English Private Detectives

At Shoreline Vines, high on the Cornish cliffs, the Harper family are preparing to welcome glamorous investor Celine Chevalier to their vineyard. They desperately need Celine’s backing to keep their business afloat. But everything is jeopardised when a body is found in one of their fields. Police believe the death was a tragic accident but the victim’s family suspect otherwise and turn to the Shell House Detectives to investigate.

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.

Date with Poison is the brilliant fourth novel in Julia Chapman's Dales Detective Agency series and is perfect of fans of M C Beaton's Agatha Raisin series and Gervase Phinn. A young teenager has gone missing. Can Samson O'Brien and Delilah Metcalfe find him? Spring is in the air in Bruncliffe. But not everyone is filled with the joys of the season. Implicated in the murder of a man in Leeds, the Dales Detective Agency’s Samson O’Brien is facing tough questions from the police....

Archie Goodwin’s aunt Edna is about to lure him away from his work at Nero Wolfe’s New York brownstone. After a phone call, he heads off to Ohio, where the president of Farmer’s State Bank and Trust, an elderly widower, has died in an apparent suicide. But Archie’s aunt has expressed nagging suspicions - which only grow stronger when someone takes a shot at a local reporter who wrote about the case.

During a stifling summer in Sydney, the body of a chaplain’s daughter is found wrapped in black plastic on the deserted grounds of an elite boarding school. Is it the work of the killer who’s been stalking the privileged neighborhoods along the Parramatta River? Gut instinct tells Detective Sergeant Rose Riley something even more devious might be at play.

The Adventure of the Dying Detective, in some editions simply titled "The Dying Detective" (first published 1913), is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Together with seven other stories, it is collected as His Last Bow (published 1917). Dr. Watson is called to tend Holmes, who is apparently dying of a rare tropical disease, Tapanuli fever, contracted while he was on a case. Watson is shocked, not having heard about his friend's illness. Mrs. Hudson says that Holmes has neither eaten nor drunk anything in three days.

The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is one of the eight stories in the cycle collected as His Last Bow, and one of the few stories in which for much of the plot Watson must act alone and try his best with Holmes left in the background. Holmes sends Dr. Watson to Lausanne to investigate Lady Frances Carfax's disappearance since he himself is too busy in London. Lady Frances is a lone, unwed woman denied a rich inheritance on account of her sex.

The Adventure of the Red Circle is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. It is included in the anthology His Last Bow. Mrs. Warren, a landlady, comes to 221B Baker Street with some questions about her lodger. A youngish, heavily bearded man, who spoke good but accented English who came to her and offered double her usual rent on the condition that he get the room on his own terms. He went out the first night that he was there, and came back after midnight when the rest of the household had gone to bed.

The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes and was published in 1904. Holmes is hired by the débutante Lady Eva Blackwell to retrieve compromising letters from a blackmailer: Milverton, who causes Holmes more revulsion than any of the 50-odd murderers in his career. Milverton is "the king of blackmailers". He demands £7,000 (over £800,000 in 2015) for the letters, which if given to third parties would cause a scandal that would end Lady Eva's marriage engagement.

A banker asks Holmes to investigate after a "Beryl Coronet" entrusted to him is damaged at his home. Awakened by noise, he had found his son, Arthur, holding the damaged coronet. Arthur refuses to speak, neither admitting guilt nor explaining himself. Footprints in the snow outside the house tell Holmes that the banker's niece had conspired with a blackguard to steal the coronet; Arthur had discovered the crime in progress and the coronet had been damaged during his struggle to prevent it being stolen. He had refused to tell his father the truth of the crime because of his love for his cousin.

After being imprisoned for two years, a former teacher enrolls in a course to learn how to become a Private Detective. What begins out of curiosity, turns into a serious business, until she is being threatened by someone who doesn't want her to continue her investigation….

Nan and I discover that someone has been embezzling funds from the local animal shelter. If we can't find the culprit soon, the shelter may not be able to keep its lights on and those poor homeless pets won't have anywhere to go.

Gavin Law exposed a tragic case of medical malpractice but now he’s missing. It’s just another case for Glasgow PI Charlie Cameron, until he comes to believe Law was murdered. Did the disgraced surgeon abandon his sacred oath to become a killer? Or did the hospital itself have Law permanently silenced? As Charlie digs deeper, he discovers just how bad the world of medicine could be for his health.

Photographer Todd Ellison is engrossed in a photoshoot deep in Alberta’s dinosaur country when he stumbles upon human bones buried in the sand of a remote coulee. Not far away, while driving through the Alberta prairie, Amanda Doucette glimpses an abandoned farmhouse that reminds her of an old photograph hanging on her aunt’s wall. Who is the cocky young cowboy in the photo? Could it be connected to Amanda’s uncle, who went missing in Alberta 30 years ago?

When Charlie and her team of investigators are asked to take on a seemingly impossible case―to identify and thwart an attack on the upcoming Detroit Auto Show―it takes a $100K incentive and the help of a dozen freelancers for Charlie and her crew to unravel a twisted plot that runs through several countries and many more bank accounts. But finding out who’s behind the intricate plot only solves half the problem. Charlie and her crew are drawn into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse as they try to locate dozens of hidden bombs before they can be detonated.

Private investigator Jessica Shaw is used to getting anonymous tips. But after receiving a photo of a three-year-old kidnapped from Los Angeles twenty-five years ago, Jessica is stunned to recognize the little girl as herself. Eager for answers, Jessica heads to LA’s dark underbelly. When she learns that her biological mother was killed the night she was abducted, Jessica’s determined to solve a case the police have forgotten.

Hot on the heels of Best Cases of the Continental Op comes Honest Gain: Dicey Cases of the Continental Op, another original compilation from Skyboat Media. The Continental Op is back on the case, tracking down thieves and murderers from the steep streets of San Francisco to the rough and tumble Wild West in Arizona. These six stories featuring the Continental Op show that this private eye is not afraid to get his hands dirty in order to get the job done right, or get himself hurt in the process.

A perfectly plotted crime is foiled by a runaway bank clerk as Inspector Littlejohn navigates impersonation, forgery, embezzlement...and a murder. It was meant to be a fool-proof scheme. The victim was a recluse, cut off from the world after the death of his wife. Nobody would think it strange when they didn't see him. Nobody would make inquiries. Yet, even the most meticulous of criminals can be caught out, especially if they don't leave room for human error.

A cold case dating from the 1960s draws forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver to the Channel Islands decades later to shine a light on the mysterious connection between two men who died there on the same night.

1950s Staffordshire. Within the clay tanks at the pottery company Shentall's, a body has been found. Amid cries of industrial espionage and sabotage of this leader of the pottery industry, there is a case of bitter murder to solve for Inspector Hedley Nicholson. Kelly's mystery won the CWA Gold Dagger Award in 1961 for its impeccable sense of place and detail, and for the emotional weight of its central crime. The novel is part of a shift from the cosiness of crime novels before to mysteries characterised by their psychological interest and affecting realism. An influential classic.