English Crime Thrillers

>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).

For years, Aidan Cullen has dreamed of becoming a successful crime writer. When his hard work finally pays off and his first book is published, what should have been a night of celebration unravels into an evening of horror. Left for dead after a brutal attack, trauma leaves him paranoid and reclusive, and he retreats to the remote countryside with only his dog Nanook for company. With the world kept at arm’s length, he begins to feel safe. That is, until a woman is murdered at the end of his road.

At first, Bridget Corrigan's work with her twin brother's senatorial campaign is an exciting distraction from the trauma of her messy divorce. But everything changes when Bridget is reminded of the secret she and Brad have been keeping since high school, a secret that could destroy the campaign - and their lives. Someone else knows what they did. Someone who's been picking off the members of their little group one by one....

One wrong does not justify another in the desolate landscapes of SENTA, the Bannau Brycheiniog army training grounds, DCI Warlow and his seasoned investigators find themselves ensnared in a deadly game of shadows. A man, recently released from prison after a 20-year wrongful conviction, is discovered dead, igniting a storm of doubt and suspicion. As long-buried secrets claw their way to the surface, the line between truth and deception blurs. With everyone involved in the original case now a potential suspect, they must tread carefully and confront the crimes of old as well as the present.

Tourist season is swinging into high gear in Miami. So are the activities of a bizarre terrorist group determined to keep the hapless "snowbirds" away. Armed with bombs, weed, and jumbled credos, they move toward their grand target, the Orange Bowl Parade, with plans to bring Miami and its tourist trade to a halt.

It is 1990 when Melvina Donleavy arrives in Soviet Belarus on her first undercover mission with the CIA, alongside three fellow agents—none of whom know she is playing two roles. To the prying eyes of the KGB, she is merely a secretary; to her CIA minders, she is the only one who can stop the flow of nuclear weapons from the crumbling Soviet Union into the Middle East. For Mel has a secret; she is a “super recognizer,” someone who never forgets a face. But no training could prepare her for the reality of life undercover, and for the streets of Minsk.

DI Nathaniel Caslin’s life is a mess. He works the minimum, abuses substances to survive the day and drinks his nights away. A once-promising career is in freefall. Investigating the death of an ex-serviceman in police custody reveals the disappearance of a young family. No-one noticed. No-one seems to care.

Dieter Hess, an aged spy, is dead, and John Bachelor, his MI5 handler, is in deep, deep trouble. Death has revealed that the deceased had been keeping a secret second bank account - and there's only ever one reason a spy has a secret second bank account. The question of whether he was a double agent must be resolved, and its answer may undo an entire career's worth of spy secrets.

When she was only 16, Cassidy Buchanan fell for the 19-year-old bad boy in town, Brig McKenzie, who'd had his share of run-ins with both the law and the local women. Then a terrible fire killed Cassidy's sister, and Brig, the chief suspect, was forced to run away. Seventeen years later, an eerily similar fire seriously injures Cassidy's husband, Chase, who happens to be Brig's brother. With the earlier fire still an open case, suspicion turns to Cassidy, the only unharmed person connected to both tragedies.

Drawing strong comparisons to the work of James Lee Burke and Tony Hillerman, William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor mysteries never fail to please fans. Here Cork joins the search for a country-western singer who has disappeared in the wilderness along the American/Canadian border.

Eccentric, reclusive Walter Rennert lies cold at the bottom of his stairs. At first glance the scene looks straightforward: a once-respected psychology professor done in by booze and a bad heart. But his daughter, Tatiana, insists that her father has been murdered, and she persuades Clay Edison to take a closer look at the grim facts of Rennert's life. What emerges is a history of scandal and violence and an experiment gone horribly wrong that ended in the brutal murder of a coed.

Five figures gather 'round a shallow grave. They had all taken turns to dig. An adult-sized hole would have taken longer. An innocent life had been taken, but the pact had been made. Their secrets would be buried, bound in blood. Years later a headmistress is found brutally strangled, the first in a spate of gruesome murders that shock the Black Country.

Almost a decade ago, Prescott, an ex-special forces Green Beret, was boots on the ground in his new role with the FBI's Critical Incidence Response Group, searching for his childhood friend Kaylie after she disappeared from her research camp in Nigeria without a trace. Now, the NSA thinks they've identified Kaylie's image in Syria. Prescott turns to Iniquus Puzzler, Lynx, to help him prove that the picture and the missing scientist are one and the same. If the NSA is right, this woman has days to live. The clock is ticking.

Abductions and murder are not what ex-DCI Luke Sackville expected when he left the police after tragedy struck his family. Luke’s return to the workplace was meant to be a soft landing, but when a woman vanishes after being accused of taking bribes, he is assigned a disparate team and tasked with tracking her down. Their search becomes more urgent when her disappearance is linked to the death of a second woman. When a third goes missing, the hunt becomes a race against time.

When legendary crime novelist William MacRae is found dead in suspicious circumstances at his Glasgow home, Police Scotland's premier investigator DCI John Lomond is put on the case. After discovering a list of seven bestselling authors–all old friends of MacRae's–Lomond and his team head north to the Ullapool Book Festival, where the seven are gathering to remember their fallen friend. But a vicious storm is closing in. And not everyone, it seems, has fond memories of MacRae. Or each other.

Tara never imagined her introduction to Ireland like this - carrying her mam's ashes to honor her final request: "Tell Johnny I'm sorry.... Take me home." She's never met her mam's estranged brother, Johnny Meehan, who owns an architectural salvage business in Galway. Although Tara is immediately charmed by the medieval city, the locals seem wary of strangers, and a gypsy warns her that death is all around. When Tara arrives at her uncle's stone cottage, the prophesy seems true. A dead man lies sprawled over the threshold in a pool of blood.

Anthony Award-winning author William Kent Krueger crafts this riveting tale about a small Minnesota town’s ex-sheriff who is having trouble retiring his badge. Cork O’Connor loses his job after being blamed for a tragedy on the local Anishinaabe Indian reservation. But he must set aside his personal demons when a young boy goes missing on the same day a judge commits suicide—and no one but O’Connor suspects foul play.

A woman is found naked, badly beaten and barely alive in the New Mexico mountains. The shocking discovery plunges Albuquerque Detective Alyssa Wyatt into a case that will test her to the limit. It appears that Callie McCormick is the latest plaything of a shadowy psychopath that leaves a long shadow on the streets of New Mexico - an individual linked to a string of deaths but leaving no evidence. But when Alyssa makes a breakthrough that just might reveal the killer, she unknowingly puts herself in the crosshairs of a brutal maniac - one with an old score to settle.

A drop, in spook parlance, is the passing on of secret information. It's also what happens just before you hit the ground. Old spooks carry the memory of tradecraft in their bones, and when Solomon Dortmund sees an envelope being passed from one pair of hands to another in a Marylebone cafe, he knows he's witnessed more than an innocent encounter. But in relaying his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits retired spies like Solly for MI5, he sets in motion a train of events that will alter lives.

When a farmer and his son go missing whilst chasing rustlers, DCI Evan Warlow and his team are called in to investigate. Everything points to a botched raid by heartless thieves, but with no bodies, and little or no clues, the team quickly start chasing their tails. The close-knit community reels from the shock, but not everyone the team comes across is being entirely honest, and it quickly transpires that, under their prim and proper facades, some have secrets they are desperate to keep.