactly the kind of person Grandy had taught me to avoid.
“You can’t fire me,” Bradley Kranepool sputtered, rubbing his thin little hand.
“Actually, I can. You lied to me, Bradley.”
“Those were just words, Mr. St. Johns.”
“Last time I checked, that’s what lies are.”
The doorbell rang downstairs. On monitor two, I saw the top of the kid’s hoodie. Normally my best friend and partner Oscar Narvaez would answer, but Oscar and his wife Cristina were out co-op hunting, looking to move away from the second-floor apartment where they’d lived for the past ten years. Due to recent tension between us, Cristina was pushing for them to move away.
Distance would fix the problem, I hoped.
Bradley Kranepool was one of those tech geniuses who can’t maintain eye contact, grew up without friends, relates to video games more than people, and substitutes, in the popular imagination, for heroes these days, having invented one more way that people need not deal with actual humans anymore. The most asocial people on the planet have designed the principal ways we communicate with each other. No need to go to a real store. Or talk to a real phone operator. Or break up with your lover in person, thanks to Twitter, Facebook, Ghost Me, Emoji, whatever this week’s click-it-and-forget-it craze is.
No wonder the world is a mess.
The bell rang again. The pink fingernail kept pressing the buzzer.
Mentally, my client was a giant; emotionally, a twelve-year-old. I explained to Bradley with sympathy—after all, he was probably going to prison for decades—“The contract states that if you misrepresent yourself, we cancel.”
“New York Magazine said you take on impossible cases.”
“Yes, but not ones where the charges are true. You lied to your investors. You funneled their money into a different scheme that failed. I advise you to plead guilty, Bradley. It cuts down on jail time.”
“I paid you a quarter million dollars!” he shouted.
“All donated to a victim fund, minus expenses.”
“I’ll sue you,” he sputtered.
“Read the contract.”
“My lawyers get me out of contracts every day!”
“And mine will prove every allegation against you. Stuff that even the FBI doesn’t know yet.”
Bradley’s lower lip quivered. “That’s not fair!”
The damn buzzer kept ringing. Sighing, I let the kid in. Monitor three showed her in the elevator. Normally, we never let clients in after three, when, rain or shine, I go kayaking and Oscar starts prepping one of his five-star dinners. The bell sounded in the waiting room. A single pink sneaker appeared on the carpet and retreated. The kid must be on the couch, eyeing more Falcon posters. Yep. The sneaker came into view again, swinging back and forth, faster and faster, showing crumpled pink socks on a thin, dark ankle.
Scared.
“You’re not listening to me,” Bradley said.
My now former client stood up. Bradley’s transition from genius to felon would be national news. I warn clients beforehand, I tell them plain out, before we sign papers, if the story you tell me turns out to be a lie, I’ll drop you. But there’s always someone who doesn’t listen. They think they’re special. They think they’re protected. They think once they pay you, they own you. My grandmother taught me this a long time ago.
“I know people,” Bradley threatened, “who can hurt you.”
“Real ones? Or in a video game?”
“You’re so perfect? I saw how you look at your partner’s wife.”
“Time to go, Bradley.”
“I’ll tell my parents!”
Thirty seconds later, he was gone.
