Police Fiction

For Officer Dare Barron, there’s only one good thing about bad-boy Brian McKnight getting thrown in the drunk tank again. Being there when Brian’s sister, Liza, strides into the precinct on those long, delectable legs to bail her brother out. It’s not just the old building’s failing air conditioning making Dare sweat. Liza is a contradiction of proper lady and sexy siren who’s riveted Dare’s attention since high school. She’s always been oblivious, which is a good thing because she’s way out of his league.

K-9 search and rescue handler Jamie Flint and her team - both human and canine - are called in when a group vanishes during a dogsledding expedition for battered women in the Mahoosuc Mountains of Maine. When it's learned a rogue gunman was involved in the disappearance, authorities look to the abusive partners of the women now lost for answers. Meanwhile, a voice from Jamie's past begins to haunt her, echoing the words of the shooter now in pursuit of a target Jamie alone can save.

Peter Marlin's wife is found strangled and he becomes the prime suspect. She'd only just returned from an unexplained absence of several months. And during that time, Peter had found a new lover. Everything points to the husband but there's no real proof. Inspector John Crow is called in to help the local police. But his new colleagues aren't keen on an outsider. And Crow must solve the case before anyone else dies.

The discovery of a dead body in the woods on Thanksgiving Weekend brings Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his colleagues from the Surete du Quebec to a small village in the Eastern Townships. Gamache cannot understand why anyone would want to deliberately kill well-loved artist Jane Neal, especially any of the residents of Three Pines - a place so free from crime it doesn't even have its own police force.

Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Québec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning.

Gemma James is adjusting to professional and personal changes - and a future now intricately entwined with Duncan Kincaid. But her new responsibilities are put to the test when she is placed in charge of a particularly brutal homicide: The lovely young wife of a wealthy antiques dealer has been found murdered on fashionable Notting Hill. This case sets off warning bells for Duncan: It's far too similar to an unsolved murder in which an antiques dealer was killed in precisely the same way.

Chief Inspector Wexford finds nothing unusual in the disappearance of Rodney Williams, a husband and father who likely has run off with another woman. But when the man’s car and suitcase are discovered abandoned, can a body be far behind?

On a cold Venetian night, shortly before Christmas, a street vendor is killed in a scuffle in Campo San Stefano. The closest witnesses are the tourists who had been browsing the man's wares: fake handbags of every designer label. The dead man had been working as a vu cumpra, one of the many African immigrants purveying goods outside normal shop hours and without work permits. Commissario Brunetti's response is that of everybody involved: why would anyone kill an illegal immigrant?

Colorado's Redstone Ridge is a place of extraordinary beauty, but this rugged mountain wilderness harbors a horrifying secret. When a charred body is discovered in a shallow grave on the ridge, officer Mattie Cobb and her K-9 partner, Robo, are called in to spearhead the investigation. But this is no ordinary crime - and it soon becomes clear Mattie has a close personal connection to the dead man.

Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be the prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? And Charlie's death was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women. Now Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant join forces with the groom to track down a killer....

The Inspector Banks novel In a Dry Season was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and won an Anthony Award. Cold Is the Grave won the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award. It takes the aging, solitary inspector from his cozy Yorkshire cottage into the dark underworld of London. The assignment is a favor asked by Banks' boss and greatest enemy: Chief Constable Riddle.

The polluted waters of the canals in Venice are an ever-present issue; but environmental concerns become significant in Commissario Guido Brunetti's work when an investigator from the Carabiniere—looking into the illegal hauling of garbage—asks for a favor. But the investigator is not the only one with a special request. Brunetti's father-in-law needs help and a mysterious woman comes into the picture. And the Commissario soon finds himself in the middle of an investigation into murder and corruption more dangerous than anything he's seen before.

Tori Hunter always worked solo, but in Samantha Kennedy, she found a partner, in more ways than one. Casey O'Connor isn't thrilled to learn that she has a new partner on the way. It's been hard enough to transition from working with live victims to dead ones. Now, Leslie Turner is going to slow down the process. Professional duty trumps personal issues as the detectives focus on their latest case, a killer whose choice of victim is solitary women. The investigation raises a lot of questions around the killer's means and opportunities.

Meet Sarah Booth Delaney...an unconventional Southern belle whose knack for uncovering the truth is about to make her the hottest detective in Zinnia, Mississippi...if it doesn't make her the deadest. No self-respecting lady would allow herself to end up in Sarah Booth's situation. Unwed, unemployed, and over 30, she's flat broke and about to lose the family plantation. Not to mention being haunted by the ghost of her great-great-grandmother's nanny, who never misses an opportunity to remind her of her sorry state.

Psychiatrist Dr. Tonya Preston lives a life of cool detachment, often sacrificing her personal needs to appease her opinionated father. She often finds it easier to deal with patients than confront her family or her own issues. When her path dramatically crosses that of irrepressible rookie Police Officer Haley Jordan, she's thrown out of her comfort zone.

He stands in the shadows. Watching them. DI Sara Ramsey's life is about to change forever. Recently moved to the area and in charge of a new team, she's tasked with finding a serial killer terrorising a rural community. Crimes as heinous as this rarely happen in picturesque rural idylls. The community is living in fear, desperate for Sara to keep them safe. When the killer changes his MO and abducts a vulnerable resident, Sara realises she is in a race against time to prevent the killer from claiming yet another victim.

Jonathan Stride and Serena Dial are both investigating high-profile murders in Las Vegas. A celebrity is assassinated during a fling with a prostitute, and a young boy is killed in a brutal hit-and-run incident. When the cases converge, Jonathan and Serena find themselves racing the clock against a determined serial killer and searching for a connection to the unsolved murder of a showgirl years earlier.

Wexford is horrified by the carnage he encounters at Tancred Manor, home of a famous anthropologist, but he is determined to do all that he can for 17-year-old Daisy, the only survivor of the mass murders that obliterated her family.

Homicide is always an abomination, but there is something exceptionally disturbing about the victim discovered in a high, lonely place: a corpse with a mouth full of sand, abandoned at a crime scene seemingly devoid of tracks or useful clues. Though it goes against his better judgment, Navajo tribal police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn cannot help but suspect the hand of a supernatural killer.

An edge-of-your-seat crime thriller starts with a vicious stabbing of a pretty teenage girl and her boyfriend on a local bus. She happens to be the mayor's niece. It's the final straw for the community. The police are desperate to get results and decide on a risky course of action involving undercover infiltration of the notorious Effingell Estate. Detective George Elms knows this hellish place extremely well, and his sharp investigative mind is put to work to solve the crime. The police are under immense media pressure and conveniently a local lowlife confesses to the attack.