On this page

This page lists novels that feature the Chicago police detective Abe Lieberman.

Lieberman's Folly

Stuart M. Kaminsky

1991

An Abe Lieberman novel.

"On a blistering Chicago afternoon, the Cubs are winning and Abe Lieberman is waiting to meet a prostitute. This mild-mannered old police detective still has a few tricks up his sleeves -- and one of them is named Estralda Valdez. One of the city's loveliest women of the night, she is Lieberman's most prized confidential informant, and she needs help with a psychotic john. Though they suspect she's only paranoid, Lieberman and his partner, Bill Hanrahan, agree to watch Valdez's back. But Hanrahan's weakness for drinking will sabotage their plans. Hanrahan gets soused watching Valdez's front door, and by the time he realizes she is in danger, it's already too late. To save the partnership and find the hooker's killer, Lieberman and Hanrahan will have to make a journey into the darkest heart of the Windy City."

Lieberman's Choice

Stuart M. Kaminsky

1993

An Abe Lieberman novel.

"Bernie Shepard comes home with a shotgun. He opens the door to his bedroom, and sees what he expected -- his wife in bed with another cop. Two pumps of the shotgun take care of them, and Shepard carries out the rest of his plan. Accompanied by his nameless dog, this half-mad young detective goes to the roof of his apartment building, where he has built a small fortress stocked with food, water, and weapons. He loads his guns and awaits the police. Talking Shepard down falls to Abe Lieberman and Bill Hanrahan, the odd-couple partners in Chicago homicide. As soon as they make contact, Shepard names his demands: He wants to talk to a Tv crew and to the new police captain. The building is rigged with explosives, he says, and he is ready to pull the trigger. To stop this renegade cop, Lieberman and Hanrahan will have to kill him -- or try to understand what made him snap."

Lieberman's Day

Stuart M. Kaminsky

1994

An Abe Lieberman novel.

"In a posh part of Chicago's North Side, two Trinidadian men look for someone to jump. Waiting outside an apartment building, they see a couple shivering in the cold as they make their way to their car. The Trinidadians draw guns, demand money - and quickly go too far. Shots ring out, and the muggers run. Behind them, the man is dead, and his pregnant wife lays bleeding in the street. The murder victim is the nephew of Abe Lieberman, one of the most dignified cops in Chicago homicide. When he learns of the killing, Lieberman's calm façade cracks. As he works with his partner, Bill Hanrahan, to find the killers, Lieberman makes a pact with the devil -- ready to sacrifice everything if it means finding the men who gunned his nephew down in the street."

Lieberman's Thief

Stuart M. Kaminsky

1995

An Abe Lieberman novel.

"Harvey Rozier has planned the murder carefully. Unseen, he slips out of the concert hall and sneaks home, knowing that if all goes perfectly he will have an hour to stab his wife to death. But things don't go smoothly, and he is pursuing the bleeding woman through the kitchen when he trips over a toolbox, and finds himself face-to-face with a shocked cat burglar. George 'Pitty-Pitty' Patniks had planned his crime even more thoroughly than Rozier, but was not counting on stumbling into a homicide. He escapes before Rozier can stop him - a witness to a hideous crime that he cannot report to the police. Long-suffering Chicago homicide detective Abe Lieberman suspects Rozier instantly, but cannot find enough proof to arrest him. To bring this killer to justice, he will have to find the thief who saw it all - before Pitty-Pitty Patniks's mouth gets shut forever."

Lieberman's Law

Stuart M. Kaminsky

1996

An Abe Lieberman novel.

"Over a decades-long career in Chicago homicide, Abe Lieberman has something most cops only dream of: a personal life. He has hobbies, a wife, and a grandchild who is about to celebrate his bar mitzvah. But Lieberman's personal and professional lives collide when his temple is attacked by vandals, and he uncovers a river of hate that runs right through the heart of Chicago's North Side. Too moderate for the hard-liners, too outspoken to win friends among the Arabs, the Conservative Temple Mir Shavot is caught in the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian debate. When a hate group breaks into the temple, scrawling graffiti and stealing a valuable Torah, Lieberman must decide if the guilty party was neo-Nazis, militant Palestinians -- even, perhaps, a group of uncompromising Orthodox Jews. Death waits at the intersection of politics and religion, and Abe Lieberman must face it head on."

