English Police Mysteries

Misery Bay is a picturesque fishing village on the Eastern shore of Nova Scotia, a seemingly idyllic location. But the islands and hidden coves hide something more sinister. Illegal immigrants and drugs are being smuggled in for the escort services in Halifax. Special Constable Garrett Barkhouse has spent 20 years fighting these twin scourges, but now he's burned out and planning to retire. However, his boss, Deputy Commissioner Alton Tuttle, has other plans.

It is a serendipitous encounter for the hapless DI Greg Byrne when retired sleuth James Munro stumbles upon his crime scene. And perhaps also for Munro himself, who, his protégé Charlie West having firmly snapped his apron strings, needs other lambs to wean. The day is far less auspicious for the victim in the affair, the unfortunate property developer Rebecca Barlow, who has been trussed up like a scarecrow in her yard. Though occurring off DI West’s Ayrshire patch, the investigation will soon intertwine with one of her own.

When a police detective is taken off life support after falling into a coma, only an autopsy reveals the murderous act that precipitated her death. She'd been working on a special task force within North London's Nigerian community, and Acting Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley is assigned to the case, which has far-reaching cultural associations that have nothing to do with life as he knows it. In his pursuit of a killer determined to remain hidden, he's assisted by Detective Sergeants Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata.

A brilliant reporter, haunted by her husband's death.... A disgraced cop, tangled in a web of lies.... Two unlikely heroes, brought together by one unthinkable crime.... Listen to the first three episodes of this addictive series, brought together for the first time in one volume.

Stuart Woods, the best-selling author of L.A. Times and Heat, has created a haunting thriller full of ghostly images, murder and old family secrets. Part detective story, part ghost story, part Southern gothic - this absorbing novel will fascinate listeners as a small town’s present, past and future converge.

He stands in the shadows. Watching them. DI Sara Ramsey's life is about to change forever. Recently moved to the area and in charge of a new team, she's tasked with finding a serial killer terrorising a rural community. Crimes as heinous as this rarely happen in picturesque rural idylls. The community is living in fear, desperate for Sara to keep them safe. When the killer changes his MO and abducts a vulnerable resident, Sara realises she is in a race against time to prevent the killer from claiming yet another victim.

When Keira Saxon’s father was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, she quit her job as a Chicago homicide detective to head home. But she hadn’t been back on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula long before Danny Saxon was dead, killed in a deadly bear attack. Keira bowed to public pressure and agreed to run in the special election to fill the rest of her father’s term as sheriff. Although doubts about the circumstances of Danny's death lingered, doubts were all she had. Until she received a grisly delivery and learned that her father’s death wasn’t an accident at all.

Rick's fourth investigation should not have involved crime. It begins when Rick is asked by his uncle to go to Orvieto to talk some sense into his cousin Fabrizio, whose fling with a married woman is embarrassing the family. Rick agrees to give it a try and plans a short but romantic weekend in Orvieto with Betta Innocenti, the woman he met in Bassano. What could go wrong? Less than a day after their arrival, his language skills draw him into the brutal murder of an American visitor.

The Terrorists is the last Martin Beck mystery, finished just a few weeks before Per Wahlöö’s death. The book is, in effect, a marvelous summing up of the series. The story centers on the visit of an American senator to Stockholm. Martin Beck tries to protect him from an international gang of terrorists, while they decide that Beck too should be removed from the scene.

DI Sally Parker has a serial killer on her patch. One thing that sets this killer apart from the others she's hunted before: his willingness to leave DNA at each of the crime scenes. It's up to Sally and her partner, DS Jack Blackman, to find out why before the body count rises to double figures. While Sally is engrossed in the investigation, her ex-husband, Darryl, pays a surprise visit to her new home.

A man is found poisoned by the deadly toxin aconite. A note found at the scene leads Detective Sergeant Jack Mackinnon to a University of Oxford laboratory, where staff and students are desperate to hide their association with the victim. As Mackinnon gets closer to the truth, he finds his own family could be at risk.

An overworked sheriff and a string of condo burglaries at a luxurious ski resort have Lieutenant Joe Gunther and the newly minted Vermont Bureau of Investigation digging deep for clues. But it doesn't take long for Joe to find the most likely thief missing and his girlfriend dead. As the complications mount, from drug dealing to environmental terrorism to attempted murder, Joe and his team go undercover to infiltrate the closed society of a one-company town, populated by bored millionaires and supported by a small legion of resort employees, not all of whom are what they seem.

When Cassidy Livingston finds a journal hidden deep in the recesses of her ice cream truck, her curiosity kicks into high gear. Islanders suspect that Elsa, the journal's owner, didn't die accidentally. Her final entry indicates their suspicions might be correct and that what Elsa observed on her final night may have led to her demise. Against the advice of Ty Chambers, her former Navy SEAL boyfriend, Cassidy taps into her detective skills and hunts for answers. But her search only leads to a skeletal body and trouble for both of them.

Detective Lauren Pengelly and her partner Matt Price are called to investigate a grisly murder outside Penzance. They quickly identify the victim as Carmel Driscoll, a former police officer, and find a cryptic note reading “Ten Green Bottles” next to her body–words from an old English nursery rhyme. When a second former officer is found murdered with the note “Nine Green Bottles” nearby, Lauren and Matt realise they could be dealing with a serial killer.

Holly Fenwick thought she had left her nightmare behind. Twelve years ago, she narrowly escaped the clutches of a brutal serial killer. Now, while she films a documentary in Eyemouth in the Scottish Borders, to recover from her ordeal and rebuild her life, she spots a figure eerily similar to her former captor. She rushes in, only to find no trace of the man but a chaotic crime scene–and a missing woman.

Retired to a small Colorado mountain town, former Denver homicide detective Woodrow “Mountain” Bell yearns only to fade away. He has failed in so many ways—as a father, a husband, friend, and cop—he fears he wasted his chance at a meaningful life. When Bell stumbles across a long-forgotten, unsolved child murder, his first impulse is to let it lie—but he can’t. He is drawn into the macabre mystery when he realizes the killer might still be near.

Lucy Durmast waits patiently in front of the judge at her own murder trial, refusing to utter a single word. Kenneth Carline, an employee of her father's, was found poisoned to death after eating a meal that Lucy herself had prepared. Kenneth was set to marry another, and Lucy, it seems, was jealous. But what should have been an open-and-shut case of envy-driven murder becomes complicated when primary detective Trevor Porritt suffers permanent brain damage. C. D. Sloan inherits the file - and immediately begins poking holes in what looked like an airtight case.

Simon Serrailler is faced with that most complicated of investigations - a cold case. Freak weather and flash floods have hit southern England. The small cathedral town of Lafferton is underwater, and a landslip on the moor has closed the roads. As the rain slowly drains away, a shallow grave - and a skeleton - is exposed; 20 years have passed, and the remains of missing teenager Joanne Lowther have finally been uncovered. Joanne, an only child, had been on her way home from a friend's house that night.

When the dead body of a Latino woman is found in a reservoir about 50 miles north of Manhattan, with a photo of a baby in her purse nearby, the police try to determine who the child is and if it is still alive. Along with the photo, they also find a disturbing note in the purse: "Go back to your country. You don't belong here."

Joe Gunther and his team - the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) - are usually called in on major cases by local Vermont enforcement whenever they need expertise and backup. But after the state is devastated by Hurricane Irene, the police from one end of the state are taxed to their limits, leaving Joe Gunther involved in an odd and seemingly unrelated series of cases. In the wake of the hurricane, a seventeen-year-old gravesite is exposed, revealing a coffin that had been filled with rocks instead of the expected remains.