Police Fiction

"And see if there's any news about the missing girl." Life, as Smith used to say, is just one thing after another - as one investigation ends, a new one begins. But for reasons unknown to the rest of her team, DCI Cara Freeman will be haunted by the next case for the Kings Lake Central murder squad. They find themselves delving into the seamy side of life in the town, and one of their number will have departed before this new investigation is over. Perhaps Detective Sergeant Chris Waters should have seen it coming, but he has a lot more than work on his mind these days.

For maverick LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch, the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal...because the murdered man was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who had fought side by side with him in a hellish underground war. Now Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam. From a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit.

Ten years ago fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel was murdered, her cold body discovered lying in a ditch. Her father’s girlfriend was found guilty of the crime. Now, evidence has emerged that proves her innocence and means that Abigail’s killer still roams free. Abigail’s best friend at the time of the murder has now returned to the East Yorkshire village of Elvet to raise her young family. Shocked by the new revelations, she begins to realize that she didn’t know her friend as well as she thought. Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope is tasked with uncovering the truth.

On the night he celebrates a big win, defense attorney Mickey Haller is pulled over by police, who find the body of a former client in the trunk of his Lincoln. Haller is immediately charged with murder but can’t post the exorbitant $5 million bail. Mickey elects to represent himself and is forced to mount his defense from his jail cell in downtown Los Angeles. Even if he can obtain a not-guilty verdict, Mickey understands that it won’t be enough. In order to be truly exonerated, he must find out who really committed the murder and why. That is the law of innocence.

After the devastating loss of her husband in Iraq, Morgan Dane returns to Scarlet Falls, seeking the comfort of her hometown. Now, surrounded by family, she’s finally found peace and a promising career opportunity - until her babysitter is killed and her neighbor asks her to defend his son, Nick, who stands accused of the murder.

The youth theatre cast are in their places but Gus Lynch’s female lead is missing, that is, until she’s found in the boot of his car. Detective Inspector Stephen Ramsay and Sergeant Gordon Hunter are assigned to head the murder enquiry, meanwhile violence is escalating on the Starling Farm Estate as police battle to contain the latest outbreak of joyriding. Is the death of Gabriella connected to the events at Starling Farm? When another death occurs, investigations suggest a possible link, and Ramsay realizes what could have provoked someone to kill...and kill again.

Called in to investigate, DCI Evan Warlow’s team are faced with finding out how and why the body of a struck-off doctor ended up on a lonely beach within sight of Laugharne’s famous boathouse. But this is no innocent victim. This is a man with more enemies than friends. A fact that muddies the waters no end as Warlow unearths more and more of the dead man’s sordid history. Not to mention a long line of suspects.

No one in Heppleburn has a bad word to say about Alice Parry...but here she is, murdered in her own backyard on a bitter St. David’s Eve. When detective Stephen Ramsay starts asking questions in the village, a more ambiguous picture begins to emerge. Yes, old Mrs. Parry was loved by everyone, but sometimes her kindness had caused trouble. Yes, her two nephews were devoted to her, but they didn’t really want her interfering in their rather complicated personal lives.

Two lonely towns in Colorado: Hope and Despair. Between them, 12 miles of empty road. Jack Reacher never turns back. It's not in his nature. All he wants is a cup of coffee. What he gets is big trouble. So in Lee Child’s electrifying new novel, Reacher - a man with no fear, no illusions, and nothing to lose - goes to war against a town that not only wants him gone, it wants him dead. It wasn’t the welcome Reacher expected. He was just passing through, minding his own business. But within minutes of his arrival a deputy is in the hospital and Reacher is back in Hope.

As the sun sets into the sea over the pretty Cornish town of St Ives, a young woman, Freya Kempston, hasn’t returned home after a day out in the mall at St Austell. Panicking, her husband begs Detective Lauren Pengelly and her team to find her. Has Freya run out on her stable, loving marriage, or has something more sinister taken place? Grainy security footage from the mall provides the first break in the case—capturing Freya talking intently with a well-known local mechanic on the day she disappeared. But when cornered, the mechanic denies even knowing her.

Atlanta, 1974: It's Kate Murphy's first day on the job, and the Atlanta Police Department is seething after the murder of an officer. Before the day has barely begun, she already suspects she's not cut out to be a cop. Her male uniform is too big, she can't handle a gun, and she's rapidly learning that the APD is hardly a place that welcomes women. Worse still, in the ensuing manhunt she'll be partnered with Maggie Lawson, a cop with her own ax to grind.

One moonlit night, the bodies of two young people are discovered lying entwined on a blanket in the woods. The young man is clutching a red rose. It appears to be a lovers' suicide pact.... Until Detective Nikki Galena and DS Joseph Easter look more closely. Romeo and Juliet, as they decide to call them, were murdered somewhere else and brought to the woods. But why? Then another young couple are found dead, again beautifully posed as lovers.

After a lifetime in service to the Soviet Union, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov may have found a way out. A high-profile homicide leads him to a cache of documents packed full of incriminating Kremlin gossip, which he uses as a bargaining chip to secure exit visas for himself and his Jewish wife. But just before the deal is concluded, Brezhnev's death sends the nation into turmoil, and makes escape impossible. His career derailed, the veteran cop is reduced to investigating penny-ante murders - one of which may lead somewhere very big indeed.

In Los Angeles, a reporter investigating a series of murders is killed. In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a beautiful medical intern suddenly disappears. Alex Cross is back to solve the most baffling and terrifying murder case ever.

When a nurse is murdered on her way home from nightshift, Jack and his team go on the hunt for her killer. As more victims are uncovered, Jack finds himself tracking a murderer afflicted by a unique psychosis - one that leaves him free to maim and kill without a shred of remorse. Facing a new type of killer in an unfamiliar city, DCI Jack Logan is about to be pushed to his limits, before being forced to realize just how little he truly knows.

In Los Angeles in 1988, a 16-year-old girl disappeared from her home and was later found dead of a gunshot wound to the chest. The death appeared at first to be a suicide, but some of the evidence contradicted that scenario, and detectives came to believe this was in fact a murder. Despite a by-the-book investigation, no one was ever charged.

Probationary constable Peter Grant dreams of being a detective in London's Metropolitan Police. Too bad his superior plans to assign him to the Case Progression Unit, where the biggest threat he'll face is a paper cut. But Peter's prospects change in the aftermath of a puzzling murder, when he gains exclusive information from an eyewitness who happens to be a ghost. Peter's ability to speak with the lingering dead brings him to the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale....

His passport read Giovanni Rossi. But decades ago, during the Urban Wars, he was part of a small, secret organization called The Twelve. Responding to an urgent summons from an old compatriot, he landed in New York and eased into the waiting car. And died within minutes… Lieutenant Eve Dallas finds the Rossi case frustrating. She’s got an elderly victim who’d just arrived from Rome; a widow who knows nothing about why he’d left; an as-yet unidentifiable weapon; and zero results on facial recognition.

Back when Harry Bosch was just a rookie homicide detective, he had an inspiring mentor who taught him to take the work personally and light the fire of relentlessness for every case. Now that mentor, John Jack Thompson, is dead, but after his funeral his widow hands Bosch a murder book that Thompson took with him when he left the LAPD 20 years before - the unsolved killing of a troubled young man in an alley used for drug deals.

Years ago, on her honeymoon in Maine, Abigail Browning's FBI agent husband Chris was killed. Immersing herself in her own police work, Abigail tried moving on, but she remained haunted by unanswered questions. Seven years later, on their anniversary she receives a phone call that suggests his murder wasn't a random act of violence, but a hit perpetrated by a serial killer.