The Big Silence

Stuart M. Kaminsky

2000

An Abe Lieberman novel.

"Once a college football star, Bill Hanrahan has had a hard time of it ever since his bad knees kept him out of the pros. He became a homicide detective with the unfortunate reputation of losing witnesses and loving the bottle. Now Hanrahan is off the sauce, and working a job that should be straightforward: He's guarding a mob informant's ex-wife and teenage son while they tour colleges. Everything is fine until the last night of their trip. At three in the morning, Hanrahan hears shots from their motel room. By the time he breaks down the door, it's too late. The woman is dead, the boy has been kidnapped, and Hanrahan wants a drink more than he ever has before. The mob issues a simple instruction to the informant: Kill yourself and your son lives. Hanrahan and his partner, Abe Lieberman, tear the city apart in search of the kid, hoping against hope that for once they will be able to keep both witnesses alive."

Not Quite Kosher

Stuart M. Kaminsky

2002

An Abe Lieberman novel.

"Abe Lieberman is up to his eyeballs in tsurris, the kind of trouble that will drive a man to madness. From tracking a pair of low-rent thieves who stumble into a heist way over their heads to finding out what happened to a man who predicted his own death in a bizarre twist of fate, not to mention planning for a grandson's bar mitzvah that threatens to send him to the poorhouse, Lieberman will do much to find a way to make everything right, even if it takes years off his life. And his Irish partner, Bill Hanrahn, the Priest to Lieberman's Rabbi, is in trouble of his own making. For the woman he loves is the object of affection of one of the kingpins of the Asian crime syndicate in Chicago and the notion of this woman marrying anyone from a different culture is anathema. How far will he go to win the woman he loves? And at what cost?"

The Last Dark Place

Stuart M. Kaminsky

2004

An Abe Lieberman novel.

"Thirty-three years ago, Connie Gower decided to raise hell in a synagogue. Drunk, armed, and out for revenge, he came to hunt down Abe Lieberman, a young cop he believed had killed his brother in a shoot-out. Lieberman takes him down, unafraid to return fire. Since then, Gower has had few run-ins with the law, even as he made a name for himself as one of the Chicago mob's most feared contract killers. When he finally gets nailed in Yuma, where he's fled to avoid a murder charge, the Chicago police send Lieberman to bring him home. Handcuffed to each other, they are about to board the plane when a geriatric airport janitor shuffles towards them, puts on his glasses, and shoots the hitman dead. Though stooped, thin, and old, inside Lieberman is still the young firebrand who wasn't afraid to draw his gun to protect his family and synagogue. The men who had Connie Gower killed have interfered with justice, and Lieberman will do anything to make them pay."

Terror Town

Stuart M. Kaminsky

2006

An Abe Lieberman novel.

"Carl Zwick is an aging Chicago Cubs baseball player. Sometimes he feels like he's spent his life hitting into double plays, but he's finally gotten onto the right track. Then tragedy strikes him out. Anita Mills is a pretty single black mother just trying to get by. A random act of brutality in one of Chicago's rougher neighborhoods permanently ends her struggle. Richard Allen Smith walks the streets of ChiTown saying God has sent him. He has an unusual, rather nasty way of getting converts to see the light. What do these people have in common? Nothing, it would seem, except they are all part of Detective Abe Lieberman's very long day. Lieberman, a sad, baggy-eyed spaniel of a man with the patience of Job and the wisdom of Solomon is trying his best to make his beloved Chicago a better place."

The Dead Don't Lie

Stuart M. Kaminsky

2007

An Abe Lieberman novel.

"Abe Lieberman and his partner, Bill Hanrahan, are hell or heaven bent on making the mean streets of Chicago just a little safer. As usual they have their hands full. Three prominent members of the Turkish community are all brutally murdered and Lieberman must find out what, if anything, ties these murders together. It doesn't help that the key to the puzzle might be an event that took place over a century ago. Bill Hanrahan finds himself assigned to a case where a hospitalized chef claims to have been beaten by two people and shot by a third, a bespectacled Chinese man. As Bill digs deeper he finds himself at odds with an old nemesis, a man who has an unusual affinity for Bill's wife."