Historical Police Fiction

London, 1878. One April morning, a small boat bearing a young woman’s corpse floats down the murky waters of the Thames. When the victim is identified as Rose Albert, daughter of a prominent judge, the Scotland Yard director gives the case to Michael Corravan, one of the only senior inspectors remaining after a corruption scandal the previous autumn left the division in ruins. Reluctantly, Corravan abandons his ongoing case, a search for the missing wife of a shipping magnate, handing it over to his young colleague, Mr. Stiles.

Berlin, Sommer 1936. Inmitten der Olympiabegeisterung muss Gereon Rath verdeckt einen Todesfall im olympischen Dorf aufklären. Die Machthaber befürchten, dass Kommunisten die Spiele sabotieren. Rath hat seine Zweifel und ermittelt eher lustlos, zumal er private Probleme hat: Er ist Gastgeber amerikanischer Olympiatouristen, und seine Ehefrau Charly hat die gemeinsame Wohnung unter Protest verlassen. Dann findet er im olympischen Dorf einen Mitarbeiter mit kommunistischer Vergangenheit, der auch am Tatort war.

An old flame has returned to Chief Inspector Frederick Troy's life: Kitty Stilton, wife of an American presidential hopeful. Private eye Joey Rork has been hired to make sure Kitty's amorous liaisons with a rat pack crooner don't ruin her husband's political career. But he also wants to know why Kitty has been spotted with Danny Ryan, whose twin brothers, in addition to owning one of London's hottest jazz clubs, are said to have inherited the crime empire of fallen mobster Alf Marx. Before Rork can find out, he meets a gruesome end.

Agatha Christie’s world is one of glamorous society parties, country house weekends and growing literary fame. Nan O’Dea’s world is something very different. Her attempts to escape a tough London upbringing during the Great War led to a life in Ireland marred by a hidden tragedy. After fighting her way back to England, she’s set her sights on Agatha. Because Agatha Christie has something Nan wants. And it’s not just her husband.

Liverpool, 1855. Ada Houston is alone. Her grandfather has recently passed away, and her brother is missing, last seen working on the Liverpool docks. Everyone assumes him to be dead. But she will not give up hope. Ada's determined search takes her to the Crimea, where she joins the team of Florence Nightingale's nurses. She may have set off looking for her brother, but along the way Ada finds friends, romance and a new purpose in her own life in the most troubling and difficult of places.

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.

Berlin, 1931. A power struggle is taking place in Berlin’s underworld. The American gangster Abraham Goldstein is in residence at the Hotel Excelsior. As a favour to the FBI, the police put him under surveillance, with Detective Gereon Rath on the job. As Rath grows bored and takes on a private case for his seedy pal Johann Marlow, he soon finds himself in the middle of a Berlin street war. Meanwhile Rath’s on-off girlfriend, Charly, lets a young woman she is interrogating escape, and soon her investigations cross Rath’s from the other side.

In the beautiful North Yorkshire countryside of the 1960s, Constable Nick’s roles are as varied as the eccentric villagers. He handles every encounter with his characteristic humor, humanity, and professionalism. His investigations include the case of a clever pony who keeps escaping, a woman running through town naked, and a pack of Canadian timber wolves hanging out in a bus shelter. He soon gets to know all the characters on his beat, from his superior officer, Sergeant Blaketon, to Claude Jeremiah Greengrass, whose lurcher, Alfred, lands him with a summons.

Detective Inspector Ian Hamilton is no stranger to Edinburgh's darkest crimes. Scarred by the mysterious fire that killed his parents, he faces his toughest case yet when a young man is found strangled in Holyrood Park. With little evidence aside from a strange playing card found on the body, Hamilton engages the help of his aunt, a gifted photographer, and George Pearson, a librarian with a shared interest in the criminal mind.

Charles Todd brings his classic mystery series to a new level of intensity and intrigue. The year is 1919, and Ian Rutledge is a fragile yet courageous former soldier searching for his place in a post-war world. Now a Scotland Yard detective, Rutledge is called upon to probe a murder in the small Norfolk town of Osterley - but he soon discovers that the crime may be connected to one of the greatest disasters of all time…

The fabulously wealthy kingdom of Sambalpore: home to tigers, elephants, diamond mines and the beautiful Palace of the Sun. When the heir to the throne of Sambalpore is assassinated in Calcutta in the presence of Captain Sam Wyndham and his colleague 'Surrender-Not' Banerjee, Wyndham works to uncover the reasons behind Prince Punit's death, despite the opposition of his commanding officers. Travelling to Sambalpore, he discovers a kingdom riven with suppressed conflict.

