Crime Detective

Summer. Holiday season. A time for rest and relaxation. But murder can strike anywhere, as this selection of an "unlucky 13" mysteries by Agatha Christie proves. Join Hercule Poirot, Christopher Parker Pyne, Harley Quin and James Bond on this special holiday-themed collection, and take a dip into these short stories, perfect for killing time on the beach, by the pool - or at home, when planning to get away from it all.

Two Cherringham locals, roaming a farm with metal detectors, discover an amazing treasure - a silver Roman plate worth millions. They must share the reward with both the farmer and the owner of the land, the formidable Lady Repton, but there will be plenty for everyone. That night, while the village pubs do a roaring trade, archaeologist Professor Peregrine Cartwright offers to keep the plate safe in his massive wall safe. But when the British Museum expert arrives to verify the find next morning, the safe is empty! Police blame a notorious gang of art thieves operating in the county.

As an undercover police officer, Rob Langton is used to terrifying situations. But his new assignment is the most dangerous yet – to infiltrate the notorious Carter family, and bring its patriarch Geraint to justice. After gaining Geraint’s trust, Rob finds himself becoming the criminal's right-hand man. The deeper Rob gets, the more danger he’s in. Then Geraint’s horrific plan comes to light – a bomb in a public place, designed to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment. Rob is the only person who can stop the carnage, but time is running out.

Commander Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard has just published a new book of poems and has taken a brief respite from publicity on the remote Larksoken headland on the Norfolk coast. A psychotic strangler of young women is at large in Norfolk, and getting nearer to Larksoken with every killing. And when Dalgliesh discovers the murdered body of the Acting Administrative Officer on the beach, he finds himself caught up in one of the most baffling murder cases of his career.

Cherringham parish council has invited Laurent Bourdain, mayor of a French village on the Brittany coast, to a gala reception to join the two villages in a mutually beneficial 'twinning.' The venue: Lady Repton's manor house, which her Grandson hopes to turn into a world-class conference center. An elaborate dinner worthy of the French dignitary has been prepared. But as the night wears on, and the wine flows, the mayor will vanish from the celebration, only to be found floating dead in the nearby lake.

Virgil knows the town of Trippton, Minnesota, a little too well. A few years back, he investigated the corrupt - and, as it turned out, homicidal - local school board, and now the town's back in view with more alarming news: A woman's been found dead, frozen in a block of ice. There's a possibility that it might be connected to a high school class of 20 years ago that has a midwinter reunion coming up, and so, wrapping his coat a little tighter, Virgil begins to dig into 20 years' worth of traumas, feuds, and bad blood.

Detective Inspector Macleod returns to his island home 20 years after the painful loss of his wife. With a disposition forged in strong religious conservatism, he must bond with his new partner, the free spirited and upcoming female star of the force, to seek the killer of a young woman and shine a light on the evil beneath the surface. To do so, he must once again stand in the place where he lost everything. Only at the water’s edge will everything be made new.

On her first day back with the Denton PD after a major trauma, Detective Josie Quinn is on the hunt for a missing woman, Krystal Duncan, the mother of one of five children killed in a devastating school bus crash. Hours later, Josie finds Krystal’s body beside her daughter’s grave, her lips sealed together forever with wax.

The streets of San Francisco aren’t as sunny as the city pretends they are. Detective Lennon Gray has learned this the hard way, and it’s starting to wear on her. When a new case plunges her into the depths of the transient community, Lennon must once again face ugly truths about humanity. Her new partner makes things a little easier, though. Agent Ambrose Mars is charming—innocent, somehow, despite his own hard years in the field. The combination leaves Lennon fascinated and disturbed at the same time, and she’s even more drawn to him for it.

Over a decade before the events of the manga series, a chance encounter leads professional bodyguard Yukichi Fukuzawa to begrudgingly take an arrogant boy genius named Ranpo Edogawa under his wing.

