Police Suspense Thrillers

In a Dry Season, winner of the Anthony Award, is an outstanding example of mystery fiction. Peter Robinson's Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks conjures up memories of classic detectives like Philip Marlowe and Sherlock Holmes. An insufferable drought ravages the Yorkshire countryside, depleting the Thornfield Reservoir, revealing the remnants of the flooded town of Hobb's End and the terrible secrets kept safe within its watery tomb. Amongst the ruins, the remains of a woman's body are discovered.

In the wake of a devastating hurricane, Special Agent Meg Jennings and her Labrador, Hawk - invaluable members of the FBI’s Human Scent Evidence Team - have been deployed to Virginia Beach. They have their work cut out for them. Amid graveyards of debris, and the buried cries for help, the search and rescue operation begins. The most alarming discovery is yet to come - a teenage girl hiding in the Great Dismal Swamp. Shaken by the storm, she has reason to be scared. But this young survivor is terrified of so much more.

Bo Tully is the sheriff of Blight County, Idaho, where law enforcement is usually pretty mundane: tracking down truants running away from school, picking up country boys who've had a few too many beers. But Tully gets a little more than the country norm when an ex-con calls with the startling news that there's a corpse draped across one of his fences.

Just graduated from the police academy, Linda Wallander returns to Skane to join the police force, and she already shows all the hallmarks of her father - the maverick approach, the flaring temper. Before she even starts work she becomes embroiled in the case of her childhood friend, Anna, who has inexplicably disappeared.

A murder followed by a series of random, motiveless crimes leaves Detective Garda Sergeant Mike West and his team puzzled. When Edel Johnson arrives at the scene of a crime Mike is taken aback, more so when he discovers she is now working with a victim support group. He has feelings for her, but he is the garda who investigated her husband's murder, and their relationship is complicated.

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.

Now that Alexandra "Alex" Donavan is finally free of her troubled upbringing, she's able to live out her childhood dream of working for the FBI. But soon after she becomes a member of the FBI's elite Behavioral Analysis Unit, authorities in Kansas and Missouri contact them about bodies found on freight trains traveling across the country - all killed in the same way.

Meet Detective Inspector Dan Hellier, a man who needs to redeem his career and catch a killer. Soon after DI Hellier returns home to Exeter under a cloud, the body of a talented young singer is found in the woods. When her death reveals links to the boss of a recording studio, a predatory gang and a school music teacher, Hellier knows he has his work cut out. Before more innocent people are put in danger, Hellier will need to untangle the web of lies and work out which of many suspects are guilty of murder.

With the lovely Priscilla Halburton-Smythe away in London, Hamish Macbeth, the constable of the small Scottish town of Lochdubh, pines for company during the long Scottish winter. He gets his wish - and more - when a troupe of flashy, urbane filmmakers clamors into the nearby town of Drim. Before long bedlam erupts around their make-believe mystery - and culminates in the sudden appearance of one very real corpse.

Amy Hill, a 19-year-old student, is strangled and her body dumped on open ground in the city. New police partners, DI Jim Neal and DS Ava Merry are called in to investigate this brutal crime. The last person to see Amy alive was Simon, the son of a family friend, but before he can be properly questioned he disappears. Detectives Neal and Merry are led on a trail of shocking family secrets and crimes. Can this duo track down the murderer before anyone else dies? Stopping this tragic cycle of violence will put DS Merry’s life at risk in a thrilling and heart-stopping finale.

A woman is found dead by a canal. Her eyes have been poked out. Detective Stephen Greco has just started his job at Oldston CID and is faced with several murders with no obvious connection except for the murderer's penchant for disfigurement. His team are crumbling under the pressure; he doesn't know whom he can trust. Can Greco regain composure and control in order to stop the murders?

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?

When the brutally beaten body of a young man is found in an alley, Eastvale's Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and his colleague, Detective Constable Susan Gay, have no choice but to lock up the three Pakistani youths who seemingly started it all after an argument in a pub. But they're out in no time, and Banks is in big trouble with the chief for risking a racial incident with the arrest.

Deputy Mattie Cobb is in a dark place and has withdrawn from Cole Walker and his family to work on issues from her past. When she and her K-9 partner, Robo, get called to track a missing junior high student, they find the girl dead on Smoker's Hill behind the high school, and Mattie must head to the Walker home to break the bad news. But that's only the start of trouble in Timber Creek because soon another girl goes missing - and this time it's one of Cole's daughters.

The body was positioned so that the train would neatly obliterate its head and hands. Dressed in a homeless man's clothes with empty pockets, it might easily be passed off as an unfortunate John Doe. But Joe Gunther has a knack for knowing when things don't quite add up, and the math in this case is all kinds of wrong. A toxic waste dumping scheme, a stabbing, and a whole lot of state politics quickly complicate matters further. If Occam's razor were applied to Gunther's caseload, how many incisions would it make?

When Inspector Banks of Yorkshire investigates whether an abusive husband might be guilty of an unsolved string of murders, his suspicions are aroused by the details of the man's marriage. Is the suspect's wife a victim or could she be his accomplice?

Rebecca Heilshorn lies stabbed to death in her bed in a remote upstate New York farmhouse. Rookie detective Brendan Healy is called in to investigate. All hell breaks loose when her brother bursts onto the scene. Rebecca turns out to have many secrets and connections to a sordid network mixing power, wealth, and sex. Detective Brendan Healy, trying to put his demons behind him, pursues a dangerous investigation that will risk both his life and his sanity.

An abandoned old house in a small town northeast of Houston is the site of a second murder, eerily similar to a supposed cold case of 14 years earlier. FBI Agents CJ Johnston and Paige Riley are dispatched to find the link between the two homicides. The team, including Ice and Billy, find the case to be anything but cold. For CJ and Paige, juggling the investigation while trying to keep their love affair a secret proves to be as hard as uncovering long-buried clues.

Shortly after 9.30 in the morning, a young man walks into Surf City, Bondi’s newest shopping complex. He’s wearing a dark grey hoodie - and a bomb around his neck. Just a few minutes later, he is locked in a shop on the upper floor. And trapped with him are four innocent bystanders. For police chaplain Paul Doherty, called to the scene by Senior Sergeant Boehm, it’s a story that will end as tragically as it began. For this is clearly no ordinary siege. The boy, known as Ali Khan, seems as frightened as his hostages and has yet to utter a single word.

DCI Kenny Murrain sees, hears and feels things that others do not. It’s a gift but also a curse. When he wakes to the phantom sound of screaming, he knows a murder has been committed, but not where or why. Then a woman’s body is found in a Stockport hotel room. It’s a murder that seems both frenzied and carefully planned, the scene expertly cleansed of any evidence.