Historical Police Fiction

A party of hunters stumbles upon a desiccated human hand, a feisty grandmother meets an untimely death in her own kitchen, and the broken remains of a World War II-era transport plane emerge from the face of a calving glacier. It's all in a day's work for Sergeant Liam Campbell of the Alaska State Troopers. And 60 years ago is like yesterday.

Rosenmontag 1933: Gereon Rath feiert Karneval in Köln. Der Morgen danach beginnt für ihn mit einem heftigen Kater, der falschen Frau im Bett und einem Anruf aus Berlin: Der Reichstag steht in Flammen! Sofortige Urlaubssperre! Seinen neuen Fall aber erbt Gereon Rath von seinem Vorgesetzten Wilhelm Böhm, der sich unter dem Nazi-Polizeipräsidenten ins politische Abseits manövriert hat: Ein Obdachloser ist erstochen am Nollendorfplatz gefunden worden.

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.

December 1940. With the Blitz devastating Britain’s cities, Lizzie Hayes and the women pilots of the Air Transport Authority are more crucial to the war effort than ever before. But when the relative peace of the village of Scotney is shattered by the disappearance of the Chief Inspector’s niece, it’s Lizzie’s training as a psychologist that draws her into another disturbing police case alongside DI Jonathan Kember.

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.

Kommissar Oppenheimers dritter Fall: ein packender Zweiter-Weltkriegs-Krimi über die Atompläne der Nazis von Glauser-Preisträger Harald Gilbers. Berlin, Ende April 1945: Die letzten Tage des Dritten Reichs verbringen Kommissar Oppenheimer und seine Frau Lisa in einem Unterschlupf des Ganoven Ede. Doch in den chaotischen Wirren der Niederlage werden sie getrennt. Als Oppenheimer in Edes Auftrag einen verschwundenen Schuldner aufspüren soll, bekommt er unverhofft einen Hinweis auf Lisas Vergewaltiger, den russischen Deserteur Grigorjew.

"La mia è una storia antica, scritta nelle ossa. Sono antiche le ceneri di cui sono figlia, ceneri da cui, troppe volte, sono rinata. E a tratti è un sollievo sapere che prima o poi la mia mente mi tradirà, che i ricordi sembreranno illusioni, racconti appartenenti a qualcun altro e non a me. È quasi un sollievo sapere che è giunto il momento di darmi una risposta, e darla soprattutto a chi ne ha più bisogno. Perché i miei giorni da commissario stanno per terminare. Eppure, nessun sollievo mi è concesso."

As lawman, rancher, and Korean War veteran, Ty Dawson has his share of problems in the southern Oregon county he calls home. Despite how rural it is, Meriwether can't keep modernity at bay. The 1970s have changed the United States—and Meriwether won't be spared. A standoff looms when the US Fish & Wildlife Service seeks to separate longtime cattleman KC Sheridan from his water supply—ensuring the death of his livestock. If that's not enough trouble, a Portland detective is found dead in a fly-fishing resort cabin.

Kommissar Oppenheimers vierter Fall: ein packender Krimi über eine Mordserie im zerbombten Berlin von Glauser-Preisträger Harald Gilbers. Berlin 1946. Nach Kriegsende nutzt Kommissar Oppenheimer seinen kriminalistischen Spürsinn, um Vermisste ausfindig zu machen. Routinemäßig besucht er dazu die Berliner Flüchtlingslager. Als der verunstaltete Leichnam eines vertriebenen "Volksdeutschen" aufgefunden wird, bekommt Oppenheimer von dem sowjetischen Oberst Aksakow den Befehl, sich mit der Sache zu beschäftigen. Weitere brutale Morde lassen nicht lange auf sich warten.

El aristocrático clan de los Moidore, una de las mejores familias de Londres, a cuya mansión de Queen Anne Street acuden los más encumbrados personajes, nunca se había visto en vuelto en el escándalo. Ahora, sin embargo, la bella hija de sir Basil ha aparecido apuñalada en su propia cama y la noticia corre de boca en boca por la ciudad. El inspector William Monk recibe la orden de encontrar al asesino sin demora, aunque evitando causarle mayores trastornos a una familia ya abrumada por la tragedia.

