Historical Detective Mystery

Cyrus Barker is undoubtedly England's premiere private enquiry agent. With the help of his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, he's developed an enviable reputation for discreetly solving some of the toughest, most consequential cases in recent history. But one evening in 1888, Robert Anderson, the head of Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigation Department (CID), appears at Barker's office with an offer.

Droitwich, April 1890. A nine-year-old girl vanishes without a trace from the local churchyard. Her father, the salt tycoon Sir Charles Chilton, is beside himself. There's no price he won't pay for his daughter's safe return. AND SOMEONE OUT THERE IS COUNTING ON IT. Sir Charles calls on Detective Inspector Ravenscroft and Constable Tom Crabb to investigate.

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford have just become the proud owners of an old house in an English village. Along with the property, they have inherited some worthless bric-a-brac, including a collection of antique books. While rustling through a copy of The Black Arrow, Tuppence comes upon a series of apparently random underlinings. However, when she writes down the letters, they spell out a very disturbing message: "Mary Jordan did not die naturally." And 60 years later, Mary's enemies are still ready to kill....

As a mute, burly German peasant is helping British soldiers move a fallen tree, he's struck on the head. When he regains consciousness he calls out to the astonished Major Manning, using his nickname "Monkey"—in perfect English.

1313. En Terre Sainte, une compagnie de brigands attaque une cité isolée. Leur chef, Roncelin de Fos, parvient à s'emparer de la ville, sans se douter qu'elle intéresse fortement deux personnages clés : le Grand maître des Templiers et le légat du Pape. Roncelin prend la fuite avant d'être récupéré par le Temple. Pour payer sa dette, il devra retrouver le seul rabbin capable de décrypter le message que les Templiers ont découvert dans les souterrains du Temple de Salomon.

In this thrilling selection of stories, a young porter is found dead in a coal tub; Colbeck devises a trap to catch a thief; and a burnt train carriage holds a gruesome secret in a small coastal village. As Colbeck and his trusty aide Sergeant Victor Leeming begin to piece together clues and motives for each crime, it becomes clear the pair must stay a step ahead of the culprits to solve the cases. With a new suspect at every turn, can the duo unearth the real villains?

In what promises to be a breakout in Charles Finch's best-selling series, Charles Lenox travels to the New York and Newport of the dawning Gilded Age to investigate the death of a beautiful socialite.

Returning from a continental honeymoon with his new wife, Lady Jane, Lenox is asked by a colleague in Parliament to consult in the murder of a footman, bludgeoned to death with a brick. His investigation uncovers some unsettling facts about the family he served and a strange, second identity that the footman himself cultivated.Going into the boxing clubs and public houses, the Mayfair mansions and servants' quarters of Victorian London, Lenox gradually realizes that an old friend may be implicated in the footman's death. Soon a suspect is arrested, but Lenox has his doubts.

On a spring morning in London, 1875, Charles Lenox agrees to take time away from his busy schedule as a Member of Parliament to meet an old protege's client at Charing Cross. But when their cryptic encounter seems to lead, days later, to the murder of an innocuous country squire, this fast favor draws Lenox inexorably back into his old profession. Soon he realizes that, far from concluding the murderer's business, this body is only the first step in a cruel plan, many years in the plotting. Where will he strike next?

Quebec, 1994. Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars is summoned from Montreal to investigate the murder of a prisoner in an experimental women's jail. He knows the prime suspect - he arrested her. But darker forces are interested in Abigail, and Émile interferes at his own peril. For as he'll soon discover, in Lady Jail, nothing is as it seems.

With the tourist season well and truly over in South Devon, Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson is looking forward to a quieter month in the CID. But when a man is shot dead on Bonfire Night, he finds he has a disturbing and complex murder case on his hands. The body of Patrick North was found in woodland connected to Nesbaraton Hall, a grand estate dating back to the eighteenth century. North worked for the Smithson family who now own the estate.

In 1912 Ian Rutledge watched as a man was condemned to hang for the murders of elderly women. Rutledge helped gather the evidence that sent Ben Shaw to the gallows. And when justice was done, Rutledge closed the door on the case. But Shaw was not easily forgotten. Now, seven years later, that grim trial returns in the form of Ben Shaw's widow Nell, bringing Rutledge evidence she is convinced will prove her husband's innocence. It's a belief fraught with peril, threatening both Rutledge's professional stature and his faith in his judgment. But there is a darker reason for Rutledge's reluctance.

In her twentieth William Monk mystery, she brings us to London's grand Mayfair mansions, where the arrogant masters of the Western world hold sway - and to the teeming Thames waterfront, where one summer afternoon, Monk witnesses the horrifying explosion of the pleasure boat Princess Mary, which takes nearly two hundred of the merrymakers on board to their deaths. The tragedy is no accident.

When a Hungarian immigrant is dismembered near London's River Thames, Commander Monk is called to the eerie scene, where 16 candles surround the corpse. As identical murders pop up around the city, Monk confronts the unsettling options: could it be the work of a secret society? A serial madman? Or is a xenophobic Brit targeting foreigners? A local doctor who speaks Hungarian from his days on the battlefield may be able to help, but his own struggles with post-traumatic stress have left his memory in shambles.

Kitchen maid Joan Hart and lady's maid Verity Hunter intend to enjoy their trip to the theater, especially as Verity's uncle Tommy is one of the leading men in the play. Act two of the play is curtailed when the lights come up in the interval, and the girls realize a man has been stabbed to death almost under their very noses. The case reunites the servant sleuths with their old ally, Detective Inspector Marks, and while the girls do their best to solve the case while keeping their jobs, the glitter and glamor of the theater may prove to be as dangerous as any battlefield.

London, June 1860: When an assassination attempt is made on Queen Victoria, and a petty thief is gruesomely murdered moments later - and only a block away - Chief Detective Inspector Charles Field quickly surmises that these crimes are connected to an even more sinister plot. Was Victoria really the assassin's target? Are those closest to the Crown hiding something? Soon, Field's investigation exposes a shocking conspiracy in which the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species sets off a string of murders, arson, kidnapping, and the pursuit of a diabolical madman.

Shrewsbury, 1866. Julian Lockyer is an imposing gentleman in his late fifties. Having reserved a room for the night at the Station Hotel, he asks to be called early in the morning because he has a train to catch. Repeated attempts are made to wake him but there is no response. After forcing the door, the horrified hotel staff discover the bloodied corpse but with the knife still in his hand ... could he have killed himself in such a brutal manner?

Silvia Hanro, the famously beautiful movie star, has received death threats alongside her morning coffee, and Posie is tasked with protecting her. Aided by her good friends Lady Dolly Cardigeon and Chief Inspector Richard Lovelace, Posie soon realises that behind the cheap canvas sets and the dreamy glamour of the Studios a dreadful secret lays buried, and traitors lurk everywhere.

1859. St Mary's Church, Spondon. A little girl playing hide-and-seek jumps into a freshly-dug grave to find a dead man already occupying it. It is the body of Cedric Norton, a senior director of the Midland Railway. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming travel to Derbyshire to investigate.

In his forties, the Reverend Charles Howard still cut an impressive figure. A married Presbyterian minister in Toronto’s east end, Howard was popular with the congregation that elected him, especially with the ladies, and most particularly with Miss Sarah Dignam. Respected in the community, Howard, as Visitor for the House of Industry, sat in judgment on the poor, assessing their applications for the workhouse. But now Howard is dead, stabbed and brutally beaten by someone he invited into his office.