Historical Police Fiction

I still dream, every night, of Polneath on fire. Smoke unravelling from an upper window, and the terrace bathed in a hectic orange light.... Now I see that the decision I made at Polneath was the only decision of my life. Everything marred in that one dark minute.

Hamburg, 1947. A ruined city occupied by the British who bombed it, experiencing the coldest winter in living memory. Food is scarce; refugees and the homeless crowd into shantytowns and sheds. There is a killer on the loose, and all attempts to find him or her have failed. Plagued with worry about his missing son, Frank Stave is a career policeman with a tragedy in his past that is driving his determination to find the killer.

Michael Cassidy, a New York cop plagued by dreams that sometimes come true, escorts a prisoner accused of murder to Havana on the cusp of Fidel Castro's successful revolution against the Batista dictatorship. After delivering the man to La Cabaña prison and rescuing his former lover - Dylan McCue, now a Russian KGB agent - from her scheduled execution, Cassidy returns to New York and retreats into the comforts of alcohol and sex.

1963, France: A farmer reports a truck ramming into a car near Picardie, followed by gunfire. A group of Englishmen are brought in after a bar fight. A tramp's body is discovered in a burnt out truck. All this occurring after multiple attempts on the President's life. Inspector Lucas Rocco knows there's a connection somewhere, and is recruited by Colonel Saint-Cloud to assist with the President's Security.

The murder of Judge Hugo Jackson is out of Detective Simon Ziele's jurisdiction in more ways than one. For one, its high-profile enough to command the attention of the notorious new police commissioner, since Judge Jackson was presiding over the sensational trial of Al Drayson. Drayson, an anarchist, set off a bomb at a Carnegie family wedding, but instead of killing millionaires, it killed passersby, including a child. The dramatic trial has captured the full attention of 1906 New York City.

During the Great War, Hermann Kohler and Jean-Louis St-Cyr fought in Alsace on opposite sides of the barbed wire. Two decades later, they return as partners: a Gestapo officer and a French cop investigating everyday crimes in a world gone mad with war. In February 1943, Alsace is unrecognizable - an occupied country where speaking French is all it takes to lose one’s freedom.

DI Hardcastle tracks a killer who’s left his hat behind... July, 1917. DI Ernest Hardcastle and his assistant, DS Charles Marriott, investigate the murder of a cashier operating in London’s Victoria Station. An army officer claims to have seen the murderer running away, and an army cap left behind appears to identify the criminal. Hardcastle believes that it will be a simple matter to go to Aldershot and arrest him, but things are never as easy as they seem.

Inspector Lestrade is called upon to investigate the brutal death of Ralph Childers, MP. It is but the first in a series of perplexing murders that lead Lestrade around the country. The connection between the victims appears to be politics. Is someone trying to destroy the Government? It would seem so, particularly when a bomb is found in the Palace of Westminster. During his investigations Lestrade encounters some old and some new faces.

The last time Jean-Louis St-Cyr visited the ruins of this ancient abbey, during one of the bloodiest campaigns of the Great War, a sniper nearly killed him. Three decades later, death has brought him here again. Ever since the German occupation of France, the chief inspector has worked alongside German detective inspector Hermann Kohler, solving crimes too common to pique the Gestapo's interest.

London 1859-62. A time of great exhibitions, foreign conquests and underground trains. But the era of Victorian marvels is also the time of the Great Stink. With cholera and depravity never far from the headlines, it's not only the sewers that smell bad. Novice detective Campbell Lawless stumbles onto the trail of Berwick Skelton, an elusive revolutionary determined to bring London to its knees through devilish acts of terrorism.

The new Charlie Woodend mystery - Angela Jackson has been missing for over 24 hours and, in the opinion of Dr. Stevenson, the psychiatrist who Woodend turns to for advice, her kidnapper will first torture and then kill her. With damaging strains operating within his own team, the more the investigation proceeds the less hope Woodend can see. And he knows deep within himself that he will fail in bringing Angela back alive....

DCI Monkia Paniatowski has seen dozens of murder victims in her time, but nothing could have prepared her for the corpse in the woods. It is not so much that the man’s throat has been slashed that shocks her, nor even the way he is naked – it is the way he has been carefully posed. Paniatowski has been assigned a new sergeant, who she does not entirely trust. Worse yet, an old enemy from the secret service announces he will be monitoring her every move.

Captain Alexei Korolev has nothing to complain about. He has his own room in an apartment, a job in the police force that puts food on the table, and his good health. In Moscow in 1937, that's a lot more than most people have to be grateful for. Korolev receives an urgent call from his boss - it seems an important man has been murdered, and Korolev is the only detective they're willing to assign to this sensitive case.

State Security Officer Brano Sev is the secretive member of the Ministry for State Security. No one else quite trusts him, but it is part of his job to do what the authorities ask, no matter what. So when he gets an order to travel to the village of his birth in order to interrogate a potential defector, he goes. When a man turns up dead shortly after he arrives and Brano is framed for the murder, he assumes this is part of the plan and allows it to run its course.

In December 1941, America is reeling from the brutal attack on Pearl Harbor. Both patriotism and paranoia grip New York as the city frantically mobilizes for war. Nurse Louise Hunter is outraged when the FBI, in a midnight sweep of prominent Japanese residents, storms in to arrest her patient’s wife. The desperately ill Professor Oakley is married to artist Masako Fumi. The nurse vows to help the professor free Masako. But when the murdered body of Masako’s art dealer is discovered in the gallery where he’d been closing down her controversial show, Masako’s troubles multiply.

Against all the visible evidence, a homicide cop embarks on a quest to prove a Hollywood goddess' innocence for the crime of killing her husband in this chilling tale set in the heart of New Orleans.

To the outside observer, Salt Lake City seems to be the squeaky-clean “City of Saints” - its nickname since Mormon pioneers first arrived. Its wide roads, huge Mormon temple topped by a horn-blowing angel, and orderly neighborhoods give it the appearance of the ideal American city. But looks can be deceiving. When beautiful socialite Helen Kent Pfalzgraf turns up dead, Salt Lake County Deputy Art Oveson - a twenty-something husband, dad, and devout Mormon just getting his start - finds himself thrust into the role of detective.

Billy Boyle awakens in a field hospital in Sicily with amnesia. In his pocket is a yellow silk handkerchief embroidered with the initial L. Gradually he remembers: he has been sent ashore in advance of the troops with this token from Lucky Luciano to contact the head of the Sicilian Mafia. But he must also thwart a murderous band of counterfeiters of Army scrip led by Vito Genovese.

Estate 1808. Nel caldo soffocante l'esercito napoleonico occupa la Prussia e tenta di mettere le mani sulla sua ricchezza più grande: l'ambra. Ma una maledizione sembra calare sulle raccoglitrici della preziosa resina, donne forti e splendide che cadono sotto i colpi di un assassino efferato e maniacale. Mentre i loro corpi, lasciati nudi e stranamente mutilati sulle spiagge del Baltico, sembrano comporre un oscuro disegno, spetta di nuovo a Stiffeniis, il detective allievo di Kant, affrontare l'ignoto, e un pericolo più vicino di quanto lui stesso possa immaginare.

When a famed Oxford historian is found dead in his study one night, all evidence points to his son, Stephen. About to be disinherited from the family fortune, Stephen returns to home after a long estrangement—and it happens to be the night his father is shot to death. When his fingerprints are found on the murder weapon, Stephen’s guilt seems undeniable. But there were five other people in the manor house at the time, and as their stories slowly emerge.