Crime Fiction Police Procedural Suspense

The polluted waters of the canals in Venice are an ever-present issue; but environmental concerns become significant in Commissario Guido Brunetti's work when an investigator from the Carabiniere—looking into the illegal hauling of garbage—asks for a favor. But the investigator is not the only one with a special request. Brunetti's father-in-law needs help and a mysterious woman comes into the picture. And the Commissario soon finds himself in the middle of an investigation into murder and corruption more dangerous than anything he's seen before.

John Sandford's best-selling Lucas Davenport series continues with the fast-paced, compelling thriller, Night Prey. A series of deaths leads to the possibility of a brutal serial killer of unusual skill and savagery. And if Lucas is right, the killer is just getting warmed up....

Until a chance assignment takes GBI investigator Will Trent to the state penitentiary, and to a prisoner who says he recognizes the MO. The attack looks identical to the one he was accused of eight years earlier. The prisoner’s always insisted that he was innocent, and now he’s sure he has proof. The killer is still out there. As Will digs into both crimes, it becomes clear that he must solve the original case in order to reach the truth

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....

Investigative journalist Laura Chambers is back in her tiny hometown of Hillsborough, North Carolina, the one place she swore never to return. Fired from The Boston Globe, her career in shambles, she reluctantly takes a job with the local paper. The work is simple, unimportant, and worst of all, boring - at least until a missing girl turns up dead, the body impeccably clean, dressed to be the picture of innocence. Years earlier, 10-year-old Patty Finch left home and never made it back. But for the people of Hillsborough, Patty was just the beginning.

As the holidays approach, Detective Lindsay Boxer and her friends in the Women's Murder Club have much to celebrate. Crime is down. The medical examiner's office is quiet. Even the courts are showing some Christmas spirit. And the news cycle is so slow that journalist Cindy Thomas is on assignment to tell a story about the true meaning of the season for San Francisco. Then, a fearsome criminal known only as "Loman" seizes control of the headlines. He is planning a deadly surprise for Christmas morning.

Piper cycles off one hot Oklahoma evening for a sleepover with her new friend, Miley, from summer camp. But when she doesn’t come home, her grandparents raise the alarm. Their little angel is missing, last seen on her pink bicycle, heading toward the dark woods on Black Heart Lane. Detective Kimberley King knows that the first 24 hours in a missing-child investigation are the most critical, but with no witnesses, and darkness falling in the small town of Dead Woman Crossing, she begins to fear the worst.

With the lovely Priscilla Halburton-Smythe away in London, Hamish Macbeth, the constable of the small Scottish town of Lochdubh, pines for company during the long Scottish winter. He gets his wish - and more - when a troupe of flashy, urbane filmmakers clamors into the nearby town of Drim. Before long bedlam erupts around their make-believe mystery - and culminates in the sudden appearance of one very real corpse.

When a rapist is found mutilated in a brutal attack, Detective Kim Stone and her team are called in to bring a swift resolution. But, as more vengeful killings come to light, it soon becomes clear that there is someone far more sinister at work.

On her sixtieth birthday, a woman commits suicide. When the case lands on Detective Carl Mørck’s desk, he can’t imagine what this has to do with Department Q, Copenhagen’s cold cases division since the cause of death seems to be clear. But his superior, Marcus Jacobsen, is convinced that this is not in fact a suicide, but a murder related to an unsolved case that has been plaguing him since 1988.

When young wife and mother Tara Burke goes missing with her baby girl, all eyes are on her husband, Lucas. He paints her not as a missing person but a wayward wife — until a gruesome piece of evidence turns the investigation criminal. While Chronicle reporter Cindy Thomas pursues the story and M.E. Claire Washburn harbors theories that run counter to the SFPD’s, ADA Yuki Castellano sizes Lucas up as a textbook domestic offender...who suddenly puts forward an unexpected suspect.

Balford-le-Nez is a dying seatown on the coast of Essex. But when a member of the town's small but growing Asian community is found dead on its beach, his neck broken, sleepy Balford-le-Nez ignites. Working solo without her longtime partner, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, Sergeant Barbara Havers must probe not only the mind of a murderer and a case very close to her own heart, but the terrible price people pay for deceiving others...and themselves.

Book 1 in the thrilling new crime series, by David J. Gatward, author of the DCI Harry Grimm crime series, and set in the hauntingly beautiful Somerset countryside.

Mickey Haller gets the text, "Call me ASAP—187," and the California penal code for murder immediately gets his attention. Murder cases have the highest stakes and the biggest paydays, and they always mean Haller has to be at the top of his game. When Mickey learns that the victim was his own former client, a prostitute he thought he had rescued and put on the straight and narrow path, he knows he is on the hook for this one. He soon finds out that she was back in LA and back in the life. Far from saving her, Mickey may have been the one who put her in danger.

When a man's body is discovered crammed into the boot of an abandoned car in a remote location, DI Tom Janssen and his team must unpick his life to find out how he came to be there. The victim was a local man, popular with some although hated by others, and he had a habit of making enemies, enemies that any sane man would seek to avoid. For once, the team do not struggle to find a suspect or a motive for his murder, but with several to choose from, how can they determine who delivered the killing blows?

In a busy shopping center, a little girl clutches a teddy bear, clinging to it in the absence of her mother, Katrina. Hours later, Katrina’s body is discovered in an abandoned building. For Detective Kim Stone, it looks like a quick, functional murder. But Kim’s instincts tell her there’s more to this senseless murder than meets the eye. What was the motive for killing a young mother out shopping with her child?

Rebus is juggling four cases trying to nail one killer - who might just lead back to the infamous Bible John. And he's doing it under the scrutiny of an internal inquiry led by a man he has just accused of taking backhanders from Glasgow's Mr Big. As if this wasn't enough, there are TV cameras at his back investigating a miscarriage of justice, making Rebus a criminal in the eyes of a million or more viewers. Just one mistake is likely to mean an unpleasant and not particularly speedy death or, worse still, losing his job.

Alex Cross is back - and so is a raging and suicidal Gary Soneji. Out of prison and dying from the AIDS virus he contracted there, he will get revenge on Cross before he dies. In addition, we are introduced to a new pair of rivals whose paths cross that of Alex and Soneji. Thomas Augustine Pierce has been chasing his demon, Mr. Smith, since the savage murder of his fiancée. Mr. Smith is a unique monster, with actions toward his victims so insane - so unimaginable - that he is thought of as "not of the Earth".

Three bodies, three different towns. Each victim was a sorority girl - pretty, privileged, and brutally murdered. There are no fingerprints, no clues. He is scrupulously careful, craving those exquisite seconds when the light fades from his victim's eyes. But the rush never lasts, and the killing won't stop - not until one special woman has been made to suffer....

The scene in the West Village studio appears to be classic crime-of-passion: two wineglasses by the bed, music playing, and a young sculptor named Ariel Byrd with the back of her head bashed in. But when Dallas tracks down the wealthy Upper East Side woman who called 911, the details don’t add up. Gwen Huffman is wealthy, elegant, comforted by her handsome fiancé as she sheds tears over the trauma of finding the body - but why did it take an hour to report it? And why is she lying about little things?