Crime Fiction Detective

Gates listened as, one by one, the guns stopped with empty magazines. The shooters paused, staring at their handy work. That was a big mistake. They should have been reloading as fast as they could. Fred Gates began working in the Special Investigations Division, an elite and covert undercover unit within the police department, investigating financial crimes associated with small drug operations.

On a hot summer’s day, the sleepy town of Mount Chester is thrown into turmoil when 17-year-old local girl Jenna goes missing. Within hours, the case takes an agonizing turn when her body is discovered in the isolated mountains. Detective Kay Sharp rushes to the scene, hiking for miles to the base of Wildfire Ridge. From the markings on Jenna’s body, it’s clear that she was brutally murdered. Near the victim, Kay finds a butterfly-shaped hair clip with a set of fingerprints that could be a vital clue. In the hunt for the truth, Kay turns the small town upside down.

When a dog walker in a local Virginia park finds the bodies of a mother and daughter, Detective Amanda Steele is first on the scene. Her own daughter has a toy just like the girl’s elephant and seeing the child like this is her worst nightmare come true. Heartbroken, she vows to get justice.

Acclaimed best-selling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found brutally murdered in his home on the night before he’s planning to leave Japan and relocate to Vancouver. His body is found in his office, a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, both of whom have rock solid alibis. Or so it seems.

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.

It's just days before the Cherringham Regatta - an annual event that draws luxury yachts from across the country, as well as the local boat crowd, all looking to party on the river. But it's no party when boats are vandalized, and a wealthy executive turns up missing, with his blood on the deck. As the Regatta date looms, Jack and Sarah discover that what's happening on the water looks less like vandalism and more like murder.

An abandoned baby is the last thing Detective Madison Harper expects to find as she drives to her first day back at work since the case that ripped her life apart. But as she cradles the shivering child close, all her instincts tell her there’s something more sinister at play. Then she finds a lone sneaker down a muddy trail nearby, the laces spattered with blood....

Stephen Munro, a demobbed army officer, reconciles himself to taking a job as a footman to make ends meet. Employed at Wintringham Hall, the delightful but decaying Sussex country residence of the elderly Lady Susan Carey, his first task entails welcoming her eccentric guests to a weekend house-party, at which her bombastic nephew—who recognises Stephen from his former life—decides that an after-dinner séance would be more entertaining than bridge. Then Cicely disappears!

When a collection of human bones is unearthed during a routine archaeological dig, a Black Country field suddenly becomes a complex crime scene for Detective Kim Stone. As the bones are sorted, it becomes clear that the grave contains more than one victim. The bodies hint at unimaginable horror, bearing the markings of bullet holes and animal traps. Forced to work alongside Detective Travis, with whom she shares a troubled past, Kim begins to uncover a dark, secretive relationship between the families who own the land in which the bodies were found.

In The Lewis Man, the second book of the trilogy, Fin Macleod has returned to the Isle of Lewis, the storm-tossed, wind-scoured outer Hebridean island where he was born and raised. Having left behind his adult life in Edinburgh - including his wife and his career in the police force - the former Detective Inspector is intent on repairing past relationships and restoring his parents' derelict cottage. His plans are interrupted when an unidentified corpse is recovered from a Lewis peat bog. The only clue to its identity is a DNA match to a local farmer, the now-senile Tormod Macdonald....

An illegal immigrant is found murdered in an Edinburgh housing scheme: a racist attack or something else? Rebus is drawn into the case but has other problems: his old police station has closed, and his masters would rather he retire than stick around. As Rebus investigates, he must visit an asylum seekers' detention centre, deal with the sleazy Edinburgh underworld and maybe even fall in love.... Siobhan has problems of her own.

As snow falls on the small town of Lost Creek, Colorado, a three-year-old boy is found playing quietly in his car seat, his mother, cold as ice, slumped against the steering wheel in front. Tearing herself away from reconnecting with her special-agent father who abandoned her for his career, Detective Madison Harper is haunted by the fear in the boy’s sky blue eyes and vows to find justice for this innocent child, left motherless just days before Christmas.

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford have just become the proud owners of an old house in an English village. Along with the property, they have inherited some worthless bric-a-brac, including a collection of antique books. While rustling through a copy of The Black Arrow, Tuppence comes upon a series of apparently random underlinings. However, when she writes down the letters, they spell out a very disturbing message: "Mary Jordan did not die naturally." And 60 years later, Mary's enemies are still ready to kill....

Elvis Cole's relationship with attorney Lucy Chenier is strained. When she moved from Louisiana to join Elvis in Los Angeles, she never dreamed that violence would so easily touch her life - but then the unthinkable happens. While Lucy is away on business and her ten-year-old son, Ben, is staying with Elvis, Ben disappears without a trace. Desperate to believe that the boy has run away, evidence soon mounts to suggest a much darker scenario. Joining forces with his enigmatic partner, Joe Pike, Elvis frantically searches for Ben with the help of LAPD Detective Carol Starkey.

Cherringham is devastated. Otto Brendl, the likeable old man who had hosted the classic Punch-and-Judy show for the kids each summer, died suddenly of a heart attack. But while the memorial service is being planned, Jack becomes suspicious that Otto wasn't just the friendly man next door. Maybe there's more behind the heart attack? Soon Jack and Sarah are on the trail of a particularly sinister murderer - and together they will find that there's not only one kind of justice.

Inspector Hemingway has his work cut out for him when a seemingly civilized card game ends in a double murder. The two crimes appear identical, but were they carried out by the same hand? When Timothy Harte's young fiancé - a put-upon secretary and suspected gold digger - becomes the inspector's prime suspect, Harte is determined to prove her innocence.

Lawyer Bobby Carter did a lot of work for the wrong type of people. Now he’s dead and it was no accident. Besides a distraught family and a heap of powerful friends, Carter’s left behind his share of enemies. So, who dealt the fatal blow? DC Jack Laidlaw’s reputation precedes him. He’s not a team player, but he’s got a sixth sense for what’s happening on the streets. His boss chalks the violence up to the usual rivalries, but is it that simple? As two Glasgow gangs go to war, Laidlaw needs to find out who got Carter before the whole city explodes.

Two young women are missing in Oslo. Strangers to each other, but last seen at the same party. When the body of one of them is found with fresh stitches along her hairline, the hunt is on to find a murderer with singular compulsions. Catching this criminal calls for a detective with a singular mind: Harry Hole. But Harry is gone: fired from the police force and down and out in Los Angeles. It seems like nothing can entice him back home—until someone close to him comes under threat. Now the clock is ticking, for Harry's friend and for the missing woman.

Some of the greatest music ever committed to vinyl has come out of Italy. And some of the greatest music to come out of Italy is the rich diversity of soundtracks composed for the indigenous film industry – particularly for gruesome thrillers known as ‘gialli'. The maestros who composed for these include Ennio Morricone, Piero Piccioni, Armand Trovajoli…And Valerius Passeri. He was one of the finest composers of this genre and his original LPs from his 1960s heyday fetch a fortune from collectors. No one disputes that Passeri was a genius…The argument is whether or not he was a murderer.

Mr Goon is on holiday, and there's a new policeman in town. While the Find-Outers are up to their usual games, he stumbles upon a puzzling mystery: the theatre safe has been robbed! The top suspect is Boysie, the pantomime cat, but Fatty, Larry, Daisy, Pip and Bets aren't convinced. Who could the real thief be?