English Police Mysteries

Hamish Macbeth, the laid-back constable of Lochdubh, Scotland, has a new Land Rover to drive and a Highland summer to savor, but as fast as rain rolls in from the loch, his happy life goes to hell in a hand basket. The trouble begins when his beloved Priscilla Halburton-Smythe returns from London - with a fiancé on her arm. His miseries multiply when clouds of midges, the diabolical Scottish mosquito, descend on the town. Then a paragon of housewifery named Trixie Thomas moves into Lochdubh with her lapdog husband in tow.

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.

Gus Freeman is a retired detective inspector who has spent the past three years alone. Freeman’s wife, Tess, died from a brain aneurysm six months to the day after his retirement. He is still coming to terms with his enforced solitary existence. His old boss wants Gus to head up a Crime Review Team investigating cold cases. Old witness statements plus fresh clues, and the hunt would be on. But Freeman wonders whether his superiors need his old-style methods.

The corpse of a beautiful woman, clad in only a bathing suit, is found strangled to death on a popular Sussex beach. When she is finally identified, it turns out she was a top profiler for the National Crime Faculty who was working on the case of a serial killer. And though she was a Bath resident, the authorities don't want Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond to investigate the murder. How strange. What could they be trying to hide?

One winter's night, a lone figure arrives on foot in a remote Pennine village. The next morning, as the first heavy snow begins to fall, a man's body is discovered in the village churchyard. Anne Tilston, one of three sisters living in a brooding run-down house in the shadow of the church, realises that the dead man is her father, a disgraced former senior police officer long estranged from his family.

Shortly after 9.30 in the morning, a young man walks into Surf City, Bondi’s newest shopping complex. He’s wearing a dark grey hoodie - and a bomb around his neck. Just a few minutes later, he is locked in a shop on the upper floor. And trapped with him are four innocent bystanders. For police chaplain Paul Doherty, called to the scene by Senior Sergeant Boehm, it’s a story that will end as tragically as it began. For this is clearly no ordinary siege. The boy, known as Ali Khan, seems as frightened as his hostages and has yet to utter a single word.

On a hot August night, Lt. Eve Dallas and her husband, Roarke, speed through the streets of Manhattan to the Down and Dirty club, where a joyful, boisterous pre-wedding girls’ night out has turned into a murder scene. One of the brides lies in a pool of blood, garroted in a private room where she was preparing a surprise for her fiancée—two scrimped and saved-for tickets to Hawaii. Despite the dozens of people present, useful witnesses are hard to come by. It all brings back some bad memories for Eve.

For GBI investigator Will Trent and medical examiner Sara Linton, McAlpine Lodge seems like the ideal getaway to celebrate their honeymoon. Set on a gorgeous, off-the-grid mountaintop property, it’s the perfect place to unplug and reconnect. Until a bone-chilling scream cuts through the night. Mercy McAlpine, the manager of the Lodge, is dead. With a vicious storm raging and the one access road to the property washed out, the murderer must be someone on the mountain. But as Will and Sara investigate the McAlpine family and the other guests, they realize that everyone here is lying.

Inspector William Monk is ordered to investigate in a manner that will give the least possible pain to the influential family. But Monk, brilliant and ambitious, is handicapped by lingering traces of amnesia and by the craven ineptitude of his supervisor, who would like nothing better than to see Monk fail.

It's the early 1980s in Belfast. Sean Duffy, a conflicted Catholic cop in the Protestant RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary), is recruited by MI5 to hunt down Dermot McCann, an IRA master bomber who has made a daring escape from the notorious Maze prison. In the course of his investigations Sean discovers a woman who may hold the key to Dermot's whereabouts; she herself wants justice for her daughter who died in mysterious circumstances in a pub locked from the inside.

Workaholic Detective Aiden Carlisle isn't looking for love - and certainly not at the law-enforcement seminar she reluctantly agreed to attend. But the first lecturer is not at all what she expected. Psychologist Dawn Kinsley has just found her place in life. After a failed relationship with a police officer, she has sworn never to get involved with another cop again, but she feels a connection to Aiden from the very first moment. Can Aiden keep herself from crossing the line when a brutal crime threatens to keep them apart before they've even gotten together?

When Sergeant Mike West and his partner, Garda Andrews, are called to a suspicious death, they are shocked to find the small body of a child abandoned in a suitcase. Who is she? No child has been reported missing. Their search reaches outside Ireland but without success, and soon another dead body takes their attention. There is a surfeit of suspects this time, but as the case evolves, the two detectives are stunned where it leads.

Death is reporter Jack McEvoy's beat: his calling, his obsession. But this time, death brings McEvoy the story he never wanted to write - and the mystery he desperately needs to solve. A serial killer of unprecedented savagery and cunning is at large. His targets: homicide cops, each haunted by a murder case he couldn't crack. The killer's calling card: a quotation from the works of Edgar Allan Poe. His latest victim is McEvoy's own brother. And his last...may be McEvoy himself.

Accustomed to the bustle of London, DI Rob Marshall finds himself confronted with the unforgiving Scottish winters he had long left behind. A gruesome discovery off the high road between Stow and Lauder sends shivers down his spine–a man and a woman, both frozen to death with their wrists and ankles bound.

When mourners gather in the village of Lower Gladdock, the grave is found to be already occupied. The victim is soon linked to a tragedy that tore the village apart five years ago and is handed over to the Bexford police to solve. Detective Sergeant Guy Poole is hoping to put his traumatic past behind him and settle into his new station at Bexford. Now history is threatening to raise its head again, and he has a murder case to contend with. Detective Inspector Sam Brock has a new recruit to take under his wing, and he's determined this one isn't going to die.

As the mists roll over the fens and enigmatic lights twinkle in the distance, only the locals know their way along the hidden paths through the mysterious watery terrain of one of England's most beautiful and sometimes dangerous places. Detective Matt Ballard may have retired but there's still plenty going on in the fens to keep him busy. Someone trashes an old lady's garden and daubs her isolated cottage with hateful graffiti. Emilia Swain seems to be totally harmless, so why is she being targeted?

Sex crimes Detective Aiden Carlisle is slowly getting used to being in a committed relationship with Dawn Kinsley - a relationship that isn't always easy since Dawn is not only a psychologist but also a former victim in one of Aiden's cases. Aiden's private and professional lives collide when Dawn's newest patient gets in trouble with the law. Will she be able to stay objective enough to solve the case without pushing Dawn away? The same case also throws Deputy District Attorney Kade Matheson's well-ordered life into chaos.

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....

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.

Gold Dagger-winner and best-selling author in the United Kingdom, Ian Rankin crafts absorbing crime novels with solidly drawn characters and first-rate plotting. In Strip Jack, he portrays a shocking murder investigation that exposes the sordid side of Edinburgh politics and society. Detective John Rebus suspects a set-up when a respected Member of Parliament is caught in a police raid on a brothel—and his flamboyant wife suddenly disappears.