Crime Mystery Fiction

Venezuela's overcrowded prison system is hell on earth. Murders, corruption, and gang wars are nothing out of the ordinary. On a humid summer's day in the state of Vargas, a new prisoner arrives at "El Infierno," the country's most notorious gulag. Newcomers are subject to savage beatings. They're treated as slaves by the general prison population. But not this time....

Jack Saxby is trying to keep the farm he thought he’d been given by his mother. His vindictive father wants to take it away, and Jack’s two brothers also have their own agenda. Then there’s a suspicious death, and the family’s dark secrets come to light. Can Eric Ward, representing Jack, find out who’s really guilty? Eric is facing a risky eye operation and he’s still resisting a serious relationship with young heiress Anne Morcombe. Can he solve the case and save his reputation?

Ex-detective superintendent Brandt has turned against society. The first kill was a stab in the dark, but now he's got a real taste for it. But his pursuer, DCI Stella Johnson, has rankled him. She has leaked to the press the idea he is impotent, and it has taken hold. Brandt wants to prove himself. Who better a victim than the woman who has embarrassed him? Johnson's strategy backfires, and she is in trouble with her superiors. Yet she now has a very personal reason to hunt down Brandt. Will going solo put her at even greater risk than before? And just what has he in mind for her?

Who killed Gray Mitchell? Gray Mitchell’s body is found buried under fresh snowfall in the early hours of the morning outside Stromford Cathedral. DI Jim Neal and DS Ava Merry are called in to investigate. It seems that a number of people had motives to kill him, including Mitchell's partner. Then another shocking act of violence occurs, also connected to the cathedral. Detectives Neal and Merry’s investigation reveals an intricate web of secrets connecting the crimes. But there is something the detectives have missed, the dark secret which can break open the case.

FBI Agent Laurel Evertson's investigation into a scam targeting the elderly takes an unexpected twist when key evidence leads her to Morton Wilmington, a felon she arrested five years ago on her first undercover assignment. That case has haunted her since, and though she's vowed to forget Wilmington - and what she sacrificed to put him away - he is now her best lead.

Multiple award-winning author Michael Buckley's New York Times best-selling Sisters Grimm series is phenomenally popular. In their fourth adventure, Sabrina, Daphne, Granny Relda, and Puck hit the streets of New York City to search for Puck's family. They quickly get wrapped up in a murder investigation, however, when a maniacal Everafter is discovered to be on the loose.

Peter Marlin's wife is found strangled and he becomes the prime suspect. She'd only just returned from an unexplained absence of several months. And during that time, Peter had found a new lover. Everything points to the husband but there's no real proof. Inspector John Crow is called in to help the local police. But his new colleagues aren't keen on an outsider. And Crow must solve the case before anyone else dies.

Pop diva Clarion Calhoun has packed the house with a celebrity appearance in Bath's Theatre Royal production of I Am a Camera. But within moments of her much-anticipated onstage appearance, she's pulled out of character as she screams and claws at her face. When tainted stage makeup is found to have caused the disfiguring burn, fingers point to her makeup artist. Detective Peter Diamond investigates when the makeup artist is found dead, pushed from a catwalk far above the stage.

Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, takes a city break in Vienna, where his favorite film, The Third Man, was set, but everything goes wrong, and his companion, Paloma, calls a halt to their relationship. Meanwhile, strange things are happening to jobbing musician Mel Farran, who finds himself scouted by methods closer to the spy world than the concert platform. The chance of joining a once-famous string quartet in a residency at Bath Spa University is too tempting for Mel to refuse. Then a body is found in the city canal, and the only clue to the dead woman’s identity is the tattoo of a music note on one of her teeth.

Poppy Denby, Arts and Entertainment Editor at The Daily Globe, covers an exhibition of Russian art, hosted by White Russian refugees, including members of the surviving exiled Romanov royal family. There is an armed robbery, a guard is shot and the largest Faberge egg in the collection is stolen. The egg itself is valuable, but more so are the secrets it contains within - secrets that could threaten major political powers. Suspects are aplenty, including the former keeper of the Faberge egg, a Russian Princess called Selena Romanova Yusopova.

