International Police Procedurals

It’s April 2020 and Edinburgh is in lockdown, but that doesn’t mean crime takes a holiday. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot—the streets all but empty, an hour’s outdoor exercise the maximum allowed—but when a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie’s team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it’s game on again. What unspools is a twisted game of betrayal and revenge, but no one quite expects how many twists it will turn out to have.

When the body of elderly Mr Winter is found in his modest terraced home, still in his pyjamas, Detective Dave Slater quickly decides there’s nothing suspicious to report. The old man fell and hit his head. It’s sad, but these things happen. A few days later, Mr Winter’s home is ransacked—and Slater is forced to change his mind. This was no opportunist break-in. Someone was looking for something specific. But what did the lonely old man have in his possession that could cost his life?

When a young Montreal family dies in an orgy of bloody violence, all signs point to a rampage by the father. But Victor Lessard isn’t convinced. The brilliant, brooding detective suspects that others were involved in the killings. But who? And why? As Lessard struggles to solve the puzzle, the discovery of a nightmarish chamber of horrors seems to confirm that the murders are part of a wider pattern. Meanwhile, in the Major Crimes Unit, Jacinthe Taillon is investigating the strange kidnapping of Laila François, a former street kid turned webcam girl.

A man is found poisoned by the deadly toxin aconite. A note found at the scene leads Detective Sergeant Jack Mackinnon to a University of Oxford laboratory, where staff and students are desperate to hide their association with the victim. As Mackinnon gets closer to the truth, he finds his own family could be at risk.

People would kill to have Faye Adelheim’s life. She lives in an ultra-swanky apartment in the most exclusive area of Stockholm, she has a gorgeous husband who gives her everything she’s ever wanted and she has an adorable daughter who lights up her world. Faye’s life is perfect. So how is it, then, that she now finds herself in a police station? The truth is that Faye’s life is far from what it seems. The truth is that Faye isn’t even her real name. And now she’s been caught out.

Yoshitaka, who was about to leave his marriage and his wife, is poisoned by arsenic-laced coffee and dies. His wife, Ayane, is the logical suspect—except that she was hundreds of miles away when he was murdered. The lead detective, Tokyo Police Detective Kusanagi, is immediately smitten with her and refuses to believe that she could have had anything to do with the crime. His assistant, Kaoru Utsumi, however, is convinced Ayane is guilty. While Utsumi's instincts tell her one thing, the facts of the case are another matter.

Manabu Yukawa, the physicist known as "Detective Galileo," has traveled to Hariguara, a once-popular summer resort town that has fallen on hard times. He is there to speak at a conference on a planned underwater mining operation, which has sharply divided the town. One faction is against the proposed operation, concerned about the environmental impact on the area, known for its pristine waters. The other faction, seeing no future in the town as it is, believes its only hope lies in the development project.

One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out of several rare books. After a round of questioning, the case seems clear: The culprit must be the man who requested the volumes, an American professor from a Kansas university. The only problem-- the man fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials, the American professor doesn't exist.

A kidnapped child and the burglary of a high-class apartment: Two crimes that seem to have no connection at all until Inspector Lojacono, known as “The Chinaman”, starts to investigate.

On leave from Canada's Community Policing department, Esa Khattak is traveling in Iran, reconnecting with his cultural heritage and seeking peace in the country's beautiful mosques and gardens. But Khattak's supposed break from work is cut short when he's approached by a Canadian government agent in Iran, asking him to look into the death of renowned Canadian-Iranian filmmaker Zahra Sobhani.

A man with dark thoughts on his mind is racing along the remote snowy roads of Hurmevaara in Finland when there is flash in the sky and something crashes into the car. That something turns about to be a highly valuable meteorite. With euro signs lighting up the eyes of the locals, the unexpected treasure is temporarily placed in a neighbourhood museum, under the watchful eye of a priest named Joel.

