Pants on Fire: A Texas Private Investigator Mystery (Iris Raines Mystery) by Denise Diana Huddle

Lying to Iris Raines is like throwing a boomerang—the truth always comes back hard.This gritty Texas private investigator mystery is relentless and razor-sharp—where sabotage, cartel money, and dark family secrets collide in a dangerous game of truth and consequences.Iris Raines doesn’t scare easy. Sharp-tongued, relentless, and backed by her St. Bernard, Festus, she’s built a career digging the truth out of the dung heap of deception. But when sabotage turns lethal, Iris finds herself caught between powerful enemies—and a client who isn’t telling her everything she needs to know.South Texas restaurateur Quinten Farragut built his circus-themed dining empire on burgers, cheesy fries, and nostalgia—until sabotage turned his brand of family fun into deadly business.

When poisoned food kills a customer and sickens dozens more, private investigator Iris Raines is hired to expose the saboteur before Farragut’s empire folds like a circus tent.The deeper she digs, the clearer it gets: this isn’t sabotage—it’s corporate warfare. A killer with nothing to lose, a client with everything to hide, and a cartel moving in for the kill leave Iris with one choice—expose the truth before it buries her.She’s made a career exposing other people’s lies—but what happens when the truth cuts just as deep as the betrayal?Fast-paced, fearless, and full of twists, Pants on Fire delivers another high-stakes ride with private investigator Iris Raines. Written by a licensed private investigator with decades in the field, Pants on Fire is perfect for fans of Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, and Robert Crais.PrologueDon’t lie to your PI. It’s a maxim for successful living…right up there with never stiff the hitman and don’t blow-dry your hair in the bathtub.

Yet every day clients walk into the offices of PIs and lie just like rugs on the floor. How can they believe we’re going to resolve their current imbroglio without uncovering their own role in it?If you’ve been a PI since lunch, you know that people do not end up slogging upstream, ass-deep in a river of alligators, without having somehow gotten into the water in the first place. However much of an asshole they may be, when we join their team, they become our assholes, and we keep their secrets and do every legal thing in our power to save them. It’s the job.

We explain this to them ad nauseam. But they lie to us anyway.Knowing this, my bullshit antenna is constantly scanning the environment for deception, like the spinning radars perched on the masts of warships. But this time I had no inkling—not until the first bullet hit my windshield.