English Police Mysteries

Late on a spring night in 1920, five boys cross the Yorkshire dales to the ruins of Fountains Abbey, intent on raising the Devil. Instead, they stumble over the Devil himself, sitting there watching them. Terrified, they run for their lives, leaving behind a book on alchemy stolen from their schoolmaster. The next morning, a body is discovered in the cloisters of the abbey--a man swathed in a hooded cloak and wearing a gas mask.

Everyone has secrets.... The beautiful young judge. The hardworking waitress. The handsome college student. Some are meant to be kept.... The victims are all different, but they will all have one gruesome detail in common. But others can kill.... A clever serial killer is stalking the streets of Seattle. Searching for this next victim. Creating a monument of madness that will be built victim by victim, piece by piece, bone by bone....

Commissario Guido Brunetti's hopes for a refreshing family holiday in the mountains are once again dashed when a gruesome discovery is made in Marghera--a body so badly beaten the face is completely unrecognizable. Brunetti searches Venice for someone who can identify the corpse but is met with a wall of silence. He then receives a telephone call from a contact who promises some tantalizing information.

On a cold Venetian night, shortly before Christmas, a street vendor is killed in a scuffle in Campo San Stefano. The closest witnesses are the tourists who had been browsing the man's wares: fake handbags of every designer label. The dead man had been working as a vu cumpra, one of the many African immigrants purveying goods outside normal shop hours and without work permits. Commissario Brunetti's response is that of everybody involved: why would anyone kill an illegal immigrant?

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.

The Department of Sensitive Crimes takes on three extremely strange cases. First, the detectives investigate how and why a local business owner was stabbed...in the back of the knee. Next, a young woman's imaginary boyfriend goes missing. And, in the final investigation, Varg must determine whether nocturnal visitations at a local spa have a supernatural element.

On a spring day in Venice, Commissario Brunetti and his assistant, Vianello, play hooky to help Vianello's friend Marco Ripetti, arrested during an environmental protest. They secure his release, only to be faced with the fury of the man's father-in-law, Giovanni De Cal, who has made violent threats against Ripetti. Brunetti's curiousity is peaked, and he finds himself drawn to investigate. Is De Cal the type of man to carry out his threats?

The annual West Uist literary festival - The Gathering - always attracts the best in the business. But with the tiny island population suddenly doubling, the local police force is stretched to breaking point. And this year they have to deal with more than just drunken fights and rowdy behavior. Ranald Buchanan, the local poet, is found dead, with his head brutally caved in, and Inspector Torquil McKinnon is brought in to investigate.

When Commissario Brunetti is summoned in the middle of the night to the hospital bed of a pediatrician, he is confronted with more questions than answers. Three men, a young carabiniere captain and two privates from out of town, burst into the doctor's apartment while the family was sleeping, attacked him, and took away his 18-month-old boy. What could have motivated an assault by the forces of the state that was so violent it has left the doctor mute?

DI Rob Marshall is stuck in Gartcosh, leading the new Behavioural Sciences Unit – a staff of one and a third – where he’s executing a fruitless hunt, profiling every single murder in Scotland just in case they’re serial cases. But when a young Peebles woman’s body is discovered in Neidpath Tunnel, disused since the sixties, Marshall is called in to consult on a case on his old home turf. Paired up with his replacement, a cop who’s disinterested in the work, Marshall must tread a line between helping and not jumping to conclusions.

In The Golden Egg, as the first leaves of autumn begin to fall, Vice Questore Patta asks Brunetti to look into a minor violation committed by the mayor’s future daughter-in-law. Brunetti has no interest in helping his boss amass political favors, but he has little choice but to comply. Then Brunetti’s wife, Paola, comes to him with a request of her own. The mentally handicapped man who worked at their dry cleaners has just died of a sleeping pill overdose, and Paola loathes the idea that he lived and died without anyone noticing him, or helping him.

In Shadow Prey, the crackling sequel to Rules of Prey, Twin Cities sleuth Lucas Davenport teams up with NYPD Lieutenant Lily Rothenberg to track down an elusive killer known only as Shadow Love. Among the victims are a Minneapolis slumlord, a judge from Oklahoma City, and a Manhattan politician. The murder weapon is a Native American ceremonial knife.

Thinking that she has been summoned by German immigrant Agnes Otto to usher a new life into the world, midwife Sarah Brandt is greeted by the news of an untimely death instead. It seems that Agnes' beautiful younger sister, Gerda, had fallen into the life of a "charity girl". Caught up in the false glamour of the city's nightlife, she would trade her company and her favors for lavish gifts. And now she was dead - victim, no doubt, of one of her "gentlemen friends".

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?

Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be the prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? And Charlie's death was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women. Now Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant join forces with the groom to track down a killer....

A prolific journalist, Martin Walker has crafted a mystery series that deftly blends the stylings of Peter Mayle and Alexander McCall Smith. Chief Bruno Courreges loves life in his small French village. One day his idyll is disturbed when a local research station for genetically modified crops is burned down. An enclave of environmentalists seems to be the most likely culprit, but soon Bruno uncovers evidence that makes the case infinitely more complicated.

Everyone is always telling Stone Barrington that he’s too smart to be a cop, but it’s pure luck that places him on the streets in the dead of night, just in time to witness the horrifying incident that turns his life inside out. Suddenly he is on the front page of every New York newspaper and his life is hopelessly entwined in the increasingly shocking life (and perhaps death) of Sasha Nijinsky, the country’s hottest and most beautiful television anchorwoman.

In the heart of the Scottish Borders, Gary Hislop is expanding his criminal empire and his lethal grasp is tightening around the area. But as he opens his Kelso hardware store one morning, a sudden attack on him sets off a chain of events that even he couldn't predict. Enter DI Rob Marshall and his team. As Marshall delves into the incident, he finds himself ensnared in a web of deceit, where every alliance is suspect and every door casts a long shadow.

Late one night, Commissario Guido Brunetti's telefonino rings. A woman's body has been found in a Spartan apartment on Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio. Brunetti sees some signs of force on the old woman, but they could just as easily have been from the radiator near where she fell. When the medical examiner rules that the woman died of a heart attack, it seems there is nothing to investigate.

Hannah Griffin was a girl when tragedy struck. She still remembers the flames reflected against the newly fallen snow and the bodies the police dug up - one of them her mother's. The killer was never found....Twenty years later Hannah is a talented CSI investigating a case of child abuse when the past comes hurtling back. A killer with unfinished business is on the hunt. And an anonymous message turns Hannah's blood cold: Your Mom called....