Dirk Pitt doesn't go looking for adventure: it finds him easily enough. His chance witnessing of an airship disaster - which nearly kills him - and subsequent discovery of the gruesome fate of the crew sets in motion the most nail-biting chain of events of his career. The hijacking on a golf course of one of the world's most powerful leaders; an exotic but outrageous undercover operation in the Caribbean; the sinister intrigue of a secret power base on the moon...Pitt's considerable resources and guile are about to be tested to the limit.

When Inspector Peter Glebsky arrives at a remote ski chalet on vacation, the last thing he intends to do is get involved in any police work. He's there to ski, drink brandy, and loaf around in blissful solitude. But he hadn't counted on the other vacationers, an eccentric bunch, including a famous hypnotist, a physicist with a penchant for gymnastic feats, a sulky teenager of indeterminate gender, and the mysterious Mr. and Mrs. Moses.

An English bobbie returning from night patrol finds a corpse in evening dress locked in the stocks on the village green. He identifies the body immediately. Andrew Vereker was not a well-loved man, and narrowing down the suspects is not going to be an easy job. The Vereker family are corrupt and eccentric - and hardly cooperative. It's another case for the resourceful Superintendent Hannasyde, who sets off on the trail of a killer so cunning that even his consummate powers of detection are tested to their limits.

When two young boys discover human bones buried beneath a tree in a trailer park, Detective Josie Quinn races to join her team at the scene. She used to play in those woods as a child, happier outside and away from her abusive mother, Belinda Rose. Josie’s past crashes into her present when a rare dental condition confirms the bones belong to a teenage foster-child who was murdered 30 years ago. A girl named Belinda Rose.

When Cora Lansquenet is savagely murdered with a hatchet, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother Richard's funeral suddenly takes on a chilling significance. At the reading of Richard's will, Cora was clearly heard to say, "It's been hushed up very nicely, hasn't it.... But he was murdered, wasn't he?"

In desperation, the family solicitor turns to Hercule Poirot to unravel the mystery....

Los Angeles, August 4, 1962. The city broils through a midsummer heat wave. Marilyn Monroe ODs. A B-movie starlet is kidnapped. The overhyped LAPD overreacts. Chief Bill Parker’s looking for some getback. The Monroe deal looks like a moneymaker. He calls in Freddy Otash. The freewheeling Freddy O: tainted ex-cop, defrocked private eye, dope fiend, and freelance extortionist. A man who lives by the maxim “Opportunity is love.” Freddy gets to work. He dimly perceives Marilyn Monroe’s death and the kidnapped starlet to be a poisonous riddle that only he has the guts and the brains to untangle

Late one evening, as the final church bell rings out, Sandra Deakin’s cold and lifeless body is found in the overgrown graveyard with multiple stab wounds. When Detective Kim Stone rushes to the scene, the violence of the attack convinces her that this murder was deeply personal. What could have caused such hate?

London. A snowy December, 1888. Sherlock Holmes, 34, is languishing and back on cocaine after a disastrous Ripper investigation. Watson can neither comfort nor rouse his friend - until a strangely encoded letter arrives from Paris. Mlle La Victoire, a beautiful French cabaret star, writes that her illegitimate son by an English lord has disappeared, and she has been attacked in the streets of Montmartre.

A grand treasure for fans of the grande dame of mystery, The Harlequin Tea Set and Other Stories brings together nine rare and brilliant Christie tales of murder and detection that span nearly half a century of her storytelling genius. In "The Mystery of the Spanish Chest," Hercule Poirot unravels the psychological conundrums that motivate a killer.... In "The Actress," a great star's shady past becomes the plaything of a blackmailer.... In "The Harlequin Tea Set," Mr. Harley Quin helps a man save his loved ones from the greedy hand of murder.

North Yorkshire, England. Detective Chief Inspector Harry Grimm is reluctantly easing into life in the dales. As he gradually acclimatizes to the slower pace of the countryside while he awaits a return to the city, he’s called out to inspect a farmer’s crushed body. And despite the doctor on site declaring it a tragic mishap, the seasoned police officer rolls up his sleeves when evidence points to foul play. With a mysterious clue the only connection and the not-so-quiet village in self-imposed lockdown, the city-bred cop hunts for a link lethal enough to lead to murder.