Police Small Town Mystery

In Archer Mayor’s intriguing new Vermont-based mystery, The Orphan’s Guilt, a straightforward traffic stop snowballs into a homicide investigation after Joe Gunther and his fellow investigators peel back layer upon layer of history and personal heartbreak to learn a decades-old hidden truth.

In the quaint town of Hart's Ridge, Deputy Taylor Gray is a force to be reckoned with. From clawing her way out of poverty and foster care to achieving her dream of being in law enforcement, Taylor is determined to make a difference in her community. When a five-year-old girl named Molly walks into a gas station alone and barely speaking, Taylor's determination is put to the test. As she delves deeper into the investigation, Taylor discovers that even the most idyllic towns have their secrets. But this time, the stakes are higher than ever before.

Bo Tully, the renowned sheriff of Blight County, Idaho, has seen his share of small-town crime. And, he always gets his man, whether by the book or otherwise. Fact is, everyone in the area knows Tully, and his unique 'Blight Way' of doing things.

When Tully and his deputy hike deep into the woods, tracking a suspected bank robber, little do they realize that they are about to witness a murder. Soon, the murder leads the Sheriff on a convoluted adventure, with a series of twists and turns, each demanding his utmost attention and keenest crime-solving abilities.

For all its old-fashioned charm, Forbes Abbot is far from the close-knit community that ex-Londoners Mallory and Kate Lawson expected. In this village, everyday squabbles can quickly turn to murder. As the couple begins to settle into their new life away from the big city, it isn't long until they're thrown into the horror and mayhem of a true Midsomer Murders mystery. Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby has encountered many intriguing cases in his years on the force, but soon he will discover that the incident of the ghost in the machine is the most challenging of them all.

Most folks in Exile, Texas, think Megan Leary got away with murder. Megan was acquitted of her mother's vicious killing after someone else confessed—but suspicion still shadows her fifteen years later. Now a private investigator, she's come back to help a friend look for her missing teenage daughter—and it's not just gossip that's being stirred up. Sheriff's Deputy Dan Fox wasn't sure what to think of Megan or her mysterious past when he pulled her over for speeding. But suddenly, people are dying—and Dan may have to decide whether he can put his trust in Megan to ensure both of them survive.

A woman is cruelly cut down in a remote corner of Arizona, killed on her nineteenth wedding anniversary by a drunk motorist. A year later, the driver himself dies badly, and all suspicions point to the slain woman's still-grieving husband as his murderer. But the truth is rarely black and white in the long Southwestern shadows, and one law officer is not rushing to condemn the tragic widower so quickly - Joanna Brady, sheriff of Cochise County.

DI Tom Stonem’s peaceful holiday is cut short when a body is discovered nearby, in the shadow of the Angel of the North. The dead man is bound, his arms outstretched in the sculpture’s iconic pose. In the man’s pocket is what appears to be a little girl’s Christmas list, with the first item – 1. Angel delight – crossed off. When a second body is found – a woman, stabbed in the abdomen after her work Christmas do – Stonem can’t help but notice a grim connection between the crime scenes and the items on the seemingly innocent list. 2. Red party dress. Could this be a murderer’s twisted code?

Colter Shaw is a career "reward-seeker", making his living locating missing persons and collecting reward money in return. In the course of his search for a missing woman, he visits the police station in the small Kansas town of Humble, and, is pulled into a puzzling case. A man is holding a hostage in a lakeside cabin, and the Humble police need Shaw's experience and know-how to assess the situation, and the captor's motives. As Shaw begins negotiating, he begins to realize that nothing about the hostage situation is as it seems, including the hostage himself.

Michael and Maggie Butler are found naked and dead in a Wisconsin wheat field, murdered by two vicious shotgun blasts. But no one gets murdered in Kickapoo Falls, a peaceful, picturesque vacation retreat on the edge of the Wisconsin Dells, home of the politically powerful Kickapoo Gunn Club. Deputy Pennington is convinced the answer lies back in the wheat field. But the town's ruling elite closes ranks and turns on him as he zeroes in on the truth. What appears to be a husband-wife murder-suicide soon opens doors into a deadly conspiracy set for election night.

On a winding mountain road into the town of Denton, Pennsylvania, Detective Josie Quinn finds the body of a local teenage girl, Dina Hale. The sight of plum-colored bruises gathering around the girl’s neck pierces Josie’s heart, but the discovery of a second girl’s empty purse in the dirt nearby gives her a flicker of hope that one person, at least, made a lucky escape. Dina’s parents are grief-stricken as the town rallies together in a desperate search for the second girl, who waitressed with Dina. The two best friends were on their way to a shift when they were attacked.