Imagine the doctors told you there was a cure, but only if you had the money. Would you break the law to save your child's life? Tony Robson faces this choice when he's told he needs £3,000 per month to carry on the life-saving experimental treatment for his son's rare disease. So Tony gets in touch with the criminal element in town. And they have a well-paying job for him.

Containing over 47 stories and two novels, this book is big baby, bigger and more powerful than a freight train - a bullet couldn't pass through it. Here are the best stories and every major writer who ever appeared in celebrated Pulps like Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and more. These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives who smoke criminals like packs of cigarettes.

When gold is discovered near the little town of No-Name, Colorado, the citizens are overjoyed at their good fortune...until trouble gallops down Maine Street on a horse straight out of Hell. For gold's closest companions are greed and murder, and every two-bit gunslick from the Atlantic to the Rockies is beating a path to the gold strike - which is practically on the doorstep of Smoke Jensen. They're looking to get rich quick...and never mind how it's done. But this legendary mountain man never learned how to back away from a good fight - and this one promises to be a whopper.

Former police officer-turned-solicitor Eric Ward is recovering from a serious eye operation when the offer comes in. Come down to London. Help Philip Scarn, a successful entrepreneur, break into the North East. Get paid handsomely doing it. On the journey, Ward is nearly killed. At the other end of a phone call, a shadowy voice warns this is just the beginning. Then a young woman is murdered.

Delaney Nichols is delighted with her life in Edinburgh, working at The Cracked Spine - a shop that specializes in hard-to-find books and artifacts. Outside the church where Delaney is searching for a reverend for her upcoming wedding, she stumbles across Norval Fraser: an elderly man obsessed with the Loch Ness monster. Always attracted to the interesting and unusual, Delaney befriends Norval. But when his nephew is found dead, the police decide Norval's obsession has moved from monsters to murder.

London, 1879. Crowds have gathered at Islington's chilly Agricultural Hall to place their bets on who will become the next world champion in a six-day, 500-mile speed-walking race, the wobble. When one of the highly favored contenders dies under suspicious circumstances, Sergeant Cribb also has a race on his hands - to pursue a ruthless murderer.

It would take a miracle to keep Dortmunder out of jail. Though he cased the electronics store perfectly, the cops surprised him, turning up in the alley just as he was walking out the back door, a television in each hand. Already a two-time loser, without divine intervention he faces a long stretch inside. Then God sends J. Radcliffe Stonewiler, a celebrity lawyer who gets Dortmunder off with hardly any effort at all. Stonewiler was sent by Arnold Chauncey, an art lover with a cash-flow problem. He asks the thief to break into his house and make off with a valuable painting in exchange for a quarter of the insurance money.

Gretel - yes, that Gretel - is now 35, very large, still living with her brother, Hans, and working as a private investigator. The small, sleepy town of Gesternstadt is shaken to its pretty foundations when the workshop of the local cart maker is burned to the ground, and a body is discovered in the ashes. It is Gretel who notices that the cadaver is missing a finger. At first she does not see this as significant, as her mind is fully focused on a new case.

Rampton Farm, Northumberland, has always been a gloomy, godforsaken place. Now it’s earmarked for demolition—to make way for just another tawdry amusement park. It will be progress, and nothing can stand in the way—except perhaps Arnold Landon, the Planning Officer who must glean the lie of the land.

In Wiltshire, England, the Crime Review Team is headed by Gus Freeman, pulled back to the police force after three years in retirement. With old witness statements plus fresh clues, the hunt can be on again. Freeman and his team now have several successful cold-case investigations behind them. Ursula Wakeley, a seventy-eight-year-old spinster, was murdered in 2013. Why did the former librarian become a victim? Was it a robbery or something more sinister? Returning to the Crime Review Team is Alex Hardy, and Blessing Umeh is a new member, giving Gus Freeman new hands and new issues.