Private Detective Fiction

The number one New York Times best-selling author’s award-winning series returns with another stunning crime drama featuring Scotland Yard members Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers. As Inspector Thomas Lynley investigates the London angle of an ever more darkly disturbing case, his partner, Barbara Havers, is looking behind the peaceful façade of country life to discover a twisted world of desire and deceit.

Why would a killer ignore expensive jewellery and take a pair of turtledoves as the only bounty? This is only one of the questions that piques Chief Inspector Domenic Jejeune's interest after a senior attaché with the Mexican Consulate is found murdered alongside the director of a local bird sanctuary. The fact that the director's death has opened up a full-time research position hasn't eluded Jejeune either. Could this be his escape from policing?

January 1970 finds Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, LA’s premier Black detective, at 50 years of age despite all expectations. He has a loving family, a beautiful home, and a thriving investigation agency. All is right with the world… and then Amethystine Stoller, his own personal Helen of Troy, arrives. Her ex-husband is missing. A simple enough case. But even as Easy takes his first step in the investigation he trips. He falls into the memory of things past. Little things, like loss, love, a world war, and a hunger that has eaten at him since he was a Black boy on his own.

A car accident in upstate New York strands Nero Wolfe, America's largest detective, and Archie Goodwin, his confidential assistant, in the midst of a family feud. The feud, over $45,000 worth of prize bull, turns ugly when the beef in question is found pawing the mangled body of a family scion. Solving the mystery is no problem - but, alas, the evidence keeps disappearing.

After wasting away in a mental institution for a year and a half, Ariana Osgood is finally back where she belongs. She has a new look, a new name, and a new life---all thanks to her former friend Briana Leigh Covington. Now enrolled as a junior at the exclusive Atherton-Pryce boarding school just outside of Washington, D.C., Ariana sleeps in Frette sheets, flirts with the captain of the crew team, and gossips with the most beautiful girls on campus. She killed to get back her life of privilege. How far will she go?

Hugo Hawksworth is on the tail of rogue Cold War agents at a top-secret government facility, while back home at Selchester Castle they're awaiting the arrival of the new earl - an American, the long-lost son of the murdered Lord Selchester.

Poirot Investigates a host of murders most foul—as well as other dastardly crimes—in this intriguing collection of short stories from the one-and-only Agatha Christie. Agatha Christie’s classic Murder in the Mews presents four mystifying criminal conundrums that will seriously test the superior detecting skills of the unflappable Hercule Poirot.

Scandal, treachery and crime are rife in Old London Town. A king blackmailed by his mistress, dark dealings in opium dens, stolen jewels, a missing bride - these are cases so fiendishly complex that only Sherlock Holmes would dare to investigate.

World War II has arrived, and U.S. Army intelligence wants Nero Wolfe urgently. But the arrogant, gourmandizing, sedentary sleuth refuses the call to duty. It takes his perambulatory, confidential assistant, Archie Goodwin, to titillate Wolfe's taste for crime with two malevolent morsels: a corpse that won't rest in peace and a sinister "accident" involving national security. So as Goodwin lays the bait on the wrong side of the law, Wolfe sets the traps to catch a pair of wily killers.

With Nero Wolfe on the job, you'd think murderers would take caution. But even the master detective can't stop a killing, especially if it's an inside job - right under the roof of his client, millionaire Otis Jarrell. What's more, it's Jarrell's own missing revolver that the killer uses. Wolfe must find the truth behind the scandals in Jarrell's ill-behaved family. One of its members sleeps the fitful sleep of the guilty, and Wolfe's getting dead tired of murder.

Jack Sommers was just an ordinary accountant from Chicago - that is until his wife passed away, his young daughter was kidnapped, and he became the main suspect in an $88 million embezzlement case. Now Jack is on the run, hoping to avoid the feds long enough to rescue his daughter, Sophie, from her maternal grandfather, a suspected terrorist in Palestine.

Lorsque la richissime Emily Inglethorp est retrouvée empoisonnée dans son manoir de Styles, les soupçons se portent rapidement sur son très jeune mari, Alfred Inglethorp. Mais le verdict paraît trop évident au colonel Hastings, qui décide de faire appel à son vieux compagnon Hercule Poirot. Ce dernier met alors tout en œuvre pour découvrir à qui pourrait profiter le crime. Car il y a aussi les beaux-enfants de Mme Inglethorp, et Cynthia, la protégée de la défunte : tous auraient pu se procurer la strychnine qui a servi à la tuer.

Hours after throwing a third birthday party for their twins Kathy and Kelly in their Connecticut home, Margaret and Steve Frawley return home from a dinner in New York to discover the police in the house, their daughters missing, and an eight million dollar ransom note. The Frawleys meet the kidnapper's demands, but the abandoned car they're led to contains only Kelly, the body of the driver, and a suicide note, saying he had inadvertently killed Kathy and dumped her body in the ocean.

In 1890, the first Japanese diplomatic delegation arrives in London to open an embassy. Cyrus Barker, private enquiry agent and occasional agent for the Foreign Service Office, is enlisted to display his personal Japanese garden to the visiting dignitaries. Later that night, Ambassador Toda is shot and killed in his office and Cyrus Barker is discovered across the street, watching the very same office, in possession of a revolver with one spent cartridge.

Nero Wolfe, lover of fine food and prize orchids, is a genius at daring detection. But he is always on guard when it comes to women. Now, murder at a fencing studio engages him and his confidential assistant, Archie Goodwin, in a dangerous duel with death. The prime suspect is a Balkan beauty who has a secret reason for wanting Wolfe to clear her - and a double identity that may be the perfect foil for covering up a killer.

Private Detective Evander “Andy” Mills has been drawn back to the Lavender House estate for a missing person case. Pat, the family butler, has been volunteering for a book service, one that specializes in mailing queer books to a carefully guarded list of subscribers. With bookseller Howard Salzberger gone suspiciously missing along with his address book, everyone on that list, including some of Andy's closest friends, is now in danger.

When two young sisters disappear from a strip mall parking lot in a small Pennsylvania town, their devastated mother hires an enigmatic bounty hunter, Alice Vega, to help find the girls. Immediately shut out by a local police department already stretched thin by budget cuts and the growing OxyContin and meth epidemic, Vega enlists the help of a disgraced former cop, Max Caplan. Cap is a man trying to put the scandal of his past behind him and move on, but Vega needs his help to find the girls, and she will not be denied.

Bien sûr, la retraite a ses charmes... Cependant, Hercule Poirot ne peut s'empêcher, de temps à autre, de reprendre du service. Oh ! pas pour n'importe quelle affaire, bien entendu. Un détective aussi célèbre que lui ne se dérangerait pas pour un meurtre ordinaire. Non, Hercule Poirot ne s'intéresse qu'aux crimes les plus déroutants, les plus passionnants, les plus... Bref, à la crème des crimes.

In Poirot Investigates, Agatha Christie presents eleven riveting short stories featuring the famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. From high-stakes jewel thefts to baffling murders, Poirot faces a variety of complex and puzzling cases that challenge his remarkable intellect and investigative prowess. In these tales, Poirot must unravel a web of deception involving missing persons, secret identities, and shocking crimes, using his keen observation and logical deductions to reveal the truth.

Madeline Fraser, radio talk show host extraordinaire, had a natural dread of dead air. So when one of her on-air guests signed off at the mike after drinking a glass of a sponsor’s beverage, it was a broadcaster’s nightmare come true.