Historical Detective

Les Illuminati... Ils vous surveillent depuis des siècles. Désormais, ils vont vous contrôler. Paris, siège de l'Unesco : l'abbé Emmanuel est abattu par un tireur isolé. Un assassinat rappelant à certains celui de Kennedy et qui alimente très vite les plus folles thèses conspirationnistes. D'autant que la juge Gardane a découvert que le tueur était franc-maçon. À charge maintenant pour le commissaire Marcas de faire la lumière sur les possibles implications de cette révélation.

It’s 1941, and the Mitford household is splintered by the vicissitudes of war. To bring the clan together—maybe for one last time—Deborah invites them to Chatsworth for Christmas, along with a selection of society’s most impressive and glamorous guests, as well as old family friend Louisa Cannon, a private detective. One night, a psychic arrives, and to liven things up Deborah agrees she may host a séance. But entertainment turns to dark mystery as the psychic reveals that a maid was murdered in this very same house—and she can prove it.

London, summer 1920. An unidentified body appears to have been run down by a motorcar and Ian Rutledge is leading the investigation to uncover what happened. While the signs point to murder, vital questions remain: Who is the victim? And where, exactly, was he killed? One small clue leads Rutledge to a firm built by two families, famous for producing and selling the world's best Madeira wine. Lewis French, the current head of the English enterprise, is missing. But is he the dead man? And does either his fiancée or his jilted former lover have anything to do with his disappearance - or possible death?

Called out by Scotland Yard into the teeth of a violent blizzard, Inspector Ian Rutledge finds himself confronted with one of the most savage murders he has ever encountered. Rutledge might have expected such unspeakable carnage on the World War I battlefields, where he’d lost much of his soul - and his sanity - but not in an otherwise peaceful farm kitchen in remote Urskdale. Someone has murdered the Elcott family at their table without the least sign of struggle.

The weathered remains of Eleanor Gray are found on a Scottish mountainside, and her mother, the domineering Lady Maude Gray, requires delicate treatment. This is a case that will lead Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard to Scotland, where his harrowing journey to find the truth will drag him back through the fires of his past into secrets that still have the power to kill.

London 1884. Victorian industrialist Alexander Glenville is a man with many secrets. Fleet Street reporter Penny Green is tasked with working undercover as a maid in his home, but tragedy strikes when Glenville's daughter is poisoned. Penny's insider knowledge is crucial for Scotland Yard's murder investigation, but someone in the Glenville household already suspects that she's more than just a servant. Can Penny and Inspector James Blakely solve the mystery before Penny's cover is blown?

Charles Lenox, Member of Parliament, sets sail on a clandestine mission for the government. When an officer is savagely murdered, however, Lenox is drawn toward his old profession, determined to capture another killer.

The Abbey of Imleach, in the southwest Irish kingdom of Muman, now rivals Armagh as the centre of the faith in Ireland. For the founder of the abbey was none other than St Ailbe, the man who brought Christianity to Muman, converted its king and baptised him at Cashel in AD448. But now, calamity has struck the community of the abbey. Not only has an elderly monk suddenly disappeared, but the holy relics of St Ailbe have also vanished. These sacred relics are not just the concern of the abbey's community but are a priceless icon and political symbol of the entire kingdom....

There’s no one and nothing the great detective Nero Wolfe wouldn’t take on if the price was right. That’s something wealthy society widow Rachel Bruner is counting on when she writes him a check for a whopping hundred grand. But even Wolfe has a moment’s doubt when he finds out why the prize is so generous. For the oversize genius and his able assistant Archie Goodwin are about to lock horns with the FBI - and those highly trained G-men have a way with threats, tails, and bugs that could give even sedentary sleuth Nero Wolfe a run for his money.

Fred Underhill is a young cop on the rise in Los Angeles in the early 1950s - a town blinded to its own grime by Hollywood glitter; a society nourished by newspaper lies that wants its heroes all-American and squeaky clean. A chance to lead on a possible serial killing is all it takes to fuel Underhill's reckless ambition - and it propels him into a dangerous alliance with certain mad and unstable elements of the law enforcement hierarchy. When the case implodes with disastrous consequences, it is Fred Underhill who takes the fall. His life is in ruins, his promising future suddenly a dream of the past.

