International Crime Thrillers

A long-lost Modigliani portrait, a grieving brother’s blood vendetta, a Soviet secret that's been buried for eighty years - Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc's current case is her most exciting one yet. When Aimée’s long-term partner and best friend Rene leaves their detective agency for a new job in Silicon Valley, Aimée knows she can handle the extra workload. At least, that what she tells herself...repeatedly. But all bets are off when Yuri Volodya, a mysterious old Russian man, hires Aimée to protect a painting.

Two officers from the American troops stationed in Caserta, Italy, not far from Naples, have been found murdered. The MOs are completely different, and it seems like the officers had no connection to each other, but one frightening fact links the murders: each body was discovered with a single playing card: the Lieutenant, the 10 of hearts; the Captain, the jack of hearts. The message seems to be clear: If the murderer isn't apprehended, the higher ranks will be next.

Cara Black’s best-selling Aimée Leduc mysteries feature a streetwise PI who calls Paris her home. In her 11th outing, Aimée is faced with her most daunting challenge yet. Her godfather and mentor Commissaire Morbier is accused of murder, and it’s up to Aimée to clear his name. But as she investigates, she uncovers a terrifying conspiracy involving police corruption and Basque terrorists.

An elderly man has been run down by a logging truck on the street in Vientiane just opposite the post office. His body is delivered to the morgue of Dr. Siri Paiboun, the official and only coroner of Laos. At the age of 73, Siri is too old to be in awe of the new communist bureaucrats for whom he now works. Before he can identify the corpse, he must decipher a letter in the man’s pocket—it is written in invisible ink and in code.

In Vientiane, Laos, a booby-trapped corpse intended for Dr. Siri, the national coroner, has been delivered to the morgue. In his absence, only Nurse Dtui’s intervention saves the lives of the morgue attendants, visiting doctors, and Madame Daeng, Dr. Siri’s fiancée.

A speeding BMW leaves a dead pedestrian in its wake and leads police to the corpse of a young girl in a cellar. Detective Inspector Irene Huss' ensuing investigation draws her into the chilling world of sex trafficking. One of Soho Crime's best-selling series, Swedish Detective Inspector Irene Huss is another example of why the Scandinavian crime fiction trend is so hot.

Twelve-year-old Bonnie MacDonald - the beloved step dancing, fiddling youngest member of Cape Breton's famed Clan Donnie band - vanishes after a family party. There was no stranger spotted lurking around, but no one thinks for one minute that Bonnie ran away. Maura MacNeil, cousin to Clan Donnie, offers her husband's legal services to the family as the police search for the missing girl. But fame attracts some strange characters, and Clan Donnie has groupies. So, it turns out, does lawyer and bluesman Monty Collins.

Aimée Leduc is happy her long-time business partner René has found a girlfriend. Really, she is. It’s not her fault if she can’t suppress her doubts about the relationship; René is moving way too fast, and Aimée’s instincts tell her Meizi, this supposed love of René’s life, isn’t trustworthy. And her misgivings may not be far off the mark: Meizi disappears during a Chinatown dinner to take a phone call and never comes back to the restaurant. Minutes later, the body of a young man, a science prodigy and volunteer at the nearby Musée, is found shrink-wrapped in an alleyway....

Aimée's childhood friend, Laure, is a policewoman. Her partner, Jacques, has set up a meeting in Montmartre with an informer. When Laure goes along as backup, Jacques is lured to a rooftop where he is shot to death. Laure's gun has been fired, there is gunpowder residue is on her hands, so she is charged with her partner's murder. As the police close ranks against the alleged cop killer, Aimée is determined to clear Laure's name.

Rick Montoya has just moved from Santa Fe to Rome, embracing the life of a translator. He's beginning to settle in to la dolce vita when school friend Beppo, now senior in the Italian Art Squad, recruits Rick for an unofficial undercover role. Armed with a list of galleries, suspects, and an expense account, Rick arrives in Tuscany posing as a buyer for a Santa Fe gallery to flush out traffickers in priceless burial urns. However, before sunset on his first day in Volterra, the challenge intensifies. Rick has one quick conversation with a gallery employee who dies minutes later in a brutal fall from a high cliff.