A madman is holding Vitoria hostage, killing its citizens in brutal ways and staging the bodies. The city's only hope is a brilliant detective struggling to battle his own demons. Inspector Unai López de Ayala, known as "Kraken", is charged with investigating a series of ritualistic murders. The killings are eerily similar to ones that terrorized the citizens of Vitoria 20 years earlier. But back then, police were sure they had discovered the killer, a prestigious archaeologist who is currently in jail.

After a lifetime in service to the Soviet Union, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov may have found a way out. A high-profile homicide leads him to a cache of documents packed full of incriminating Kremlin gossip, which he uses as a bargaining chip to secure exit visas for himself and his Jewish wife. But just before the deal is concluded, Brezhnev's death sends the nation into turmoil, and makes escape impossible. His career derailed, the veteran cop is reduced to investigating penny-ante murders - one of which may lead somewhere very big indeed.

One year after moving to his late wife’s Tuscan hometown of Gravigna, Nico Doyle has fully settled into life there, seeing friends in the course of daily errands and helping to serve and test recipes at his in-laws’ restaurant. But the town is shaken by the arrival of wine critic Michele Mantelli in his flashy Jaguar. Mantelli holds his influential culinary magazine and blog over Gravigna’s vintners and restaurateurs. Mantelli’s lavish, larger-than-life, and often vindictive personality has made him many enemies, and when he is poisoned, Maresciallo Perillo needs help....

A decade ago, Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga went to collect the ashes of his recently deceased mother. Years before, she ran away from her husband and son without explanation or any further contact, leaving her estranged son with many unanswered questions. Now in Tokyo, Michiko Oshitani is found dead many miles from home. Strangled to death, left in the bare apartment rented under a false name by a man who has disappeared without a trace. Oshitani lived far away in Sendai, with no known connection to Tokyo—and neither her family nor friends have any idea why she would have gone there.

When a newborn baby is found drowned in the shallow waters of the Golden Horn, all-out warfare threatens to erupt between rival criminal gangs. Inspector Kerim Gürsel is assigned to the case and he must tread carefully when DNA tests reveal that the baby's father is Görkan Paşahan, Istanbul's most feared Mafia boss. But the identity of the infant's mother is yet to be discovered. Meanwhile, Çetin İkmen and Mehmet Süleyman attend the winter festival known as Bocuk Gecesi, held on the darkest night of the year, and witness a magic trick whereby a young man, Emir Kaya, disappears.

When a hit-and-run accident leaves eight-year-old Lee Sanders in critical condition, DI Freya Bloom and DS Ben Savage arrive on the scene in rural Lincolnshire. But the investigation they thought would be simple, soon develops into something far more sinister. The driver of the car is found in a nearby ditch, and she didn't die of natural causes. Poppy Gray, a nineteen-year-old girl with a bright future ahead of her, had only one known friend, a troubled boy who rarely speaks. Leading a simple life, Poppy had been filled with the joys of spring. But she knew something.

In the hilarious new novel in the best-selling Detective Varg series, an eminent art historian is framed and the ace investigators of the department of sensitive crimes are on the case.

Les Troubadours go viral with their new number, “Song for Catalonia,” when the Spanish government suddenly bans it. The songwriter, Joel Martin, is a local enthusiast for the old Occitan language of Périgord and the medieval troubadours, and he sympathizes with the Catalan bid for independence. The success of his song provokes outrage among extreme Spanish nationalists. Then a stolen car on a Périgord back road collides with a deer. The driver and passengers disappear but leave behind a distinctive bullet for a state-of-the art sniper's rifle that can kill at two kilometers.

Lars Martin Johansson is a living legend. Cunning and perceptive, always one step ahead, he was known in the National Criminal Police as "the man who could see around corners". But now Johansson is retired, living in the country, his police days behind him. Or so he thinks. After suffering a stroke, Johansson finds himself in the hospital. Tests show heart problems as well. And the only thing that can save him from despair is his doctor's mention of an unsolved murder case from years before.