Police Procedural Thriller

Chief Inspector Acton and Detective Sergeant Kathleen Doyle know firsthand how the administration of justice can often follow a labyrinthine path. As they pursue a self-appointed judge, jury, and executioner, Acton's own questionable methods may prove his undoing.

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.

Twenty-five years ago, a schoolgirl was attacked. Ambushed by three bullies at her home where she lived alone with her granny. Now, the mother of one of those bullies is found murdered on the Hobfield housing estate. Written on the wall in the victim’s blood is the word “sorry”. Detective Tom Calladine and his partner DS Ruth Bayliss discover a link to some bones found at an old house up in the hills. It was the home of the teenage girl who was attacked. The detectives have more than this puzzling case on their hands.

When Sergeant Mike West and his partner, Garda Andrews, are called to a suspicious death, they are shocked to find the small body of a child abandoned in a suitcase. Who is she? No child has been reported missing. Their search reaches outside Ireland but without success, and soon another dead body takes their attention. There is a surfeit of suspects this time, but as the case evolves, the two detectives are stunned where it leads.

A teenager is found dead, stabbed through the heart by a professional killer. Detective Stephen Greco and his team must find out who the victim was and work to piece together the backstory. Then 'The Knifeman' strikes again, leading DCI Greco into a depraved world of exploitation. How is drugs baron Vinny Costello involved? What is the connection with a private clinic that provides plastic surgery for the elite?

A sweltering summer day on the Hobfield housing estate. New tenant Lisa Woodley is horrified when her cat comes home with a human foot in its mouth. The foot belongs to 16-year-old Noah Crosby, whose decomposing remains are found in a rubbish-strewn alleyway. It’s not a robbery, as the teen has an expensive gold watch, high-end trainers and a top-of-the-range mobile phone on him. Where did he get such expensive gear? A letter X is carved into Noah’s flesh. Twenty years ago this was the hallmark of a serial killer who was never caught.

On the hottest day in living memory, Richard Mallory Tindall, the owner of a patent firm, does not return home to Cleete village. When a man is found crushed to death, Tindall's case goes from missing person to homicide. In the course of solving murder cases, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan has seen all manner of ugly death. But there's something particularly gruesome about this one, the body crushed beneath the marble and iron of an old Saxon church tower. With rubble blocking off access to the crime scene, no one can get close enough to inspect the body.

Retired from the force, Detective Superintendent Jeffrey Brandt goes native. He stabs a woman but holds back from killing her. Frustrated that no one takes any notice, he ups his game. Next time, he'll kill. Brandt fully knows how the police work. He'll use this knowledge to win a sick game; after all, he's chosen the rules. The crime scenes are spotless, Brandt's covered his tracks. There is no forensic evidence. Yet each killing has his unmistakable print. Faced with the challenge of discovering his identity is DCI Stella Johnson. She rises to Brandt's macabre challenge.

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.

Belfast, 1980, is the apocalypse. Bombings, riots, army on the streets, low flying helicopters, and ever-present rain. The grinding Northern Irish civil war between Protestants and Catholics has been going for a decade now. Hated by both sides are the police.

Elvie McCulloch's sister, Sophie, has been missing for 57 days. She went out for a run - and never came home. Several young women in the area have disappeared in similar circumstances, and Elvie's family fears the worst. Teaming up with retired detective Billy Hopkirk, Elvie determines to find out the truth. But as the pair alternately collaborate with and infuriate investigating police detectives Anderson and Costello, they find themselves up against a terrifying enemy. Someone they call The Night Hunter.

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?

His holiday with his family has just begun, but a phone call sends Martin Beck packing off to Budapest, where a boorish journalist has vanished without a trace. With the aid of the coolly efficient local police, who do business while soaking at the public baths, Beck must troll about in the Eastern Europe underworld for a man nobody knows - while he is at the risk of vanishing along with his quarry.

Was the biggest case of his career the worst mistake he ever made? Ten years ago, DCI Jack Logan stopped the serial child-killer dubbed "Mister Whisper", earning himself a commendation, a drinking problem, and a broken marriage in the process...When another child disappears a hundred miles north in the Highlands, Jack is sent to lead the investigation and bring the boy home. But as similarities between the two cases grow, could it be that Jack caught the wrong man all those years ago?

When Venetian detective Commissario Guido Brunetti is called to investigate a presumed suicide in Venice's elite military academy, his inquiries are immediately met with a wall of silence. The young man is the son of a doctor and former politician, a man of an impeccable integrity all too rare in Italian politics. Dr. Moro seems devastated by his son's death, but is not eager to talk to the police.

In a wicked conspiracy reaching across the Mexican border, Tularosa pits a jaded ex-cop against tight-lipped Army personnel, hired thugs, and smooth-talking outlaws. Forced into retirement by a crippling gunshot wound, Santa Fe policeman Kevin Kerney seeks solitude on a small New Mexico ranch far from the nearest neighbor. But when his godson disappears without a trace into the harsh, high-security desert of the White Sands Missile Range, Kerney emerges to search for the young soldier.

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.

Joe Gunther is sent to the neighboring town of Bellows Falls to investigate harassment allegations against a fellow officer. But as Gunther doggedly pursues the truth, what begins as a seemingly open-and-shut case starts to look more and more like a frame job, and he soon finds himself feeling around the edges of a statewide drug distribution network.

Forensic linguist Macy Reid is an expert on kidnapping, having been abducted when she was a child. So, she is the perfect investigator to be called in when a Denver tycoon's 11-year-old daughter is abducted - for the second time. But Macy's biggest stumbling block may be a member of her own team: Kellan Burke, the wise-cracking, rule-breaking investigator who relishes getting under Macy's skin - and who just may be the man to help her confront the demons from her past.

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.