Police Detective Mysteries

The body of a young girl lying face down in a swimming pool - white tennis shoes still on her feet, chestnut hair fanned out like a halo - is the last thing Detective Josie Quinn expects to find on an early morning visit to see her brother before class at Denton University. But when she recognizes the girl’s face as she drags her limp body from the water, there’s only one question racing through Josie’s mind: How does a champion swimmer accidentally drown?

When new victims of the still-at-large serial killer known as the Red Reaper start to appear in London, DCI Declan Walsh and his team are placed back on the case—but everything isn't what it seems. For a start, the deaths are different, and the calling card is new. It could be a copycat, apart from one thing... They know what Declan did to the real Red Reaper a year earlier. Something only Declan and the closest members of his team keep secret. Is this the real Reaper, back to gain revenge on Declan and his family—or is this a protégé, staking his own claim to the serial killer name?

The Chicago PD is on high alert when two city aldermen are found dead: one by apparent suicide, one brutally stabbed in his office, and both with thirty dimes left on their bodies—a betrayer’s payment. With no other clues, the question is, Who else has a debt to pay? Detective Harriet Foster is on the case before the killer can strike again. But even with the help of her partner, Detective Vera Li, and the rest of their team, Harriet has little to go on and a lot at risk. There’s no telling who the killer’s next target is or how many will come next.

In the seaside village of Sechelt, Emma O’Brea prepares a dinner to celebrate six years of marriage: ­a union she has polished to gleaming perfection, along with her showcase home. The next morning her husband leaves for work, never to return. At the same time, in nearby Vancouver, a simple-minded stock boy named Eddie Addison defends his tattered pride against the unwitting slights of a college girl, unleashing his rage in an act that will have far-reaching consequences.

When the body of a beautiful and wealthy doctor is discovered in her high-rise apartment – all alone with the doors locked from the inside – nobody can understand how or why her life has been so brutally cut short. Detective Jacqueline “Jack” Kent may have never worked a murder case before, but that’s not going to stop her trying. It seems Ana’s murderer may have scaled the ten-story building to get in – and Jack should know.

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.

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.

In Blackwater Falls, Colorado, veteran police officer Harry Cooper is hot on the heels of some local vandals when the situation turns deadly: Harry, believing one of them has a gun, opens fire and Duante Young, a young Black man, is killed. The “gun” in Duante’s hands was a bottle of spray paint. Meanwhile, in nearby Denver, a drug raid goes south and a Latino teen, Mateo Ruiz, is also killed. The Denver Police force is spread thin between the two cases, and protests on both sides begin.

When seven-year-old Lucy Ross is snatched from the carousel in Denton city park, Detective Josie Quinn joins the frantic search. She’s the one who finds Lucy’s sparkly butterfly backpack abandoned by the ticket booth, a note with a devastating message stuffed inside: Answer your phone, or your sweet little darling will die.... The next day, Lucy’s parents are filled with hope when they pick up a call which they think is from their babysitter - but instead it’s a chilling male voice on the line.

She wakes surrounded by an inky black darkness and can barely breathe. A sack is covering her head, and her hands are tied behind her back. She desperately tries to struggle free as she hears footsteps walking toward her. She silently starts to cry as a chilling voice whispers “It’s time to pay for what you did…”

When 12-year-old Holly Mitchell’s fragile little body is found on the steps of a mountainside church in the small town of Denton, a doll made from pine cones clasped tightly to her chest, Detective Josie Quinn rushes to attend the scene. She knows this little girl’s angelic face; her mother had offered Josie help when she’d needed it most. Searching the girl’s house, Josie is devastated to find that Holly’s mother is dead, too, and her little sister is missing.

A bloated corpse turns up in the Thames, throat slashed, and the only clue is a hospital wristband reading "Dr. F. Klein". Frieda is taken to see the body and realizes with horror that it is Sandy, her ex-boyfriend. She's certain that the killer is Dean Reeve - the man who has never stopped haunting her. But the police think he has been dead for years, and Frieda is their number one suspect. With few options, Frieda goes on the run to save herself and try to uncover the truth.

When Detective Kim Stone is called to a local business, what she sees leaves her speechless. The photo on the driving license bears little resemblance to the man laid out before her, and she knows she’s up against the most twisted killer she has ever encountered. But as she breaks the devastating news to the victim’s wife, Diane Phipps, Kim can’t help feeling that something isn’t quite right about the woman’s reaction.

It’s been five years since Detective Amanda Steele’s life was derailed by the tragic death of her young daughter. The small community of Dumfries, Virginia, may have moved on, but Amanda cannot. When the man who killed Lindsey is found murdered, she can’t keep away from the case.

Kamil Rahman is a cook in a Brick Lane restaurant. But he used to be a detective back in Kolkata. And somehow trouble still knows how to find him. When a young woman Kamil knows is murdered the police are convinced her boyfriend is the culprit. Kamil isn't so sure and feels he has no choice but to start his own investigation. Meanwhile, his friend and restaurant manager, Anjoli, is troubled by a rise in the number of homeless deaths in their local area.

When Detective Amanda Steele unexpectedly reconnects with an old boyfriend, the last thing she expects to see lying on his bed is the dead body of his wife, Claire, who walked out on him four years ago. Logan begs Amanda to believe he’s innocent. But she doesn’t miss the gun on a nearby table, and she’s torn when forensics reveal that not only was this the murder weapon, but Logan’s fingerprints are all over it.... Could he have been framed? Or is he using his connection to Amanda to get away with murder?

When a tech entrepreneur from Shoreditch is found dead in a construction site, along with three skeletons which are discovered to be over a hundred years old, Detective Kamil Rahman sets out to prove himself on his first case for the Met Police.

In Lisa Gardner's second short story, after the New York Times bestseller The 7th Month, Detective D.D. Warren takes on her most intimidating assignment yet: a fifty-minute class meant to educate a horde of bloodthirsty thriller writers on the ways of actual police work. Yet sometimes life really does imitate fiction, as D.D. takes the writers through the reality of one of her most twisted cases - a case that involves a seedy motel room, drugs, prostitution...and a severed leg.

Lord Comstock is a barbarous newspaper tycoon with enemies in high places. His murder in the study of his country house poses a dilemma for the Home Secretary. In the hours before his death, Lord Comstock’s visitors included the government Chief Whip, an Archbishop, and the Assistant Commissioner for Scotland Yard. Suspicion falls upon them all and threatens the impartiality of any police investigation. Abandoning protocol, the Home Secretary invites four famous detectives to solve the case: Mrs Adela Bradley, Sir John Saumarez, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Mr Roger Sheringham.

Detective Madison Knight should have ignored her phone when it rang on Christmas Eve. Now she is spending the holiday dealing with her least favorite thing: a bloody murder scene. The victim, Claire Reeves, was a successful entrepreneur and had it all - sex appeal, intelligence, and money - but it seems that one of those things may have caught up with her.