Crime Fiction Detective

When a body is found stuffed into a barrel at a garbage dump, covered in long red lacerations, Detective Jenna Alton and her new deputy, David Kane, rush to the scene. Nothing ever happens in the small American town of Black Rock Falls, so Jenna believes the victim must be one of two recent missing persons, and she fears for the life of the other. Both were strangers to the town, but there's nothing else to link them. Jenna knows someone must have seen something, but no one's talking.

A shooting incident at a private school just north of Edinburgh. Two 17-year olds killed by an ex-Army loner who has gone off the rails. As Detective Inspector John Rebus puts it, 'there's no mystery'... exceptthe why. This question takes Rebus into the heart of a shattered community. Ex-Army himself, Rebus becomes fascinated by the killer, andfinds he is not alone. Army investigators are on the scene, and won't be shaken off. The killer had friends and enemies to spare - ranging from civic leaders to the local Goths - leaving behind a legacy of secrets and lies.

Detective Megan Carpenter is no stranger to evil. Escaping the horrors of her old life, she’s vowed never to let anyone hurt her or those she loves ever again. Joining the small police force in Jefferson County’s Port Townsend, Megan is determined to get every victim of a crime the justice they deserve. So when Ruth Turner walks into the Sheriff’s office claiming her sister Ida Watson has been missing for over a month, Megan’s instincts tell her that she needs to do more than just file a report.

Nobody likes The Complaints - they're the cops who investigate other cops. Complaints and Conduct Department, to give them their full title, but known colloquially as 'the Dark Side', or simply 'The Complaints'. Malcolm Fox works for The Complaints. He's just had a result, and should be feeling good about himself. But he's middle-aged, sour and unwell.

On holiday on the Cornish Riviera, Hercule Poirot is alarmed to hear pretty Nick Buckley describe her recent "accidental brushes with death". First, on a treacherous Cornish hillside, the brakes on her car failed. Then, on a coastal path, a falling boulder missed her by inches. Later, an oil painting fell and almost crushed her in bed. So when Poirot finds a bullet hole in Nick's sun hat, he decides that this girl needs his help. Can he find the would-be killer before he hits his target?

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, and John D. MacDonald all got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by the magazine.

The murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing who is intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts; or the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch. As Nicola leads her suitors towards the precipice, London--and, indeed, the whole world--seems to shamble after them in a corrosively funny novel of complexity and morality.

When a body is found beside the Roman Fort Gate on the London Wall, dressed as a Roman Soldier and with an antique Roman Gladius stabbed into their chest, it's tasked to DCI Declan Walsh and the team of the Last Chance Saloon to investigate the murder, leading them into a rabbit hole of similarly themed attacks - as re-enactors perform real-life battles at various locations for a "History of London" celebration during the day, with some taking a darker and more brutal approach at night.

Two young women are found murdered in Oslo, both drowned in their own blood. Media coverage quickly reaches fever pitch: Could this be the work of a serial killer? The crime scenes offer no coherent clues, the police investigation is stalled, and the one man who might be able to help doesn't want to be found. Traumatized by his last case, Inspector Harry Hole has lost himself in the squalor of Hong Kong's opium dens. Yet when he is compelled, at last, to return to Norway - his father is dying - Harry's buried instincts begin to take over. Then a female MP is discovered brutally murdered.

Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist for both North Carolina and Quebec, has come from Charlotte to Montreal during the bleak days of December to testify as an expert witness at a murder trial. She should be going over her notes, but instead she's digging in the basement of a pizza parlor. Not fun. Freezing cold. Crawling rats. And now, the skeletonized remains of three young women. How did they get there? When did they die?

Thomas Fool is an Information Man, an investigator tasked with cataloging and filing reports on the endless stream of violence and brutality that flows through Hell. His job holds no reward or satisfaction, because Hell has rules but no justice. Each new crime is stamped "Do Not Investigate" and dutifully filed away in the depths of the Bureaucracy. But when an important political delegation arrives and a human is found murdered in a horrific manner - extravagant even by Hell's standards - everything changes.

When human remains are found in a fisherman's crab pot, Detective Alana Mack faces her toughest case yet. As she unravels a complex web of genetic links, Alana becomes the target of a seemingly random attack, leaving her injured and reliant on her ex-husband for help.

When London’s finest jazz musicians, the Dizzy Heights, are booked to play the glitzy Midsummer Ball at a country house in Oxfordshire, they expect a weekend filled with flappers and toffs having a roaring good time. But the festivities at Bilverton House take a turn for the worse when the group are stranded by a summer storm. And when a member of the Bilverton family turns up dead in a locked room in an apparent suicide, Skins, Dunn and Ellie realize this is going to be a much tougher gig than they thought.

Maurice Seton was a famous mystery writer - but no murder from his imagination could equal the ghastliness of his own death. When his grotesquely mutilated corpse is found in a drifting dinghy, ripples of horror spread among his bizarre neighbors: the cruel and cynical drama critic, the celebrated recluse, and the rakish young heir. It is up to Superintendent Adam Dalgliesh and his extraordinary aunt to discover the shocking truth about Seton's past - before the plot takes another murderous turn.

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.

After getting canned from the Seattle PD, brilliant, wisecracking Thomas Prescott follows his sister Lacy to Philadelphia, where she swims on the Drexel University team. While Thomas’s slapstick antics mask a keen analytic mind, it’s his nose for trouble that leads him again and again into dicey situations. The ex–homicide detective is not long in Philly before getting caught up in two high-powered criminal cases. Thomas stumbles into a crime scene amid the Occupy Philadelphia protests. Activist Brooke Wexley has been strangled within sight of city hall.

From the outside, Glenfarach looks like a quaint, sleepy village, nestled in the heart of Cairngorms National Park, but things aren't what they seem. The place is thick with security cameras, and there's a strict nine o'clock curfew, because Glenfarach is the last safe haven for people who've served their sentences but can't be safely released into the general population. For Detective Constable Edward Reekie, this was supposed to be a simple delivery job—drive his new boss up to HMP Grampian and collect Marky Bishop, take him to Glenfarach, then head back home again.

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.

When the body of Leann Truitt is found in a secluded cove in Mystery Bay, Detective Megan Carpenter is one of the first on the scene. The victim has telltale marks on her wrists, ankles, and neck where she has been bound. But that’s not all. Next to Leann’s body lies a puzzling clue - an unusual symbol scratched into a rock. With rookie Deputy Ronnie Marsh under her wing and the investigation underway, Megan starts to receive disturbing messages. Someone knows about her traumatic past. They know what she did.

It is World War II, and while the RAF struggles to keep the Luftwaffe at bay, Britain faces an even more sinister threat from "the enemy within" - Nazis posing as ordinary citizens. With pressure mounting, the intelligence service appoints two unlikely spies, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. Their mission: to seek out a man and a woman from among the colorful guests at Sans Souci, a seaside hotel. But this assignment is no stroll along the promenade - N and M have just murdered Britain's finest agent and no one at all can be trusted....