Historical Police Fiction

Helena Lanark is an elderly woman, living in a luxurious care home. The heiress of an immense family fortune, she keeps the secret to the horror which once occurred within the Lanark family house. Jane Tennison is leading a murder investigation into the recent brutal death of a young girl, her decomposed starved body discovered in an old air raid shelter in the garden of the Lanark's now derelict house. Initially the focus is on identifying the victim, until another body is found, hidden in the walls of the shelter.

Late on a spring night in 1920, five boys cross the Yorkshire dales to the ruins of Fountains Abbey, intent on raising the Devil. Instead, they stumble over the Devil himself, sitting there watching them. Terrified, they run for their lives, leaving behind a book on alchemy stolen from their schoolmaster. The next morning, a body is discovered in the cloisters of the abbey--a man swathed in a hooded cloak and wearing a gas mask.

As Police Superintendent Thomas Pitt investigates the leak in the Colonial Office, he quietly looks into the tragic death of his childhood mentor, Sir Arthur Desmond. Pitt believes he was murdered and that the crime is connected with the treachery in the government. He makes little progress...until a second murder reverberates through London.

1944: Daniel, a soldier, legendary among the Norwegians fighting the advance of Bolshevism on the Russian front, is killed. Two years later, a wounded soldier wakes up in a Vienna hospital. He becomes involved with a young nurse, the consequences of which will ripple forward to the turn of the next century. 1999: Harry Hole, alone again after having caused an embarrassment in the line of duty, has been promoted to inspector and has surveillance duties. He is assigned the task of monitoring neo-Nazi activities; fairly mundane until a report of a rare gun being fired sparks his interest.

After two London men end their business partnership, one of them is savagely murdered in a medieval tithe barn on his estate in Somerset. Investigating the killing, Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge discovers that the victim was universally despised in Cambury - even the victim's wife and the town's police inspector are suspect. And yet in London circles, the man was highly regarded. What triggered his death?

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?

Women rich and poor come to her, desperate and in dire need of help – and discretion. Dolly Merishaw is a midwife and an abortionist in Victorian Toronto, but although she keeps quiet about her clients’ condition, her contempt for them and her greed leaves every one of them resentful and angry. So it comes as no surprise to Detective William Murdoch when this malicious woman is murdered. What is a shock, though, is that a week later a young boy is found dead in Dolly’s squalid kitchen.

Eric Ward thinks there is something odd about Arthur Egan’s life and death. But Ward is a former police inspector and trained to be suspicious. Egan left a large sum. But Ward makes no progress tracing the dead man’s offspring. A photograph of an unknown tombstone is his only clue. He discovers Egan served a term for manslaughter and that the evidence against him may have been planted. Why had he accepted his fate so meekly?

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.

It's 1987. An isolated farm house in the east of Iceland. The snowstorm should have shut everybody out. But it didn't. The couple should never have let him in. But they did. An unexpected guest, a liar, a killer. Not all will survive the night. And Detective Hulda will be haunted forever.

Hours later, the man’s cold body lies in the city mortuary, alongside the woman he couldn’t save. And his sister, unconventional nurse Gemma Tate, tracks down troubled police inspector Sebastian Bell to unravel the truth. Sebastian has enough pressure to solve the murder of an aristocratic heiress without Gemma meddling in his case. But the cryptic sentences she brings him from her brother’s notebook could be a crucial lead. If only they knew what “milky way” meant.

About to depart on his first vacation in years, Edward Wozny, a hotshot young investment banker, is sent to help one of his firm's most important and mysterious clients. His task is to search their library stacks for a precious medieval codex, a treasure kept sealed away for many years and for many reasons.

When the body of a boy is found in the filthy sewers of Bluegate Fields, Inspector Pitt is called to investigate. The boy was clearly upper class, so what was he doing in one of London's most dangerous slums? The boy's parents refuse to answer police queries. What are these proper, prosperous people hiding? With the help of his wife and helpmate, Charlotte, Inspector Pitt intends to find out.

Not since the bloody deeds of Jack the Ripper have Londoners felt such terror as that aroused by the gruesome beheadings in Hyde Park. And if newly promoted Police Superintendent Thomas Pitt does not quickly apprehend the perpetrator, he is likely to lose his own head, professionally speaking. Yet even with the help of Charlotte Pitt’s subtle investigation, the sinister violence continues unchecked. And in a shocking turn of events that nearly convinces the pair of sleuths that they have met their match, the case proves to be Pitt’s toughest ever.

A society wedding at Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire becomes a crime scene when a man is murdered. After another body is found, the baffled local constabulary turns to Scotland Yard. Though the second crime had a witness, her description of the killer is so strange it's unbelievable. Despite his experience, Inspector Ian Rutledge has few answers of his own. The victims are so different that there is no rhyme or reason to their deaths. Nothing logically seems to connect them - except the killer. As the investigation widens, a clear suspect emerges. But for Rutledge, the facts still don't add up, leaving him to question his own judgment.

It’s the holiday season, and Max Mephisto and his daughter Ruby have landed a headlining gig at the Brighton Hippodrome, the biggest theater in the city, an achievement only slightly marred by the less-than-savory supporting act: a tableau show of naked “living statues”. But when one of the girls goes missing and turns up dead not long after, Max and Ruby realize there’s something far more sinister than obscenity afoot in the theater.

The new decade is going well for Edgar Stephens and his good friend the magician Max Mephisto. Edgar is happily married, with children, and promoted to Superintendent. Max has found fame and stardom in America, though he's now back in England for a funeral, and a prospective movie job. Edgar's new wife, though - former detective Emma - is restless and frustrated at home, knowing she was the best detective on the team. But when an investigation into a string of disappearing girls begins, Emma sees her chance to get back in the action. She begins her own hunt.

Chief Inspector Brian Leslie, a respected colleague of Ian Rutledge’s, is sent to Avebury, a village set inside a great prehistoric stone circle not far from Stonehenge. A young woman has been murdered next to a mysterious, hooded, figure-like stone, but no one recognizes her - or admits to it. And how did she get there? Despite a thorough investigation, it appears that her killer has simply vanished.

When a man’s naked corpse is found strapped to a waterwheel, newly appointed Inspector Haze is called upon to investigate the crime. With the help of American surgeon Captain Redmond, he delves into the life of Frank Darrow, a man who inspired such hatred, his mere death wasn’t enough to satisfy his killer. Finding few clues and no obvious motive for the murder, Redmond and Haze must peel away the layers of Frank Darrow’s relationships to get to the shocking truth, while also coming to terms with unexpected developments in their own lives.

The man who lies bleeding to death in a London brickyard is no ordinary drifter but a secret informant with details of an international plot against the British government. Special Branch officer Thomas Pitt, hastening to rendezvous with him, arrives seconds after the knife-wielding assassin—who, in turn, flees on an erratic course that leads Pitt in wild pursuit to picturesque St. Malo on the French coast. Meanwhile, Pitt’s supervisor, Victor Narraway, stands accused of embezzling government funds.