Crime Fiction Detective

It’s late evening when the Regional Control Centre receives a mysterious 999 call. No one speaks, but the call location is somewhere along a narrow, hardly used tree-lined stretch of road that leads nowhere. With no uniformed officers free to investigate, they pass the call on to DC Judy Lane at Llangwelli station. Lane informs DS Norman Norman who, concerned it may be a trap, agrees to meet her at the scene. But when Norman arrives, he finds a dead motorcyclist sitting against a tree, and the young detective unconscious nearby.

A sunken DC-3 lying on the Caribbean floor. Its cargo: $10.25 million in gold ingots, emeralds and uncut diamonds guarded by the remains of two men, one woman and a very small boy. The fortune was there for the taking, and ready to grab it were a blue-blooded oilman with his own offshore rig, a gangster so cold and independent that even the Mafia couldn't do business with him and a psychopathic hired assassin.

A junkie lies dead in an Edinburgh squat, spreadeagled, cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, a five-pointed star daubed on the wall above. Just another dead addict - until John Rebus begins to chip away at the indifference, treachery, deceit and sleaze that lurks behind the facade of the Edinburgh familiar to tourists. Only Rebus seems to care about a death which looks more like a murder every day, about a seductive danger he can almost taste, appealing to the darkest corners of his mind.

Best-selling author Jasper Fforde begins an effervescent new series. It's Easter in Reading - a bad time for eggs - and no one can remember the last sunny day. Humpty Dumpty, well-known nursery favourite, large egg, ex-convict and former millionaire philanthropist, is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town.

When Victoria Davies was pushed off her stately home's roof in 2001, all evidence pointed to her husband Michael. But now, 20 years later a letter has appeared, written by Victoria before her death; a letter that was never received, and a letter that brings new suspects into the fray; Labor MPs Shaun Donnal, Andrew MacIntyre, and Charles Baker.

It's the early 1980s in Belfast. Sean Duffy, a conflicted Catholic cop in the Protestant RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary), is recruited by MI5 to hunt down Dermot McCann, an IRA master bomber who has made a daring escape from the notorious Maze prison. In the course of his investigations Sean discovers a woman who may hold the key to Dermot's whereabouts; she herself wants justice for her daughter who died in mysterious circumstances in a pub locked from the inside.

Jason Brazel is an out-of-work journalist who lives in Penrith with his family and mother-in-law, Amita. She knows everyone and everything that’s going on in this corner of the Lakes. So when it’s discovered that Madeline Forbisher, one of Amita’s fellow regulars at the bingo club has died, found by the postman outside her crumbling country home close to Ullswater Lake, she senses immediately this is no accident. The trouble is, no one else seems to take her suspicions seriously. That is, until she enlists the help of her friends at the Penrith Bingo Club.

SFPD Sergeant Lindsay Boxer has guns on her mind. There’s buzz of a last-ditch shipment of drugs and weapons crossing the Mexican border ahead of new restrictive gun laws. Before Lindsay can act, her top informant tips her to a case that hits disturbingly close to home. Former cops. Professional hits. All with the same warning scrawled on their bodies.

The April Fool’s Day had been a roaring success for all, it seemed - except for poor Mr. Cartell, who had ended up in the ditch - forever. Then there was the case of Mr. Percival Pyke Period’s letter of condolence, sent before the body was found - not to mention the family squabbles. It was a puzzling crime for Superintendent Alleyn.

A serial kidnapper is on the loose in a small town in Maine, targeting wealthy women and demanding a huge ransom in bitcoin for their safe return. When his latest victim’s husband claims that he can’t come up with the money, the word “deadline” takes on a disturbingly literal meaning. The local police are out of their depth, but Colter Shaw takes the lead in the investigation. Soon, he’s using his survivalist instincts to uncover clues and pursue suspects, putting his own life on the line to catch the would-be killer before the countdown hits zero.

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

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 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.

About the best that can be said of wealthy Maggie Baird is that inside her middle-aged body, there still beats the heart of a beautiful tart. So when her car catches fire with Maggie in it, there are five likely suspects right on the premises of her luxurious Highlands cottage. Lochdubh police constable Hamish Macbeth has to question Maggie's timid niece and four former lovers, one of whom Maggie had intended to pick for her husband. All five are equally poor - with ample motive and opportunity to monkey with Maggie's car.

Ngaio Marsh returns to her New Zealand roots to transplant the classic country house murder mystery to an upland sheep station on South Island - and produces one of her most exotic and intriguing novels. One summer evening in 1942, Flossie Rubrick, MP, one of the most formidable women in New Zealand, goes to her husband’s wool shed to rehearse a patriotic speech - and disappears.

Can Lord Peter Wimsey prove that Harriet Vane is not guilty of murder--or find the real poisoner in time to save her from the gallows? Impossible, it seems. The Crown's case is watertight. The police are adamant that the right person is on trial. The judge's summing up is also clear. Harriet Vane is guilty of the killing her lover. And Harriet Vane shall hang. But the jury disagrees.

Rebus is off the case - literally. A few days into the murder inquiry of an Edinburgh art dealer, Rebus blows up at a colleague. He is sent to the Scottish Police College for 'retraining' - in other words, he's in the Last Chance Saloon. Rebus is assigned to an old, unsolved case, but there are those in his team who have their own secrets - and they'll stop at nothing to protect them. Rebus is also asked to act as a go-between for gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty.

Hard-boiled detective Sam Spade is hired to locate a client's sister by tailing the sister's companion. Spade's partner Miles Archer takes on the assignment, and quickly both Archer and the man he was shadowing are murdered. As Spade pursues the mystery of his partner's death, he is drawn into a circle of colorful characters, and they are all after a legendary statuette of a falcon that had long ago been made for King Charles of Spain. Encrusted with jewels, it is worth a fortune.

In his #1 New York Times bestseller Plum Island, Nelson DeMille introduced listeenrs to NYPD Homicide Detective John Corey, who we first met on the back porch of his uncle’s waterfront mansion on Long Island, recovering from wounds incurred in the line of duty.

Life is good for DI Dan Hellier until the discovery of two headless, handless bodies buried in a bog on Dartmoor. How can he identify the victims when nobody has reported them missing? The tension mounts when the death of a young man plunges Hellier into the murky world of the Garrett family. Could the peaceful, family-run Animal Rescue Centre really be a cover for murder and other criminal activity? Hellier is about to learn just how far people will go to get what they want, as he races to catch a murderer before it’s too late.