Detective Thriller Fiction

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.

One time police detective Peter Diamond loses his job as a security guard when he fails to spot a small Japanese child hiding in the furniture department of Harrods. Weeks later, she's still unclaimed; Diamond is unable to forget the frightened eyes of the silent little girl and takes on the challenge of uncovering her identity.

In the 1920s, in post - World War I England, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple, newly engaged to Detective Inspector Alec Fletcher, is asked by her brother-in-law to discreetly investigate a series of poisoned pen letters that many of the local villagers have been receiving. When the pompous and unbearable brother of the local vicar is killed by a very large rock, dropped on his head from a great height, it seems clear to all that this campaign of gossip has escalated to murder.

Christmas, 1141 A.D. Abbot Radulfus returns from London, bringing with him a priest for the vacant living of Holy Cross (known as the Foregate), a man of presence, scholarship and discipline, but neither humility nor the common touch. When he is found drowned in the mill-pond, suspicion is cast in many directions, not least toward a young man who came in the priest's train, sent to work in Brother Cadfael's garden. For he has little obvious priestly calling. Indeed, he soon attracts the friendship of a girl both beautiful and formidable. To Brother Cadfael, once wordly, now dedicated, if gently cynical, is left the familiar task of sorting the complicated strands which define guilt and innocence.

In March of 1926, Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher and her friend and collaborator, Lady Lucy Gerald, head off for several days to a stately home reputed to have the best grotto in the country. Working on a book of architectural follies, they plan to research and photograph it. Leaving her husband and young twins behind, Daisy is expecting a productive weekend at Appsworth Hall, with the only potential difficulty being keeping Lucy from offending the current owner, a manufacturer of plumbing products. Alas, it's not to be quite so simple.

When retired homicide detective Thomas Prescott learns he’s inherited a 250-acre farm in Tarrin, Missouri (pop. 2,100), he can’t get there fast enough. As he slowly acclimates to small-town living, he hears rumblings about a horrific crime in the town’s past. Four years earlier, a recently fired employee of the local grocery store enacted his revenge, shooting and killing the owner of the store, plus four customers, then turning the gun on himself. The crime appears to have been solved, but Prescott has his doubts.

In England in the late 1920s, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, on a convalescent trip to the countryside, goes to visit three old school friends in the area. Daisy and her husband Alec - Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard - go for a Sunday lunch with Daisy’s friends, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, which remains curiously locked, no key to be found. Alec offers to pick the lock, but when he opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine but the stench of a long-dead body.

In 1890, the first Japanese diplomatic delegation arrives in London to open an embassy. Cyrus Barker, private enquiry agent and occasional agent for the Foreign Service Office, is enlisted to display his personal Japanese garden to the visiting dignitaries. Later that night, Ambassador Toda is shot and killed in his office and Cyrus Barker is discovered across the street, watching the very same office, in possession of a revolver with one spent cartridge.

Edgar Award winner Rick Riordan captures San Antonio at its grittiest with his mysteries featuring Jackson "Tres" Navarreunlicensed P.I., Tai Chi master, and imbiber of Big Red cream soda laced with tequila. It’s been a decade since his father was murdered and Tres left town. But he’s got an itch that can only be scratched by looking for answers. Returning to San Antonio with his enchilada-eating cat, he uncovers a conspiracy involving the Mafia and dirty politicians.

Charles Lenox, Victorian gentleman and armchair explorer, likes nothing more than to relax in his private study with a cup of tea, a roaring fire and a good book. But when his lifelong friend Lady Jane asks for his help, Lenox cannot resist the chance to unravel a mystery. Prudence Smith, one of Jane's former servants, is dead of an apparent suicide. But Lenox suspects something far more sinister: murder, by a rare and deadly poison.

When Alex arrives in Provincetown to patch things up with his new wife, Mina, he finds an empty wine glass in the sink, her wedding ring on the desk, and a string of questions in her wake. The police believe that Mina, a successful romance author, simply left, their marriage crumbling before it truly began. But what Alex finds in their empty cottage points him toward a different reality: Mina has always carried a secret. And now she's disappeared.

Detective Olivia Mast would rather run through gunfire than return to her former Amish community in Unity, Maine, where she killed her abusive husband in self-defense and witnessed her family's murder. After an Amish man is murdered, the community will not answer questions from the police, so she begrudgingly dons her old prayer kapp and heads to Unity to investigate the murder undercover. To make things even worse, her captain also orders her to protect the man she dated as a teen: Isaac Troyer, who was attacked on the night of the murder but can't remember the incident.

When a body is found on a lonely cliff top path, the angelic face of a murdered teenager lies facing the rising sun. Strangled by the hands of an unknown killer, it falls to DI Tom Janssen and his fledgling team to find out how she came to be there. Destined for a career in medicine, one to rival that of her parents, Holly Bettany’s future was as bright as it had been privileged. Seemingly, all that could threaten this promising teenager’s life was Holly herself.

India, 1922: In the kingdom of Satapur, a curse seems to have fallen upon the royal family, whose maharaja died of a sudden illness shortly before his teenage son was struck down in a tragic accident. The kingdom is now ruled by an agent of the British Raj on behalf of Satapur's two maharanis, the dowager queen and the maharaja's widow. The royal ladies are in dispute over the education of the young crown prince, and a lawyer's council is required. Just one person can help them: Perveen Mistry, India's only female lawyer.

While out on a walk, Eleanor Trewynn, her niece Megan, and her neighbor Nick spot a young, half-drowned Indian man floating in the water. Delirious and concussed, he utters a cryptic message about his family being trapped in a cave and his mother dying. The young man, unconscious and unable to help, is whisked away to a hospital while a desperate effort is mounted to find the missing family in time.

Bo Tully, sheriff of Blight County, Idaho, has dealt with small-town crime throughout his long, storied career. Now, contemplating retirement after years on the job, Tully is faced with perhaps his most perplexing case yet. When area bald eagles start getting picked off by a ghost-like killer, and when a prominent local rancher is murdered by an arrow with eagle fletching, things gets complicated fast. In this fast-paced whodunit, Tully has a vast array of suspects to choose from, including the rancher's gorgeous, bird-loving wife, who mysteriously leaves for a ranch in Mexico the day of the murder.

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 and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald 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 seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine” ( Booklist).

When a marriage proposal appears imminent for the beautiful - if rebellious - Lady Rose Summer, her father wants to know if her suitor's intentions are honorable. He calls on Captain Harry Cathcart, the impoverished younger son of a baron, to do some intelligence work on the would-be fiance, Sir Geoffrey Blandon.

For the Sake of the Game is the latest volume in the award-winning series from New York Times best-selling editors Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger, with stories of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and friends in a variety of eras and forms. King and Klinger have a simple formula: Ask some of the world's greatest writers-regardless of genre - to be inspired by the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. The results are surprising and joyous.

When she was a child, Cassidy Pratt accidentally started a fire that killed her neighbor. At least, that's what she's been told. She can't remember anything from that day. She's pretty sure she didn't mean to do it. She's a victim, too. But her town's bullies, particularly the cruel and beautiful Melody Davenport, have never let her live it down. In Melody's eyes, Cassidy is a murderer and always will be. And then Melody goes missing, and Cassidy thinks she may have information about what happened.