International Police Procedurals

The United States occupation of Iraq is a swamp of incompetence and self-delusion. The CPA has disbanded the Iraqi army and police as a consequence of its paranoid policy of de-Ba'athification of Iraqi society. Tales of hubris and reality-denial abound, culminating in Washington hailing the mess "a glorious mission accomplished". Inspector Muhsin al-Khafaji is a mid-level Iraqi cop who deserted his post back in April. Khafaji has lived long enough in pre- and post-Saddam Iraq to know that clinging on to anything but poetry and his daughter Mrouj is asking for trouble.

Twenty years ago, a mysterious group called the Blue Demon committed a series of bizarre and ritualistic crimes evoking the legacy of the lost race of the Etruscans, and leaving in their wake a group of dead students, a murdered couple, a cryptic message and a kidnapped child. Now, the leaders of the G8 are descending on Rome for a summit at the Quirinale Palace.

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.

Small-town police detective Hanna Duncker has a past. Her deceased father was convicted of murder and arson long ago, and she has taken up residence and resumed her police career in her hometown after his death. She and her partner Erik Lindgren are called to investigate the disappearance of a father and his infant son from their home while his wife was away on a weekend trip. As the investigation unfolds, Hanna makes a breakthrough in her ongoing private investigation of her father’s crimes: a discovery that could change everything she thought she'd learned so far.

When the granddaughter of the wealthy Sachs-Smith family is kidnapped, Louise's skills as a trained negotiator are put to work. She is tasked with helping the desperate mother negotiate what soon turns into a life-or-death situation. The kidnappers will only exchange the deathly ill little girl for an infamous stained glass panel - known as the Angel of Death - that has been in the family for generations. But there's a problem.... The Angel, worth millions, was recently stolen from the family home.

DC Barnes is back on the job after an eighteen-month suspension. He’s offered this case no one else wants—and he’s in no position to refuse. A one-punch homicide. The accused is Mandy’s partner James. An honest, upright citizen and a firefighter. The victim is Mandy’s ex, an aggressive alcoholic. James’s acquittal is a sure thing. No jury will convict this good man defending his girlfriend.

Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov is an honest policeman in a very dishonest post-Soviet Union. He and his team are searching for a serial killer who has claimed at least 40 victims. And then there is the problem of protecting a visiting British journalist who is working on a story about a Moscow prostitution ring. In doing so Rostnikov and his team uncover a chain of murders that lead to a source too high to be held accountable if the police want to keep their jobs - or their lives.

For the first time in her adult life, former Long Island homicide detective Maggie D’arcy is unemployed. No cases to focus on, no leads to investigate, just a whole summer on a remote West Cork peninsula with her teenage daughter Lilly and her boyfriend, Conor and his son. The plan is to prepare Lilly for a move to Ireland. But their calm vacation takes a dangerous turn when human remains wash up below the steep cliffs of Ross Head.

On a Dublin city street, packed with afternoon Christmas shoppers, a young woman appears, naked, traumatised and bearing burn marks. Tom Reynolds, now chief superintendent, is no longer head of the murder squad. But when it transpires the woman escaped from a house fire started deliberately and that there are more victims, including a baby, Tom is sucked in. What begins as a straightforward case of arson, soon becomes something much more sinister. The people in that house never wanted to be there in the first place. Now more of them are missing.

Kids can be so cruel. They'll call you names. Hurt your feelings. Push you to your death. In the garden of an abandoned house, Luke Connolly lies broken, dead. The night before, he and his friends partied inside. Nobody fought, everybody else went home safely. And yet, Luke was raped and pushed to his death. His alleged attacker is now in custody. DCI Tom Reynolds is receiving the biggest promotion of his career when a colleague asks him to look at the Connolly case, believing it's not as cut and dried as local investigators have made out.

Eric Ward has a new client: Dieter Barschell. He’s an ex-professional footballer charged with dealing drugs at a Newcastle racecourse. Eric secures bail for his client. He also precipitates a murder investigation. While defending Barschell, Eric antagonizes one of the prosecution witnesses, DCI Charlie Spate. Can the two men work together to try to resolve this mess?

A pregnant woman has been murdered in a brutal, ritualistic way: burned, hung, and then placed upside down in a Bronze Age cauldron. When Unai “Kraken” Lopez de Ayala discovers the victim is his first love, Ana Belén Liaño, memories of their time together come flooding back, and with them reminders of a dark secret long buried.

With two street gangs on the brink of war, Detective Michael Kelly must solve a murder before the entire town goes up in flames. Boston Homicide Detective Michael Kelly just took his latest case. It seemed simple enough: A convenience store clerk gunned down in cold blood. There’s just one catch...the store was under the protection of the Irish mob. Now the city is a powder-keg, and Kelly must solve the murders before it explodes in further bloodshed. Brian Shea has served as both a military officer and law enforcement Detective.

What was supposed to be an Italian vacation for forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver and his wife turns into a busman's holiday when their hosts' only child goes missing - and nearby construction workers unearth human bones. The family awaits Oliver's conclusions with both dread and cautious hope. But along the way, he'll expose some extraordinary deceptions that lay bare the long-hidden secrets at the dark heart of a highborn family.

Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the devout Buddhist Royal Thai Police detective who led us through the best sellers Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo, returns in this blistering novel. Sonchai has seen virtually everything on his beat in Bangkok's District 8, but nothing like the snuff film he's just been sent anonymously. Furiously fast-paced and laced through with an erotic ghost story that gives a new dark twist to the life of our hero, Bangkok Haunts more than lives up to the smart and darkly funny originality of its predecessors.

Along the picturesque Belon River, home of the world famous oyster beds, between steep cliffs, ominous forests, and the Atlantic Ocean, a stubborn elderly film actress discovers a corpse. By the time Commissaire Dupin arrives at the scene, the body has disappeared. A little while later, he receives a phone call from the mystical hills of Monts d'Arree, where legends of fairies and the devil abound: Another unidentified body has turned up. Dupin quickly realizes this may be his most difficult and confounding case yet.

In Ilmarsh, England, local police detective Alec Nichols discovers sixteen horses' heads on a farm, each buried with a single eye facing the low winter sun. After Veterinary Forensics expert Cooper Allen travels to the scene, a pathogen is discovered lurking within the soil, and many of those who have come into contact with the corpses grow critically ill. A series of crimes comes to light—disappearances, arson, and mutilations—and in the dark days that follow, the town slips into panic and paranoia.

Die oorskot van ’n verminkte vierjarige word in die vroeë oggendure in ’n Frutti Tutti-roomyskarretjie in Harrismith ontdek. Kaptein Brummels besluit oornag om Parkwegstasie se bulhond, Sollie Mtembu, saam te sleep om ’n oudkollega van hom met die ondersoek te help. Sollie lyk dalk na ’n onervare sersant wat dikwels oor sy eie woorde struikel, maar as hy iets beetkry, laat los hy nie.

A devastating terror attack strikes at the heart of Birmingham... but is all as it seems? When DI Zoe Finch and her colleagues rush to respond to a terrorist attack, the city is plunged into chaos. But Zoe begins to suspect that all is not as it seems. Could the attack be a smokeshield for other criminal activity? And are Zoe's own colleagues involved in that cover-up?

With packs of stray wild canines roaming Moscow, it was inevitable that enterprising criminals would find a way to get rich. As dogfighting became big business, the Mafia got involved, and venues upgraded from alleys and garages to private arenas with padded seats. Police Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has assigned Sasha Tkach and Elena Timofeyeva to go undercover and bust up a dogfighting ring. But the only ones more vicious than the dogs are the ones who profit from them.