Crime Fiction Police Procedural Suspense

The village of Badger's Drift is the essence of tranquillity. But when resident and well-loved spinster Miss Simpson takes a stroll in the nearby woods, she stumbles across something she was never meant to see, and there's only one way to keep her quiet. Miss Simpson's death is not suspicious, say the villagers. But Miss Lucy Bellringer refuses to rest: her friend has been murdered. She is sure of it.

John Sandford's acclaimed Prey novels featuring the brilliant Lucas Davenport have plunged millions of readers into the darkest recesses of the criminal mind.... When Lucas and his team gun down two bank robbers in the middle of a heist, Davenport falls prey to the purest and simplest criminal motivation: revenge.

It all started harmlessly enough. An egged window, a deflated car tire, and a few garden gnomes knocked over. But then, the silent calls began–late nights and early mornings to landlines and mobiles, and numbers that no one should have access to.

Mayhem. You won't find this story on television. Hollywood gets more than it bargained for when television's hottest star arrives at the Miami Police Department and develops an intense, professional interest in a camera-shy blood spatter analyst named Dexter Morgan. Mega-star Robert Chase is famous for losing himself in his characters. When he and a group of actors descend on the Miami Police Department for "research", Chase becomes fixated on Dexter Morgan, the blood spatter analyst with a sweet tooth for doughnuts and a seemingly average life.

A body has been found on the overlook near Mulholland Drive. The victim, identified as Dr. Stanley Kent, has two bullet holes in the back of his head, from what looks like an execution-style shooting. LAPD detective Harry Bosch is called out to investigate. As soon as Bosch begins retracing Dr. Kent's steps, contradictions emerge. While Kent doesn't seem to have had ties to organized crime, he did have access to dangerous radioactive substances from just about every hospital in Los Angeles County.

A businessman found hanged. A tortured and mutilated loaner. High finance has never been so deadly.... DI Nathaniel Caslin is spiralling toward a professional crisis. His biggest case in years has collapsed amid accusations of police intimidation. A rebuilt reputation is now facing ruin.... As the extremes of nationalist hate descend upon York, a refugee is tortured to death while a straightforward case of a bankrupt’s suicide proves to be anything but simple. How does an enigmatic campaigner with a secret to keep link these two disparate worlds?

A murder without motive. A bombing. The sins of the past revisited.... DI Nathaniel Caslin is heading up a specialist unit, an opportunity to make a real difference. Little does he know, decisions taken decades previously are about to threaten all that he holds dear.... Gangland tensions are on the rise as an uneasy peace is fractured in spectacular fashion. Two warring factions are lining up to unseat the other. Old adversaries rekindle their passion to exact revenge whilst the next generation seek to make a name for themselves.

A vicious murder. A case close to home. DI Simon Fenchurch is back. Rekindling his marriage helps put their shared trauma behind him. He's finally living his life again. But on a busy London street, Fenchurch and his wife witness a young woman being attacked in broad daylight, the vicious killer leaving her bleeding to death on the pavement.

When Detective Anjelica Henley is called to investigate the murder of a popular preacher in his own church, she discovers a second victim, tortured and tied to a bed in an upstairs room. He is alive, but barely, and his body shows signs of a dark religious ritual. With a revolving list of suspects and the media spotlight firmly on her, Henley is left with more questions than answers as she attempts to untangle both crimes. But when another body appears, the case takes on a new urgency. Unless she can apprehend the killer, the next victim may just be Henley herself.

An activist attorney is killed in a cute little L.A. trolley called Angels Flight, far from Harry Bosch's Hollywood turf. But the case is so explosive - and the dead man's enemies inside the LAPD are so numerous - that it falls to Harry to solve it. Now the streets are super heating. Harry's year-old Vegas marriage is unraveling. And the hunt for a killer is leading Harry to another high-profile L.A. murder case, one where every cop had a motive. The question is, did any have the guts?