Charlie Howard - globe-trotting mystery writer, professional thief, and poor decision maker - is in Paris. Flush with the success of his latest book reading, Charlie agrees to show a complete novice how to break into an apartment in the Marais. Fast-forward twenty-four hours and Charlie's hired to steal an ordinary-looking oil painting - from the exact same address. Mere coincidence? Charlie figures there's no harm in finding out - until a dead body turns up in his living room and he finds himself evading the law while becoming caught up in a quite outrageous heist.

Dawn. The English Channel. A small boat arrives crammed with exhausted migrants, not all of whom will make land. Some of the shattered occupants have already paid for their journeys. Others have arrived with a debt still to be paid. One of the migrants isn't fleeing anything. He's not from Europe, or Africa, or the East. He's from Texas, and he's wearing a robe. When the traffickers take some of their passengers to pay for their journey, they also take the man in the robe. That was their first mistake.

The phone rings. One of Brendan Healy's oldest and best friends is dead. Healy must return home to Hawthorne to find out why. Meanwhile, Agent Jennifer Aiken is investigating the same dark conspiracy involving politicians, prostitution, and black markets. The trail will put both her and Brendan's lives in mortal danger, as well as introducing Healy to the fascinating young woman Sloane Dewan, who may hold the key to it all.

Charlie Howard isn’t only a part-time crime writer and part-time thief; he’s also a magician. For his next trick, he’ll relieve Josh Masters, the famous illusionist vying for the affections of Charlie’s friend Victoria, of $60,000 in casino chips stashed in his hotel safe. Revenge would be sweet - if there weren’t a dead redhead floating in Masters’ bathtub and if Masters hadn’t just disappeared in a puff of smoke after cheating at roulette. Convinced that Charlie was in on the scam, the casino’s owners give him an impossible mission....

For the first time in decades Rome is paralysed by a blizzard. And a gruesome discovery is made in the Pantheon, one of the city's most ancient and revered architectural treasures. Covered by softly falling snow is the body of a young woman, her back horribly mutilated. But before Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni of the Questura can begin a formal investigation, the US Embassy has brought in its own people, FBI Agents who want the case closed down as quickly and discreetly as possible.

Things are not going well for Inspector Salvo Montalbano. His relationship with Livia is once again on the rocks and - acutely aware of his age - he is beginning to grow weary of the endless violence he encounters. Then a young woman is found dead, her face half shot off and only a tattoo of a sphinx moth giving any hint of her identity. The tattoo links her to three similarly marked girls - all victims of the underworld sex trade.

Ellery had a simple case. A few days of discreet snooping, some choice advice, and the inimitable sleuth would blithely restore domestic harmony to the millionaire couple Dirk and Martha Lawrence. Then came the scarlet letters. And finally the cryptic clue, scrawled in a murdered man’s blood. A simple case? Unless Ellery did some super-fast sleuthing, he’d have nothing to show but a very scarlet face. The case will drag him all over New York as he hunts for the truth.

What if the greatest violin maker in history actually did have a secret formula? And, what if it were stumbled upon, more than 300 years later, by innocent guitar makers, who then became the target of someone who could not let that secret be revealed. Add to this volatile situation a second party who wants the secret made public. The cascade of events takes our protagonists to London, Paris, Cremona, the island of Sardinia, Phoenix and Ottawa, as they dodge violence and try to uncover the mystery.

When Gideon Oliver and his wife, Julie, are in Tuscany visiting the Cubbiddu family, the renowned Skeleton Detective is asked to reexamine the remains of a mysterious family tragedy. Pietro Cubbiddu, former patriarch of the Villa Antica wine empire, is thought to have killed his wife and then himself in the remote mountains of the Apennines. It does not take long for Gideon to deduce that, whatever happened, a murder-suicide it was not. Soon Gideon finds himself in a morass of family antipathies, conflicts, and mistrust, to say nothing of the local authority's resentment.

Detective Ngaire Blakes is back on the case when a skeletonized murder victim is discovered - a crime that took place during the Springbok Tours of 1981. A period that pitted father against son, town against city, and police against protesters. When the victim is identified as Sam Andie, a young African American man transplanted from the States to NZ by his family, Ngaire must investigate whether racial motives were behind the death.