Jeri Howard

Created by Janet Dawson

One of the better (and one of my favourite) of the new breed of female P.I.s following the eighties boom, was Berkeley’s (later, Oakland’s) JERI HOWARD, a former paralegal who worked the Bay Area.

Initially I was a little dubious. Was this going to be an amateur sleuth soap opera, dressed up in private eye drag? An awful lot of her cases seemed to involve her family.

In her memorable debut, Kindred Crimes (1991), her ex-husband, a cop (of course) brought her a case. In the second, Till the Old Men Die (1993), her client was her father. That’s fine — private eyes don’t have to be total loners; they can have families. But stuff like this started to feel claustrophobic, almost incestuous at times.

Fortunately, as the series progressed, the client pool spread, and Jeri proved to be quite a determined and shrewd sleuth. Plus, Dawson gets plenty of props for tackling tough issues in her books.

No wonder the series proved to be one of the most reliable and popular throughout the nineties. In fact, Kindred Crimes won the 1989 St. Martins Press/PWA Best First Private Eye Novel Contest, and was subsequently nominated for the Best First Private Eye Novel in 1991 (but lost to Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress).

Author Dawson is a former naval officer, drama major, amateur actress and journalist.

NOVELS

• Kindred Crimes (1991) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Till the Old Men Die (1993) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Take a Number (1993) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Don’t Turn Your Back on the Ocean (1994) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Nobody’s Child (1995) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• A Credible Threat (1996) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Witness To Evil (1997) | Buy this book  | Kindle it!
• Where The Bodies Are Buried (1998) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• A Killing at the Track (2000) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Bit Player (2011) | Buy this book  | Kindle it!
• Cold Trail (2015)  | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Water Signs (2017) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• The Devil Close Behind (2019) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• The Things We Keep (2023) | Buy this book | Kindle it!

SHORT STORIES

• “Little Red Corvette” (1996, Lethal Ladies) | Kindle it!
• “Blue Eyes” (2001, Murder Most Feline) | Kindle it!
• “Scam and Eggs” (2002, Scam and Eggs) | Kindle it!
• “Slayer Statute” (September/October 2003, EQMM) | Kindle it!
• “Candles on the Corner” (November 2008, EQMM) | Kindle it!

COLLECTIONS

• Scam And Eggs (2002) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
  Contains three Howard stories.
• The Jeri Howard Casebook (2012) | Kindle it!
  Contains four Howard stories.
• Jeri Howard Books 1-9 (2018) | Kindle it!
  Budget-priced ebook set, collects the nine novels

RELATED LINKS

• The Janet Dawson Web Site
  The usual bibliography, lists of upcoming signing and the like.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.