In a remote sea loch on the west coast of Scotland, a fisherman disappears without trace. His remains are never found. A young man jumps from a bridge in Glasgow and falls to his death in the water below. DS Max Craigie uncovers evidence that links both victims. But if he can’t find out what cost them their lives, it won’t be long before more bodies turn up at the morgue. Soon cracks start to appear in the investigation, and Max’s past hurtles back to haunt him.

In a Dry Season, winner of the Anthony Award, is an outstanding example of mystery fiction. Peter Robinson's Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks conjures up memories of classic detectives like Philip Marlowe and Sherlock Holmes. An insufferable drought ravages the Yorkshire countryside, depleting the Thornfield Reservoir, revealing the remnants of the flooded town of Hobb's End and the terrible secrets kept safe within its watery tomb. Amongst the ruins, the remains of a woman's body are discovered.

When a revered sports legend falls victim to a brutal home invasion, a nation is shaken to its core. Outrage swells and the press and powers that be demand answers. DCI Evan Warlow, fresh from a well-earned vacation, is thrown into the cauldron to lead the investigation. But the victim, despite his iconic status, has secrets of his own. Amidst the chaos of jealousy and rivalry that swirls around the case, a darker underbelly emerges. The pursuit of truth transforms into a gripping hunt, but whose truth is the team hunting?

When the remains of a young woman are discovered near to Branodunum, a Roman archaeological site on the Norfolk coast, DI Tom Janssen and his team must work to discover who she was and how she came to be buried there. The area is steeped in myth and folklore, a site excavated many times over the years. Just how long has she lain there...and who wishes she'd never been discovered? As the victim’s life comes into sharp focus, it appears there is far more to those who crossed her path than anyone previously realised.

Community service clean-up was supposed to be a tedious affair. But, when a young offender stumbles upon a bin bag filled with human remains, a quiet Highland village is thrown into chaos. The investigation leads DCI Jack Logan to a remote and nightmarish cottage, where a forgotten freezer holds a disturbing discovery: a full set of human fingers. As more body parts are uncovered, Logan and his team hunt for a killer with a gruesome obsession for collecting trophies.

Newlywed Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is awakened by an urgent midnight call summoning her to a suspicious fire in the woods. When she arrives at the scene, she discovers a charred body. According to the coroner, the deceased, an Amish man named Milan Swanz, was chained to a stake and burned alive. It is an appalling and eerily symbolic crime against an upstanding husband and father.

When Grace Ozmian, the beautiful and reckless daughter of a wealthy tech billionaire, first goes missing, the NYPD assumes she has simply sped off on another wild adventure. Until the young woman's body is discovered in an abandoned warehouse in Queens, the head nowhere to be found. Lieutenant CDS Vincent D'Agosta quickly takes the lead. He knows his investigation will attract fierce scrutiny, so D'Agosta is delighted when FBI Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast shows up at the crime scene assigned to the case.

FBI Agent Emmy Dockery is absolutely relentless. She's young and driven, and her unique skill at seeing connections others miss has brought her an impressive string of arrests. But a shocking new case - unfolding across the country - has left her utterly baffled. The victims all appear to have died by accident, and have seemingly nothing in common. But this many deaths can't be coincidence. And the killer is somehow one step ahead of every move Dockery makes. How? To FBI Special Agent Harrison "Books" Bookman, everyone in the FBI is a suspect - particularly Emmy Dockery.

After a lifetime in service to the Soviet Union, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov may have found a way out. A high-profile homicide leads him to a cache of documents packed full of incriminating Kremlin gossip, which he uses as a bargaining chip to secure exit visas for himself and his Jewish wife. But just before the deal is concluded, Brezhnev's death sends the nation into turmoil, and makes escape impossible. His career derailed, the veteran cop is reduced to investigating penny-ante murders - one of which may lead somewhere very big indeed.

Orphaned at 18, a naïve and solitary Chris Pritchard joins the Metropolitan Police in search of a family, friends and a regular income. He is posted to Stoke Newington police station in London’s tough East End. Despite barely concealed contempt for her hapless new charge, his experienced instructor, WPC Dawn Matthews, puppy walks him through a journey, which is regularly amusing, frequently sad and occasionally bizarre. You will not listen to a more accurate account of how London was policed a generation ago.