Why was the redoubtable King Henry, an aborigine from Western Australia, killed during a thunderstorm in New South Wales? What was the feud that led to murder after nineteen long years had passed? And who was the woman who saw the murder and kept silent? This first story of Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, the half-aborigine detective, takes him to a sheep station in the Darling River bush country where he encounters those problems he understands so well... mixed blood and divided loyalties.

A wicked Scottish winter has just begun when pioneering female physician Sophia Jex-Blake calls on Detective Inspector Ian Hamilton to investigate the suspicious death of one of her patients - a railroad lineman who she believes succumbed to the horrific effects of arsenic poisoning. The most provocative aspect of the case doesn’t escape Hamilton: the married victim’s numerous sexual transgressions. Now, for the first time since the unexplained fire that killed his parents, Hamilton enters the Royal Infirmary to gain the insights of brilliant medical student Arthur Conan Doyle.

Lady Ottilia and Lord Francis Fanshawe are holidaying in Tunbridge Wells when they stumble across the scene of a horrific accident. While visiting the High Rocks, a local tourist spot, a young woman falls to her death from the top of the climb. It soon becomes clear that the woman is linked to the infamous Dowager Viscountess Lady Wem - an indomitable matriarch visiting Tunbridge with her extended family. The young woman was at the center of a scandal - Lady Wem's grandson, Daniel, eloped with her three years prior.

April 1937, die Familie Rath ist zersprengt. Eigentlich wollte Charlotte Rath, geborene Ritter, schon längst im Ausland sein, doch halten die Umstände sie in Berlin fest. Ihr ehemaliger Pflegesohn Fritze ist in die geschlossene Abteilung der Nervenheilanstalt Wittenau gesteckt worden, ihre beste Freundin Greta ist spurlos verschwunden und steht unter Mordverdacht. Dem untergetauchten und von den Behörden für tot gehaltenen Gereon Rath wird es derweil zu gefährlich in Deutschland, er besteigt einen Zeppelin, um in die USA zu entkommen.

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.

Already suffering the privations of the 1930s Dust Bowl, an Oklahoma town is further devastated when a passenger train derails—flooding its hospital with the dead and maimed. Among the seriously wounded is Etha, wife of Sheriff Temple Jennings. Overwhelmed by worry for her, the sheriff must regain his footing to investigate the derailment, which rapidly develops into a case of sabotage.

Lawton's novel opens in 1938 with Europe on the brink of war. In London, Frederick Troy, newly promoted to the prestigious Murder Squad at Scotland Yard, is put in charge of rounding up a list of German and Italian "enemy aliens" that also includes Frederick's brother, Rod, who learns upon receiving an internment letter that despite having grown up in England he is Austrian-born. Hundreds of men are herded by train to a neglected camp on the Isle of Man. And, as the bombs start falling on London, a murdered rabbi is found, then another, and another.

Berlin, Spätsommer 1935. In der Familie Rath geht jeder seiner Wege. Pflegesohn Fritz marschiert mit der HJ zum Nürnberger Reichsparteitag, Charly schlägt sich als Anwaltsgehilfin und Privatdetektivin durch, während sich Gereon Rath, mittlerweile zum Oberkommissar befördert, mit den Todesfällen befassen muss, die sonst niemand haben will. Ein tödlicher Verkehrsunfall weckt seinen Jagdinstinkt, obwohl seine Vorgesetzten ihm den Fall entziehen und ihn in eine andere Abteilung versetzen. Es geht um Hermann Göring, der erpresst werden soll, um geheime Akten, Morphium und schmutzige Politik.

In the summer of 1914 a boy vanishes, never to be seen again. Now, in 1920, the once esteemed Stilwell family of Darkacre Hall find themselves struggling with the legacy of the First World War. Leonard bears the physical scars, while his brother Maurice has endured more than his mind can take. Maurice’s wife Ida yearns for the lost days of privilege and pleasure and family friend Victor seems unwilling to move on. But their lives are thrown into further disarray when the missing boy’s case is reopened – and this time they themselves are under police scrutiny.