When the ancient waters of Lady’s Well in the rural village of Holystone begin to run red, it seems to be a nasty Hallowe’en prank and nothing more. But things take a sinister turn when the entire village suffers severe poisoning, and one old man turns up dead. Accusations abound in the small close-knit community, and ‘old’ religions spar against ‘new’ while fear runs like wildfire through the streets. With so many potential motives and countless opportunities, there’s only one man who can help solve this particular mystery.

Street-smart and straightforward police chief Cuddy Mangum and his refined homicide detective Justin Savile V are determined to keep their town’s cultural, political and racial divisions stable…even peaceful. But when a young black activist is murdered while in the process of fighting for his brother’s freedom from death row, the lines keeping Hillston, North Carolina, in balance start to crumble.

All communities have their secrets...but on Widow’s Island, there’s a skeleton in every closet, as Deputy Tessa Black knows all too well. When Tessa stumbles upon a half-buried body in the woods, a peaceful morning hike suddenly turns into a race to catch a killer. Tessa identifies the skeletal corpse as Aurora Franklin, a young college student and aspiring actor. She’d come to Widow’s Island for a summer job, only to be strangled and discarded. Aurora has been dead for over a month - and not a single islander has reported her missing.

Mutée disciplinairement à New York, Colorado, un petit village raciste du fin fond de l'Amérique, sans couverture mobile et où il ne se passe jamais rien, la lieutenant de police de couleur noire, à forte corpulence, Agatha Crispies a trouvé un échappatoire à son désœuvrement dans l'animation d'un club de lecture au sein du commissariat. Mais alors qu'elle désespérait de pouvoir un jour enquêter à nouveau sur un meurtre autre que celui d'un écureuil, une série d'effroyables assassinats et disparitions viennent (enfin) troubler la tranquillité des lieux.

Nash Rankin is a disgraced cop trying to escape his past—his career was destroyed when he chose to take justice into his own hands. Now he's living a quiet life in a small town caring for the local wildlife and trying to stay away from trouble. Jesse Redpath has a new job in a new town, Satellite—the stormy weather that greets her first few days on the new beat seems like a sign for what's to come. A local has died in what seems like an accident, but Jessie isn't so sure that ‘accident' wasn't planned. All evidence seems to point to Nash, but Jesse's not sure about that either.

When former FBI agent Cate Wilde moves back to Widow’s Island, she envisions a simpler life than the one she had in law enforcement. But Cate’s past has a habit of catching up with her. When she receives a mysterious package containing a child’s mandible, she finds herself thrust back into action. The mandible leads Cate to an unsolved case she worked seven years ago - the kidnapping of a three-year-old girl. At the time, Cate suspected the girl was kidnapped by her overprotective father. But after they both vanished, the case went cold.

An online flirtation can have horrific consequences, as detective Louise Rick discovers when she is called to an idyllic Copenhagen neighborhood where a young woman has been left bound and gagged after a profoundly brutal rape attack. Susanne Hansson met her rapist on a popular dating website. But the man is hiding behind a labyrinth of false pseudonyms, and neither Susanne - nor the police - have been able to trace his true identity. With the Internet as his playground, the rapist will almost certainly strike again if Louise can't unmask him before it's too late.

A long-unsolved mystery gets a grim new break when the bones of Kim Ward are unearthed in Las Cruces, New Mexico, 45 years after her disappearance. Suspicion swiftly falls on her old college boyfriend: none other than retired police chief Kevin Kerney. The chief's hopes of clearing his name look bleak in the face of damning evidence compiled against him by State Police Lieutenant Clayton Istee. Left grasping for clues, with no alibi and not a single witness to speak for him, Kerney and his wife must race to reconstruct long-past events to identify the one person who can clear his name.

When Professor Alan Tunbridge is discovered in his office with his throat slashed, the suspects start queuing up. The brilliant but unpleasant microbiologist had a genius for making enemies. For Warren Jones, newly appointed Detective Chief Inspector to the Middlesbury force, a high-profile murder is the ideal opportunity. He’s determined to run a thorough and professional investigation but political pressure to resolve the case quickly and tensions in the office and at home make life anything but easy.

There was the moment eight-year-old Ruth Corrigan ran away from playing in the woods with her best friend, and then the moment after, when Ceely was gone. Murdered. Now the silence of that day lives within Ruth. Lives in the judgment she sees in the faces of so many in the small town she still calls home. Ruth may be older now, tougher, a cop by trade, but her life has been unraveling ever since that tragic day in the woods. Alcohol, sex, broken marriages—nothing can lighten the truth she knows inside. Until the child-killer returns, free and unencumbered, having already paid for his crime.