Police Detective Mysteries

Another day, another hijacked body. And just 13 hours to solve a murder…Detective Vincent Graves has made a habit of dying. Waking up in someone else’s body isn’t pleasant, especially when it's inside a coffin with tons of dirt pressing down on it. Once he’s out, he learns his soul has 13 hours to find the borrowed body’s killer. With the help of a brilliant FBI agent, Vincent’s quest for clues leads to a looming supernatural presence. And escaping the dark threat may be impossible with his ever-ticking clock… Can Vincent close the case in time?

Haunted by the serial killer she never caught, Detective Kimberley King leaves her job in New York and relocates to the sleepy town of Dead Woman Crossing, Oklahoma. Kimberley hopes to bring her daughter Jessica up close to her family, far from the bad memories the city holds. But her quiet new home is not the peaceful place she dreamed of. Within days of her arrival, Kimberley is called to the scene of a terrible crime: her friend Hannah, a single mother, has been brutally murdered while her one-year-old daughter was sleeping nearby.

A young woman is found dead in a college while the students demonstrate. It turns out she was the principal's secretary, and there was more to her than meets the eye. Who wanted her dead and why? And what does it have to do with the student revolt led by a charismatic firebrand from Iraq? Inspector John Crow is called in and has little doubt who's responsible, but a series of surprises will make him reconsider everything. Many of the faculty seem to have things to hide.

Fred Underhill is a young cop on the rise in Los Angeles in the early 1950s - a town blinded to its own grime by Hollywood glitter; a society nourished by newspaper lies that wants its heroes all-American and squeaky clean. A chance to lead on a possible serial killing is all it takes to fuel Underhill's reckless ambition - and it propels him into a dangerous alliance with certain mad and unstable elements of the law enforcement hierarchy. When the case implodes with disastrous consequences, it is Fred Underhill who takes the fall. His life is in ruins, his promising future suddenly a dream of the past.

Police Constable Matthew Riley is called to an emergency on a hot day in Langthorne. He is forced to read out words live on police radio. Then he is shot dead. Someone is killing the officers of the Langthorne Police one by one. And in a sadistic twist he makes each victim push their radio panic button before they die, thus broadcasting their last moments to the entire force. And as the police face this ruthless adversary, detective George Elms is in no fit state to help. He can barely keep his life together and is desperate to sort things out with his estranged wife and daughter.

Retired policeman turned killer Jeffrey Brandt has gone underground. He is even living something like a normal life in North Wales. He killed to make society stand up and take notice. It did. His crimes are notorious. So infamous, in fact, that someone wants to emulate him. How will Brandt react to a copycat killer? Will he be flattered, or disturbed that someone wants to steal his limelight? Crucially, for investigating officer DSI Stella Johnson, the new spate of murders might offer an opportunity to finally bring Brandt to justice.

The Art of Detection is another spellbinding tale starring San Francisco homicide inspector Kate Martinelli. The victim is Sherlock Holmes aficionado Philip Gilbert, whose collection of priceless memorabilia is definitely worth killing for. It's up to Kate and her trusted partner Al Hawkin to follow the clues and bring a rather peculiar murderer to Justice.

Jack Saxby is trying to keep the farm he thought he’d been given by his mother. His vindictive father wants to take it away, and Jack’s two brothers also have their own agenda. Then there’s a suspicious death, and the family’s dark secrets come to light. Can Eric Ward, representing Jack, find out who’s really guilty? Eric is facing a risky eye operation and he’s still resisting a serious relationship with young heiress Anne Morcombe. Can he solve the case and save his reputation?

In Midcoast Maine, Jamie Flint and her K-9 team search for the cognitively challenged son of a local animal hoarder, while recently licensed private investigator Jack Juarez looks into a murder related to the case. Unfortunately, each new clue Jack finds in the investigation seems to lead him back to a suspect police already have in their sights: Jamie's son. Meanwhile, Jamie fights to save a critically ill pit bull pulled from the hoarder's home who could hold the key to the woman's dark secrets.

When the Berebury Footpaths Society created their locally infamous motto, "Every walk a challenge," they couldn't have known just how apt it would be. Avid hikers Wendy Lamport and Gordon Briggs suffer from a good walk spoiled when, while reclaiming a public footpath from the greedy barbed-wire fences of encroaching farmers, a crow drops a severed human finger at their feet. And where there's a finger, thinks Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, a body can't be far behind.

