Police Fiction

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.

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.

On a July afternoon, the body of a young woman is dredged from Sweden's Lake Vättern. Three months later, all that Police Inspector Martin Beck knows is that her name is Roseanna, that she came from Lincoln, Nebraska, and that she could have been strangled by any one of 85 people. As Beck narrows down the list of likely suspects, he is drawn increasingly to the enigma of the victim, a free-spirited traveler with a penchant for the casual sexual encounter.

Joe Gunther, a Brattleboro, Vermont cop, is the head of the new Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI). In The Marble Mask, the VBI's first case takes the force north to Stowe, where a 50-year-old corpse has turned up in a crevasse on Mt. Mansfield. When the frozen stiff turns out to have been a big-time Canadian crime boss named Jean Deschamps who disappeared after World War II, Joe and his gang cross the border to work with the Mounties, the Surete, and the local cops in Sherbrooke.

In Wiltshire, England, the Crime Review Team is headed by Gus Freeman, pulled back to the police force after three years in retirement. With old witness statements plus fresh clues, the hunt can be on again. Freeman and his team now have several successful cold-case investigations behind them. Ursula Wakeley, a seventy-eight-year-old spinster, was murdered in 2013. Why did the former librarian become a victim? Was it a robbery or something more sinister? Returning to the Crime Review Team is Alex Hardy, and Blessing Umeh is a new member, giving Gus Freeman new hands and new issues.

In August 1992 a young mother and her two small sons were brutally murdered in the woods behind their home. Her neighbour, Andrew Gyle, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment. Now, 23 years later, a macabre discovery throws new light on the case. Could there have been a shocking miscarriage of justice?

New sheriff Bree Taggert is called to a shooting in a campground shuttered for the winter. But she arrives to find a perplexing crime. There is no shooter, no victim, and no blood. No one but Bree believes the sole witness, Alyssa, a homeless teenager who insists she saw her friend shot. Bree calls in former deputy Matt Flynn and his K-9 to track the killer and search for Alyssa’s friend. They discover the battered corpse of a missing university student under the ice in Grey Lake - but it’s not the victim they were looking for.

Boone Drake follows all the rules - as a cop, husband, and father. But when everything in his personal life is destroyed, he buries himself in guilt. His faith is rocked when he questions why God would allow this to happen to him. When it appears that it can't get any worse, he's accused of police brutality and suddenly his career is at risk. The possibility of being promoted to the Organized Crime Division is slipping from his hands. His life is spiraling out of control....

Wexford is shopping for his wife’s birthday present when the body of a strangled woman is discovered nearby. Then his daughter is arrested for an anti-nuclear war demonstration, and a car bomb puts him in the hospital while a psychopathic killer is loose and bent on revenge.

Eighteen months on from the case that nearly cost him his life, only DCI Jamie Carver knows the incredible extent of the Worshipper Killer’s network of depravity - and the storm that will hit when others learn of it. They include those who walk Whitehall's corridors of power as well as others in high office and even, maybe, the upper echelons of the Police Service itself. When former members of that network start dying, Carver suspects that someone is out to make sure that their involvement, at least, remains hidden - and will stop at nothing to do so.

When Graciella Rivers steps onto his boat, ex-FBI agent Terrell McCaleb has no idea he's about to come out of retirement. He's recuperating from a heart transplant and avoiding anything stressful. But when Graciella tells him the way her sister, Gloria, was murdered, Terry realizes he has no choice. Now the man with the new heart vows to take down a predator without a soul. For Gloria's killer shatters every rule that McCaleb ever learned in his years with the Bureau-as McCaleb gets no more second chances at life...and just one shot at the truth.

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.

Twelve friends sit down for supper at Strontfield Park, but only 11 survive the evening. After dinner, the host, William Fent, offers to drive one of his guests home, only to die behind the wheel in a violent accident. The autopsy shows that Fent ingested enough barbiturates to kill a horse. So begins a fresh tale of murder and deceit for Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, whose list of suspects begins and ends with the surviving dinner guests.

Mike and Callie Simpkins moved north to restart their lives and get their finances back on track. Their son Braxton immerses himself in an online game-world of crime and gangs. When he decides to meet some of the players in the real world, tragedy strikes. Detective John Swift must untangle a web of virtual and real crimes in order to solve this complex mystery. And as the family copes with unimaginable grief, even Braxton’s stepfather, Mike, comes under suspicion.

Deep in the muddy fields of the Lincolnshire Fens, a teenage girl is found wandering, delirious, claiming to have been drugged at a party. Metres away, the drowned body of another girl is found on an isolated beach. And all this on a small stretch of land where, nearly 10 years ago, the shocking disappearance of a young girl remains an open case.

Who is murdering female college students, and can they be stopped? The only link between the victims is their participation in an unusual psychology experiment. Leading the investigation is Detective Dana Gates. She has a past no one talks about and a husband and daughters she hardly ever sees. She’s a dedicated, by-the-book investigator. And now a serial killer is ripping through the local college campus, and everything she knows is going to change.

Harry attacked his commanding officer and is suspended indefinitely, pending a psychiatric evaluation. At first he resists the LAPD shrink, but finally recognizes that something is troubling him and has for a long time. In 1961, when Harry was 12, his mother, a prostitute, was brutally murdered with no one ever accused of the crime.

Ex-detective superintendent Brandt has turned against society. The first kill was a stab in the dark, but now he's got a real taste for it. But his pursuer, DCI Stella Johnson, has rankled him. She has leaked to the press the idea he is impotent, and it has taken hold. Brandt wants to prove himself. Who better a victim than the woman who has embarrassed him? Johnson's strategy backfires, and she is in trouble with her superiors. Yet she now has a very personal reason to hunt down Brandt. Will going solo put her at even greater risk than before? And just what has he in mind for her?

Separating from the Air Force after 13 years may seem drastic to some, but Zoe Acevedo is finally doing something for herself. Opening an independent bookstore in Haven Springs, North Carolina, is a major undertaking, but Zoe has a plan and a list. What she doesn't have is time for distractions like her interfering family, her cheating ex, or the sexy neighbor who always manages to find her in the most awkward situations.

When Cassidy Livingston finds a journal hidden deep in the recesses of her ice cream truck, her curiosity kicks into high gear. Islanders suspect that Elsa, the journal's owner, didn't die accidentally. Her final entry indicates their suspicions might be correct and that what Elsa observed on her final night may have led to her demise. Against the advice of Ty Chambers, her former Navy SEAL boyfriend, Cassidy taps into her detective skills and hunts for answers. But her search only leads to a skeletal body and trouble for both of them.