Crime Fiction Detective

The Golden Age of Detection has enjoyed a great resurgence of interest in recent years, with publishers mining back catalogues to bring the best of yesteryear to very receptive new audiences. What is it about a literary movement that took off in the 1920s that still appeals to book lovers in the 2020s? In this authoritative new study, John Curran reveals that it is the ludic qualities of classic crime fiction that continue to intrigue.

For three years, Detective Jude Fontaine was kept from the outside world. Held in an underground cell, her only contact was with her sadistic captor, and reading his face was her entire existence. Learning his every line, every movement, and every flicker of thought is what kept her alive. After her experience with isolation and torture, she is left with a fierce desire for justice - and a heightened ability to interpret the body language of both the living and the dead.

On a beautiful morning in mid-May, the body of a young woman is found in one of Notting Hill's private gardens. To passersby, the pretty girl in the white dress looks as if she's sleeping. But Reagan Keating has been murdered, and the lead detective, DI Kerry Boatman, turns to Gemma James for help. She and Gemma worked together on a previous investigation, and Gemma has a personal connection to the case: Reagan was the nanny of a child who attends the same dance studio as Toby, Gemma, and Kincaid's son.

Scandal hits the staid publishing house of Barnabas when one of the directors is found dead in the strong-room. Suspicion immediately falls on his wife's lover, the junior partner in the firm. But how does an unpublished Restoration comedy come to feature in the tragedy? And what of the odd disappearance of another director twenty years before?

On the edge of Cherringham lies St. Francis' Convent, home of the Sisters of St. Francis, a small Catholic teaching order. Here a handful of nuns worship, contemplate, and pray. And here one Easter the beloved local priest Father Byrne meets his unexpected demise. The circumstances of the death are suspicious, and soon Jack and Sarah are on the case: what secrets did Father Byrne take to the grave? Who wanted him dead? And is religious faith ever a guarantee of innocence?

When a popular high school cheerleader dies of a suspected heroin overdose, it becomes clear that the opioid epidemic has spread even to the idyllic town of Paradise. It will be up to police chief Jesse Stone to unravel the supply chain and unmask the criminals behind it, and the investigation has a clear epicenter: Paradise High School.

Detective Megan Carpenter is no stranger to horrifying crime scenes, but when she arrives at the home of a woman whose body has been brutalized, Megan is shocked to discover that she knows the victim. Monique Delmont helped Megan when she was in danger years ago. And the killer has left a disturbing calling card...two laminated photographs of a 16-year-old high school girl - Megan.

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.

The body of Amos Price lies in a pool of blood on the polished floor of an otherwise empty house. With no signs of a break in and no clues left at the scene, Detective Jenna Alton is at a loss. But as the team begins to unpick the life of the reclusive victim, they discover a disturbing link between Amos and the disappearance of several young girls in the county going back years.

It’s hiking season in Black Rock Falls, and the small town in Montana is flooded with visitors. But when a hiker finds a human skull on a deserted trail in the woods that surround the town, Detective Jenna Alton is called in to investigate. With no missing persons reported, Jenna has no leads. Then her team makes a shocking discovery - the body of another hiker, a young man, tied to a tree and riddled with bullets. Could the two murders be linked? As more bodies are found, Jenna and her deputy David Kane know that they must venture deep into the forest to find and face the killer.

Jude has never been averse to a bit of a flutter; her friend Carole, on the other hand, thinks that the local betting shop is a den of iniquity. But when Jude stumbles upon the body of a Polish immigrant, Tadeusz Jankowski, the race is on to find his killer. The odds aren’t looking good. No one seems to know anything about the mysterious Tadeusz - even his sister can’t shed any light on what he was doing in Fethering.

An honest policeman, Sergeant Wigan, escorts a drunk man home one night to keep him out of trouble and, seeing his fine book collection, slowly falls into the gentle art of book collecting. Just as the friendship is blossoming, the policeman's book-collecting friend is murdered. To solve the mystery of why the victim was killed, and which of his rare books was taken, Wigan dives into the world of 'runners' and book collectors, where avid agents will gladly cut you for a first edition and then offer you a lift home afterwards.

As the head of the Major Investigation Team, Detective Inspector Laura Warburton must catch a killer that is preying on vulnerable women. The case strikes dangerously close to home for Laura. Once a victim of domestic violence at the hands of her ex-fiancé, Laura escaped with a shattered reputation, a drinking problem and tormented memories. With the body count piling up, Laura barely holds herself together as she finds and pieces together the fragmented clues at the crime scenes. Like breadcrumbs, the clues lead her down a dark road to a past she wishes to forget.

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....

When a young red-haired woman is found brutally murdered in downtown Chicago, one detail stands out: the red lipstick encircling her wrists and ankles. Detective Harriet Foster is on the case, even though she’s still grieving the sudden death of her partner. As a Black woman in a male-dominated department, Foster anticipates a rocky road ahead acclimating to a new team—and building trust with her new partner isn’t coming easily. After another victim turns up with the same lipstick markings, Foster suspects she’s looking for a serial killer.

When Ella Tate stumbles into Black Rock Falls, her exhausted and bloodied body is a terrifying sight, but not as frightening as the story she has to tell. Ambushed on their way into town when they stopped to help a man by the side of the road, Ella and her friend Sky ran when he pulled a knife on them. But only one of them got away.

When the body of a woman is found hanging from a tree in her front garden, rookie Detective Morgan Brookes is first on the scene. But Olivia Potter is past saving. And when her husband and daughters cannot be traced, Morgan knows there is more to this tragedy. And then she finds them. Lying huddled together in the dark basement, each of their faces covered with a small cotton cloth, their bodies cold to the touch. But as Morgan kneels beside the family, she realizes that one of the girls is still breathing.

Yoshitaka, who was about to leave his marriage and his wife, is poisoned by arsenic-laced coffee and dies. His wife, Ayane, is the logical suspect—except that she was hundreds of miles away when he was murdered. The lead detective, Tokyo Police Detective Kusanagi, is immediately smitten with her and refuses to believe that she could have had anything to do with the crime. His assistant, Kaoru Utsumi, however, is convinced Ayane is guilty. While Utsumi's instincts tell her one thing, the facts of the case are another matter.

After the brutal abduction and murder of two young girls, now a third is missing, presumably gone to the same sad end. Detective Sergeant John Rebus, smoking and drinking too much, his own daughter spirited away by his estranged wife, is one of many policemen hunting the killer. Then, the messages begin: knotted string and matchstick crosses taunt Rebus with a puzzle only he can solve.

She’d been running for so long, it felt like her legs were on fire. Her heart was pounding so hard, she was sure it would give out. Around her, the snow was falling, casting an eerie silence over the town. A crack behind her, a foot snapping a branch, it warned her that he was still coming. She whipped around and saw the knife gleaming in his hand....