Historical Police Fiction

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.

Berlin am Abgrund: Gereon Raths vierter Fall. Juli 1932, die Berliner Polizei steht vor einem Rätsel: Ein Mann liegt tot im Lastenaufzug von Haus Vaterland, dem legendären Vergnügungstempel am Potsdamer Platz. Kommissar Gereon Rath ist wenig erfreut über den neuen Fall, denn er hat schon genug Ärger.

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.

Willa Noble knew it was bad luck when it was pouring rain on the day of her ever-important job interview at the Dickinson home in Amherst, Massachusetts. When she arrived late, disheveled with her skirts sodden and filthy, she'd lost all hope of being hired for the position. As the housekeeper politely told her they'd be in touch, Willa started toward the door of the stately home only to be called back by the soft but strong voice of Emily Dickinson. What begins as tenuous employment turns to friendship as the reclusive poet takes Willa under her wing.

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. accompany him to Dublin to investigate.

Der erste Fall der "Gereon Rath"-Bestsellerreihe. Mit diesem Roman beginnt die spektakuläre Serie, in der Kutscher seinen Kriminalkommissar Gereon Rath in die politischen und gesellschaftlichen Umbrüche im Berlin der späten 20er-Jahre führt. Rath, neu in Berlin und abgestellt bei der Sitte, erlebt eine Weltstadt im Rausch, die von sozialen und politischen Spannungen zerrissen ist. Ungefragt schaltet sich der Kommissar in die stagnierenden Ermittlungen eines Mordfalls ein – und stößt in ein Wespennest.

In Victorian England, a divisive election is fast approaching. Passions are so enflamed that Thomas Pitt, shrewd mainstay of the London police, has been ordered not to solve a crime but to prevent a national disaster. The aristocratic Tory candidate—and Pitt’s archenemy—is Charles Voisey. The Liberal candidate is Aubrey Serracold, whose wife’s dalliance with spiritualism threatens his chances.

Responding to pressure from on high, the Atlanta Police Department is forced to hire its first black officers. It's a victory of sorts, though the newly minted policemen are met with deep hostility by their white peers, and their authority is limited: They can't arrest a suspect unless a white officer is present; they can't drive squad cars; they can't even enter the station through the front door.

Upon reaching the tumultuous 1980s, Olen Steinhauer's literary crime series set in Eastern Europe comes full circle as one of the People's Militia's earliest cases reemerges to torment its inspectors, including militia chief Emil Brod, the original detective on the case.

Chicago, 1923: Ten-year-old Dani Flanagan returns home to find police swarming the house, her parents dead. Michael Malone, the young patrolman assigned to the case, discovers there’s more to the situation—and to Dani Flanagan herself—than the authorities care to explore. Malone is told to shut his mouth, and Dani is sent away to live with her spinster aunts in Cleveland.

Everyone in Denmark knew that Yousef Ahmed, a refugee from Iraq, brutally murdered the right-wing politician Sanne Melgaard. So, when part-time blues musician, frustrated home renovator, and full-time private detective Gabriel Præst agrees to investigate the matter because his ex—the one who got away—asked him to, he knew it was a no-win case. But as Gabriel starts to ask questions, his face meets with the fists of Russian gangsters; the Danish prime minister asks him for a favor; and he starts to realize that something may be rotten in the state of Denmark.

September, 1940. The sun is shining, and in the midst of the good weather Londoners could be mistaken for forgetting their country was at war - until the familiar wail of the air-raid sirens heralds an enemy attack. The Blitz has started, and normal life has abruptly ended - but crime has not. That night a man's body is discovered in an unmarked van in the back streets of West Ham. When Detective Inspector John Jago is called to the scene, he recognises the victim: local justice of the peace Charles Villiers. The death looks suspicious, but then a German bomb obliterates all evidence.

Serpent's Point in South Devon is the focus of local legends. The large house on the headland is shrouded in an ancient tale of evil, and when a woman is found strangled on the coastal path nearby, DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate. The woman had been house-sitting at Serpent's Point, and Wesley is surprised to discover that she was conducting an investigation of her own into unsolved missing persons cases. Could these enquires have led to her murder?

Falkenberg, Sweden. The mutilated body of talented young jewellery designer, Linnea Blix, is found in a snow-swept marina. Hampstead Heath, London. The body of a young boy is discovered with similar wounds to Linnea's. Buchenwald Concentration Camp, 1944. In the midst of the hell of the Holocaust, Erich Hebner will do anything to see himself as a human again. Are the two murders the work of a serial killer, and how are they connected to shocking events at Buchenwald?

London, 1968: The body of a teenage girl is found just steps away from the Beatles' Abbey Road recording studio. The police are called to a residential street in St John's Wood where an unidentified young woman has been strangled. Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen believes she may be one of the many Beatles fans who regularly camp outside Abbey Road Studios. With his reputation tarnished by an inexplicable act of cowardice, this is Breen's last chance to prove he's up to the job.

When the Earl of Granville is skewered with a pitchfork in his own stables, Inspector Haze and Lord Redmond must unearth decades-old family secrets in order to unravel the motive behind the murder. But just when they think they’re making headway, disturbing new revelations come to light and cast doubt on their findings.

USA, 1958. President Joseph McCarthy sits in the White House, elected on a wave of populist xenophobia and barely‑concealed anti‑Semitism. The country is in the firm grip of McCarthy's Hueys, a secret police force evolved from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Hollywood's sparkling vision of the American dream has been suppressed; its remaining talents forced to turn out endless anti‑communist propaganda.

Why did literary legend Wynn Staniland suddenly become a recluse in the 1980s? Most assumed he stopped writing because of his wife's bizarre suicide. And now a promising young author called Zac Wilkinson is working on Staniland's biography and hopes to reveal the true story to a waiting world. When Wilkinson is found brutally murdered, DI Wesley Peterson finds links to the unexplained poisoning of a middle-aged couple - and Staniland appears to be the connection.

From Edgar-nominated author Lyndsay Faye comes the next book in what Gillian Flynn calls, "a brilliant new mystery series." Six months after the formation of the NYPD, its most reluctant and talented officer, Timothy Wilde, thinks himself well versed in his city's dark practices - until he learns of the gruesome underworld of lies and corruption ruled by the "blackbirders," who snatch free Northerners of color from their homes, masquerade them as slaves, and sell them South to toil as plantation property. The abolitionist Timothy is horrified by these traders in human flesh.

In the West End, a renowned Italian escape artist dies spectacularly on stage during a performance - immolated in a gleaming copper cauldron of his wife’s design. In Cambridge, the runaway daughter of a famous don is found drowned, her long blonde hair tangled in the Jesus Lock on the River Cam. And in Baker Street, a mysterious locksmith exacts an unusual price to open a small silver box sent to Watson.