La enfermera Hester Latterly debe acompañar a una anciana señora durante una visita a Londres. El asunto se complica cuando la mujer muere durante la noche. Al practicarle la autopsia se descubre que ha sido envenenada y ¿quién si no Hester puede haber sido la asesina? El inspector William Monk deberá hallar las pruebas incriminatorias para demostrar la culpabilidad de la enfermera o encontrar un asesino entre los miembros del enigmático y cerrado clan de los Farraline.

En el hospital londinense Royal Free cada día se combate con la muerte; no con el asesinato. Así que el hallazgo del cadáver de Prudence Barrymore, una amable enfermera de buena familia crea confusión y asombro. Pese a que la policía señala que Kristian Beck, un médico extranjero, es el culpable, la dirección del hospital encarga la investigación del caso a William Monk. Este, junto a la enfermera y amiga de la víctima Hester Latterly y el brillante abogado defensor Oliver Rathbone, desvelará los secretos intereses que en ocasiones empañan la imparcialidad de la justicia.

July 1940. As the Battle of Britain begins, the women of the Air Transport Auxiliary carry out the dangerous task of ferrying warplanes to RAF airbases. But for the ATA detachment sent to the base at Scotney, it’s not only in the skies that they’re a target—it seems a killer is stalking them on the ground. On the day pilot Lizzie Hayes arrives in the quiet village, one of her new comrades is found murdered. One of the few women in Britain with a psychology PhD, Lizzie thinks she can use her skills to help identify the killer, but DI Jonathan Kember isn’t convinced.

It is 1945 in the American sector of occupied Berlin, and a German boy has discovered the body of a beautiful young woman in a subway station. Blonde and blue eyed, she has been sexually assaulted and strangled with a chain. When the bodies of other young women begin to pile up, it becomes clear that this is no isolated act of violence, and German and American investigators will have to cooperate if they are to stop the slaughter.

When a rainmaker is bludgeoned to death in the pitch-blackness of a colossal dust storm, small-town sheriff Temple Jennings shoulders yet another burden in the hard times of the 1930s Dust Bowl. The killing only magnifies Temple's ongoing troubles: a formidable opponent in the upcoming election, the repugnant burden of enforcing farm foreclosures, and his wife's lingering grief over the loss of their eight-year-old son. As the sheriff and his young deputy investigate the murder, their suspicions focus on a teenager, Carmine, serving with the Civilian Conservation Corps.

It's 1976. Dr. Colin Sanford, a brilliant, ambitious obstetrician in the Pacific Northwest city of Emerald, has a plan to create the first in vitro baby. He recruits Dr. Giselle Hearn, an experienced laboratory geneticist/embryologist at the university who’s frustrated by the ultraconservative policies of her department chairman. Drs. Sanford and Hearn, working secretly, set out to put their names in the history books. Unfortunately, a secret that big is hard to keep....

On Christmas Eve, 1943, the newly formed but undermanned Homicide division of the Melbourne police force is called to investigate the vicious double murder of a father and son. When Military Intelligence becomes involved, Homicide's Inspector Titus Lambert must unravel the personal from the political. If only the killings had stopped at two. The police are desperate to come to grips with an extraordinary and disquieting upsurge of violence.

Two years after the firebombing that devastated the historic East German city, the suffering continues in the throes of a brutal winter. The wary and exhausted citizens scramble to survive, wolf packs of orphans scavenge for food, and Detective Max Heller is called to the scene of a savage murder. A Russian officer was stabbed to death, and not far from the frozen corpse is an abandoned backpack containing another man’s severed head.

New York, August 1896. A "hot wave" has settled on the city with no end in sight, leaving tempers short and the streets littered with dead horses felled by the heat. In this presidential election year, the gulf between rich and poor has political passions flaring, while anti-immigrant sentiment has turned virulent. At police headquarters, the gruff, politically ambitious commissioner Theodore Roosevelt has been struggling to reform his notoriously corrupt department.

A reckoning with the persistence of evil in post-Civil War Atlanta. After leaving Atlanta in disgrace three years before, detective Thomas Canby is called back to the city on the eve of Atlanta's 1881 International Cotton Exposition to partner with Atlanta's first African American police officer, Cyrus Underwood. The case they're assigned is chilling: a serial murderer who seems to be violently targeting Atlanta's wealthiest black entrepreneurs. The killer's method is both strange and unusually gruesome.