International Crime

This is collection of 18 crime stories with a diverse range of characters and scenarios, from guilt-ridden fraudsters to lovesick murderers.

A young "national model worker," renowned for her adherence to the principles of the Communist Party, turns up dead in a Shanghai canal. As Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Special Cases Bureau struggles to trace the hidden threads of her past, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. Chen must tiptoe around his superiors if he wants to get to the bottom of this crime, and risk his career-perhaps even his life-to see justice done.

To survive the notorious prison IK-2 and assassinate Russian President Vladimir Petrov, John Dempsey had to become rosomakha, the wolverine. Now, back home in America, he’s trying to put the pieces of his life at Ember back together. But which man returned from Russia—Dempsey, or the wolverine? From the way his teammates look at him, it’s obvious they’re not sure, and neither is he. Meanwhile, Vice President Kelso Jarvis has barely had time to mourn the death of his mentor before a devastating attack reveals a new threat.

From the moment Karen Stannard comes striding in the door, Arnold Landon knows his workplace will never be the same. Now, he is saddled with a project he never wanted: the Ridgeway Viking Trust. Its shady leaders tell him there’s treasure buried in the rolling Northumberland Hills—they just need one more payout to reach it. But is there more to the Trust than meets the eye? Muck-raking journalist Alan Crickley seems to think so. He’s got the scent of corruption and he’s on the trail... Until the day he drives his car into a ditch, a stone’s throw from the dig.

When Jonathan Argyll is arrested for breaking into an obscure church in Rome, he claims that it contains a long-lost Raphael hidden under a painting by Mantini. The painting disappears - then reappears in the hands of the top British art dealer, Edward Byrnes. How has Byrnes found out about the hidden masterpiece, and whom is he acting for? There is also the curious matter of the safe deposit box full of sketches closely resembling features of the newly discovered painting.

Despite their investigative prowess, Scotland Yard's Chief Inspector Michael Sinclair, Lord Acton, and rookie detective Kathleen Doyle stir more than a few feathers at CID Headquarters when their relationship comes to light. But office politics quickly become trivial when a rash of underworld murders shatters London's normally austere façade. With a growing list of successfully solved cases to her name, the ever-dauntless Doyle shakes off the gossip and sets out to investigate the escalating turf war.

When CIA operative Jenny Silkwell is murdered in rural Maine, government officials have immediate concerns over national security. Her laptop and phone were full of state secrets that, in the wrong hands, endanger the lives of countless operatives. In need of someone who can solve the murder quickly and retrieve the missing information, the U.S. government knows just the chameleon they can call on.

Colombian drug lords, bored with Uncle Sam's hectoring, assassinate the head of the FBI. The message is clear: Bug off! At what point do these druggies threaten national security? When can a nation act against its enemies? These are questions Jack Ryan must answer because someone has quietly stepped over the line. Does anyone know who the real enemy is? How much action is too much? Which lines have been crossed? Ryan and his "dark side", a shadowy field officer known only as Mr. Clark, are charged with finding out.

A professional pickpocket and accomplished thief ignores his wife's warnings and embarks on an adventure that will change his life - perhaps for the better. A technological marvel of a sports car kills a pedestrian, but no one was at the wheel. A local lunatic admits to murder, but is he crazy - or crazy smart? The life of a researcher with ties to a British spy agency is thrown into chaos when his research goes missing. Injury Time delivers captivating tales of intrigue wrapped in Catherine Aird's tightly woven logic, sealed with the bow of enigma.

Max - an elderly Paris bookstall owner - is abducted at gunpoint. His friend Hugo Marston, head of security at the U.S. embassy, launches a search. His investigation reveals that Max was a Holocaust survivor and later became a Nazi hunter. Is his disappearance somehow tied to his grim history, or even to the mysterious old books he sold? Before long, other booksellers start to disappear, their bodies found floating in the Seine. Then Marston himself becomes a target of the unknown assassins.