San Francisco, 1952. Detective Evander “Andy” Mills has started a new life for himself as a private detective—but his business hasn’t exactly taken off. It turns out that word spreads fast when you have a bad reputation, and no one in the queer community trusts him enough to ask an ex-cop for help. When James, an old flame from the war who had mysteriously disappeared, arrives in his offices above the Ruby, Andy wants to kick him out. But the job seems to be a simple case of blackmail, and Andy’s debts are piling up. He agrees to investigate, despite everything it stirs up.

When Muriel Carew attends a lavish society party, the last person she expects to bump into is her ex-fiancee Henry Jekyll, a man she's not seen for many years. When Jekyll turns out to be investigating a series of missing persons in London, Muriel is intrigued. But Jekyll is not working alone, and if Muriel wants to aid in the investigation, she must work with both Henry and his partner, the monstrous and uncouth Mr Hyde.

An astonishing tip from a grateful ex-convict seems implausible - but Inspector Ian Rutledge is intrigued and brings it to his superior at Scotland Yard. Alan Barrington, who has evaded capture for 10 years, is the suspect in an appalling murder during Black Ascot, the famous 1910 royal horse race honoring the late King Edward VII. His disappearance began a manhunt that consumed Britain for a decade. Now, it appears that Barrington has returned to England, giving the Yard a last chance to retrieve its reputation and see justice done.

Among the workhouses and pudding shops of South London, Private Detective William Arrowood is presented with far grittier, more violent, and considerably less well-paid cases than Sherlock Holmes. Arrowood has no doubt who is the better detective, and when Mr. and Mrs. Barclay engage him to find their estranged daughter, Birdie, he’s sure it won’t be long before he and his assistant, Barnett, have tracked her down.

In this, his third adventure, the lovable detective William Murdoch becomes involved with the apparent suicide of Constable Oliver Wicken, a man who was the sole support of his mother and invalid sister. But further investigation by Detective Murdoch takes him far afield, and he begins to suspect that the Eakin family, whose house adjoins the one where Wicken died, is more involved with the case than they admit. Here, once again, Maureen Jennings brings the period vividly to life.

There's a new man in charge at Bow Street Magistrates' Court and all is not well. His ambition is to split up Lavender and Woods—and to add to Lavender's woes, someone is leaking exaggerated stories about his investigations to The Times. Lavender is tasked with solving the theft of an aristocrat's precious jewels, while Woods is instructed to track down a libeler. But after a series of vicious murders and surprising coincidences, they discover that these apparently unconnected crimes have more in common than they could ever have imagined.

In Let Loose the Dogs, Murdoch’s life and work overlap tragically. His sister, who long ago fled to a convent to escape their abusive father, is on her deathbed. Meanwhile, Harry Murdoch, the father whom Murdoch long ago shut out of his life, has been charged with murder and calls on his estranged son to prove his innocence. But, knowing his father, what is Murdoch to believe?

Rosemary Simpson presents Book 8 in the Gilded Age Mystery series.

Minerva Kenny is a dear woman, but her tendency to "borrow" things without asking has finally caught up with her. William Barrett has learned Minerva's shameful secret, and he's holding it over her head. Mrs. Jeffries and the staff at Upper Edmonton Gardens have hatched a scheme to save her - but when they try to recover the damning evidence from Barrett, they discover something more shocking: Barrett's corpse. Considering the victim's wicked ways, Minerva is far from the only suspect.

It's London in 1876, and the whole city is abuzz with the enigmatic disappearance of a famous foreign pianist. Lenox has an eye on the matter - as a partner in a now-thriving detective agency, he's a natural choice to investigate. Just when he's tempted to turn his focus to it entirely, however, his grieving brother asks him to come down to Sussex, and Lenox leaves the metropolis behind for the quieter country life of his boyhood. Or so he thinks. In fact, something strange is afoot in Markethouse.