When a sniper kills four people on Boston Common, Boston homicide detective Mike Houston and his partner Anne Bouchard are sent to investigate the case. Amidst the blood and terror, Houston discovers similarities, likenesses the killer’s positioning, his choice of victims, and his code of ethics between the crime scene and his own training as a US Marine scout and sniper. And with the staging of the scene set for prime shock value, Houston has to wonder what it is this murderer intends to accomplish.

A year ago, local philanthropist and millionaire Nathan Lyon died a natural death in his sprawling mansion, a 150,000-square-foot converted mill, surrounded by his loving, attentive family. Or so it seemed at the time. Now Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team has discovered that almost nothing about that story was true. Nathan Lyon was actually Nick Bianchi from Providence, Rhode Island. His money came from Mafia-tainted sources. And his family now seems to be dying themselves, and their deaths are now revealed to be murders.

As the mists roll over the fens and enigmatic lights twinkle in the distance, only the locals know their way along the hidden paths through the mysterious watery terrain of one of England's most beautiful and sometimes dangerous places. Detective Matt Ballard may have retired but there's still plenty going on in the fens to keep him busy. Someone trashes an old lady's garden and daubs her isolated cottage with hateful graffiti. Emilia Swain seems to be totally harmless, so why is she being targeted?

When the remains of a brutally murdered young woman are left hanging from the Glenfinnan Monument in the Highlands of Scotland, DCI Jack Logan and his Major Investigations team are dispatched to investigate. At first, the case appears to be fairly open and shut. But, as evidence mounts, Jack uncovers some shocking truths about the victim that risk turning the investigation into a potentially explosive international incident.

Detective George Elms is out of prison, and the police force that put him there is in chaos. Now they want him back to lead the hunt for vicious cop killer Kane Forley. Only George can put together a team that will bring this criminal to justice. Are his superiors using George as bait? They have their own very dark secrets to hide. But this is personal, and things spin out of control fast. Soon George will face one last race against time to save everyone who is close to him. Who can he trust to help him?

On a hot August night, Lt. Eve Dallas and her husband, Roarke, speed through the streets of Manhattan to the Down and Dirty club, where a joyful, boisterous pre-wedding girls’ night out has turned into a murder scene. One of the brides lies in a pool of blood, garroted in a private room where she was preparing a surprise for her fiancée—two scrimped and saved-for tickets to Hawaii. Despite the dozens of people present, useful witnesses are hard to come by. It all brings back some bad memories for Eve.

Nine-year-old Jenny Carson is brutally murdered in Kenton Wood on her way from school. Then Charles Lendon is found stabbed to death with a skewer through his heart. He was a ruthless lawyer and something of a womanizer. Jenny's father blamed him for her murder. As the local police struggle, Inspector Crow is called in. Can he connect the two killings? He discovers that several of those closest to Charles Lendon had good reason to hate him: his housekeeper lover, her unstable brother, even the boyfriend of his attractive young colleague Cathy Tennant.

The best mysteries have one thing in common: a memorable perpetrator. For every Sherlock Holmes or Sam Spade in noble pursuit, there's a Count Dracula, a Lester Leith, or a Jimmy Valentine. These are the rogues and villains who haunt our imaginations - and who often have more in common with their heroic counterparts than we might expect. Now, for the first time ever, Otto Penzler gathers the iconic traitors, thieves, con men, sociopaths, and killers who have crept through the mystery canon over the past 150 years, captivating and horrifying readers in equal measure.

When Octavia Garamond passed away, she left explicit instructions in her will: The police must be present at her funeral, and the coroner should be exceptionally thorough when examining her body. Amelia Kennerly is perplexed to find herself the sole executor of her great-aunt's will, as she barely knew her. Further questions arise when the local parson is anything but happy to conduct Octavia's service. Then someone breaks into Octavia's home and tears the house apart. It seems the old lady's words may have been eerily prescient: "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here."

It was supposed to be a routine road accident recovery, but the moment Detective Josie Quinn sees the passenger—pale and painfully thin, a sharp tool lodged in her stomach—it’s clear she was the victim of something far more sinister, and likely dead before the crash. Watching the driver taken away in an ambulance, questions spin through Josie’s mind. Where were these two women going? Was the driver trying to save a life, or hide a body? And—most heartbreaking of all—is there a child in danger, crying out for help with no reply?