Intrepid's Last Case chronicles the post-World War II activities of Sir William Stephenson, whose fascinating role in helping to defeat the Nazis was the subject of the worldwide best seller A Man Called Intrepid.

Amos Decker is a former professional football player whose career was ended by a terrible hit. Now a police detective, Amos is still haunted by a side effect from the accident he can never forget. One night Decker comes home from a stakeout to find his wife, young daughter, and brother-in-law horrifically murdered. Obviously scarred and nearly broken, Decker has to use his skills as a detective and his unusual brain capacity to try to catch the monster who killed his family.

Court Gentry's flight on a CIA transport plane is interrupted when a security team brings a hooded man aboard. They want to kick Gentry off the flight but are overruled by CIA headquarters. The mystery man is being transported to England where a joint CIA/MI6 team will interrogate him about a mole in Langley. When they land in an isolated airbase in the UK, they are attacked by a hostile force who kidnaps the prisoner. Only Gentry escapes. His handlers send him after the attackers, but what can one operative do against a trained team of assassins?

On a cold and rainy Stockholm night, nine bus riders are gunned down by an unknown assassin. The press, anxious for an explanation for the seemingly random crime, quickly dubs him a madman. But Superintendent Martin Beck of the Stockholm Homicide Squad suspects otherwise. This apparently motiveless killer has managed to target one of Beck's best detectives - and he, surely, would not have been riding that lethal bus without a reason.

In late summer of 1994, Jack Noble, a former All-American quarterback, is in the middle of the toughest event he's ever taken part in: marine corps recruit training. After eight weeks he's managed to make enemies of every drill instructor and every recruit in his platoon. Then on one particularly humid South Carolina day, an odd sequence of events changes everything. Contains an excerpt of Noble Intentions: Episode 1.

Special Agent Ingrid Skyberg is ready to walk away from her life in London. She’s at rock bottom and even wants to leave the FBI. But when Ingrid attempts to board a flight at Heathrow and sneak away without telling anyone, she’s arrested for killing a man she’s never heard of. Now Ingrid must stay in the country, and with the FBI, to prove her innocence. Up against powerful forces who would rather silence her—permanently—than let the real killer pay the price, Ingrid digs deep to uncover a conspiracy that leads all the way to the White House.

Set once again in Sicily, The Patience of the Spider pits Inspector Montalbano against his greatest foe yet: the weight of his own years. Still recovering from the gunshot wound he suffered in Rounding the Mark, he must overcome self-imposed seclusion and waxing self-doubt to penetrate a web of hatred and secrets in pursuit of the strangest culprit he’s ever hunted.

After three years working as a private investigator, newly reinstated Detective Inspector Will Foster still holds himself responsible for the death of an officer under his command. But he's returned to the Met bent on redeeming himself and that means bringing down gangland boss Joey Clarkson. Will's prepared to put in long hours and make sacrifices for his work, even if it comes at a cost to his nascent romance with international model, Tom Gray. After all, Tom has a history of wandering but crime is a constant in London. And Will has committed himself to the Met.

Two years ago, a hostile Prime Minister launched the Monochrome inquiry, investigating "historical over-reaching" by the British Secret Service “to investigate historical over-reaching.” Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out any hint of misconduct by any MI5 officer—and allowed Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, the two civil servants seconded to the project, unfettered access to any and all confidential information in the Service archives in order to do so. But MI5’s formidable First Desk did not become Britain’s top spy by accident, and she has successfully thwarted the inquiry at every turn.

Lucy Durmast waits patiently in front of the judge at her own murder trial, refusing to utter a single word. Kenneth Carline, an employee of her father's, was found poisoned to death after eating a meal that Lucy herself had prepared. Kenneth was set to marry another, and Lucy, it seems, was jealous. But what should have been an open-and-shut case of envy-driven murder becomes complicated when primary detective Trevor Porritt suffers permanent brain damage. C. D. Sloan inherits the file - and immediately begins poking holes in what looked like an airtight case.