Traditional Detectives Police Procedural

Net curtains twitch furiously, and neighbours have observations to make to Chief Inspector Purbright and Sergeant Love about the inhabitants of 14, Beatrice Avenue. Nice Gordon Periam, the mild-mannered tobacconist, and his rather less nice (in fact a bit of a bounder) lodger Brian Hopjoy had apparently shared the house amicably. But now neither man is to be found, and something very disagreeable seems to be lurking in the drains.... Then a couple of government spooks turn up, one with an eye for the ladies - the drama is acquiring overtones of a Bond movie!

Tuesday nights have suddenly turned quite ridiculously noisy in the country town of Chalmsbury, where the good folk are outraged at having their rest disturbed. It begins with a drinking fountain being blown to smithereens - next the statue of a local worthy loses his head, and the following week a giant glass eye is exploded. Despite the soft-soled sleuthing of cub reporter Len Leaper, the crime spate grows alarming.

The British-based Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company finds itself in hot water its engineer, Alan Ottershaw, hits and kills a pedestrian while driving in a foreign country - a nation with thick veins of the strategically important mineral querremitte. This country has draconian laws about killings, so Ottershaw is relieved when he's whisked back to Calleshire. Bur the Lassertan government threatens to strip the company of its most valuable contract, and poor Mr. Ottershaw dies suddenly, a very convenient solution. A little too convenient, if you ask Calleshire detective C. D. Sloan.

Lucy Durmast waits patiently in front of the judge at her own murder trial, refusing to utter a single word. Kenneth Carline, an employee of her father's, was found poisoned to death after eating a meal that Lucy herself had prepared. Kenneth was set to marry another, and Lucy, it seems, was jealous. But what should have been an open-and-shut case of envy-driven murder becomes complicated when primary detective Trevor Porritt suffers permanent brain damage. C. D. Sloan inherits the file - and immediately begins poking holes in what looked like an airtight case.

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.

È notte. Il commissario De Vincenzi è nel suo ufficio in Questura, quando riceve la visita inaspettata di un suo amico, ex compagno di collegio. Nel mentre il commissario riceve una telefonata, è stato commesso un omicidio proprio nell'appartamento del suo amico... La prima inchiesta, in ordine di tempo (1935) del popolare commissario della Mobile milanese che possiede grandi capacità deduttive e intuitive ma principalmente si manifesta come un uomo assetato di giustizia.

Une femme a disparu. Sa voiture est retrouvée au départ d'un sentier de randonnée qui fait l'ascension vers le plateau où survivent quelques fermes habitées par des hommes seuls. Alors que les gendarmes n'ont aucune piste et que l'hiver impose sa loi, plusieurs personnes se savent pourtant liées à cette disparition. Tour à tour, elles prennent la parole et chacune a son secret, presque aussi précieux que sa propre vie. Et si le chemin qui mène à la vérité manque autant d'oxygène que les hauteurs du ciel qui ici écrase les vivants, c'est que cette histoire a commencé loin, bien loin de cette montagne.

Guillaume a disparu. Son cheval a été retrouvé sans cavalier. Au pays des lavandes et des chênes truffiers, cette disparition ne manque pas d'inquiéter sa famille et ses amis. Son oncle, Morin, débarque de Paris et de sa fraîche retraite pour aider à le retrouver. Rapidement, Morin se retrouve face à un mystère que ses années d'expérience à la P. J. ne lui permettent pas de découvrir : pas de nouvelle petite amie, pas de raison de fuguer, pas d'ennemis. Pas la moindre piste pour comprendre.

Sir Daniel Denton was NOT a nice man, and when his body is found in his study at Bywater Grange, shot through the back with his own pistol, no one sheds many tears. Scotland Yard Inspector Pinkey is sent to the country estate to investigate the crime, and quickly focuses his efforts on three suspects: the dead man's widow, Lady Adelaide Denton; his half-brother, Gerard Denton; and his secretary, Redwin, who'd recently been dismissed for "cooking" the accounts.

When Octavia Garamond passed away, she left explicit instructions in her will: The police must be present at her funeral, and the coroner should be exceptionally thorough when examining her body. Amelia Kennerly is perplexed to find herself the sole executor of her great-aunt's will, as she barely knew her. Further questions arise when the local parson is anything but happy to conduct Octavia's service. Then someone breaks into Octavia's home and tears the house apart. It seems the old lady's words may have been eerily prescient: "Hell is empty, and all the devils are here."

In this second mystery featuring Chief Inspector Peter Cammon, the veteran detective is lured out of retirement once more. With a familiar cast of characters reacquainting themselves with readers of the series, the novel follows Peter as he embarks on his seemingly simple assignment: Travel to Canada to retrieve the body of a murdered Scotland Yard colleague. But Peter can’t resist delving into the oddities of the crime. His colleague was brutally attacked, run over by a car, and then dumped into a canal - all seemingly for the theft of three letters from the American Civil War era, one of which is signed by John Wilkes Booth.

Forbidden in Victorian England, the grim and violent world of bare-knuckle fighting has gone underground. So when a headless body is found floating in the Thames, his hands "pickled" for fighting, Sergeant Cribb knows he is facing a challenge. Desperate for information, they select the young constable Henry Jago to infiltrate the gang, subjecting him to a rigorous program of purging, pickling, and training. Cribb is certain that the losing fighters are being killed, or worse, so getting Jago out just in time is crucial....

The Detective Story Club's first short story anthology is based around a London detective club and includes three newly discovered tales unpublished for 100 years, plus a story bearing an uncanny resemblance to a Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes story but written some seven years earlier.

Peter Maxwell didn't want to attend the GNVQ course. He didn't want to get mixed up in murder either - but perhaps it was all part of death's rich tapestry. And while a disparate gathering of teachers was breaking ice upstairs at the Carnforth Centre, someone else was in the basement - breaking skulls. But what the killer couldn't have foreseen was that one of the victims was an old flame of Maxwell's. So now it was personal. And when 'Mad Max' takes something personally, he doesn't get madder - he gets results.

Merry Folger is more than ready for a romantic vacation with her fiancé, Peter, when fate - and her police chief father - intervenes. Twenty-one-year-old Jay Santorski never should have drowned in the frigid waters off the Nantucket shore. What was the athlete, Harvard scholar, and part-time scalloper doing out alone in the storm-churned bay? At her father's insistence - and over Peter's objections - Merry returns to the island to investigate.

5 September 1992: Fifteen-year-old Norma Jean Judd disappeared from her home never to be seen again. Exactly 18 years later, Bryan Judd, Norma Jean’s twin, is pulled from the searing heat of a hospital incinerator. When his charred remains are examined, the murder squad confirms that his death was no accident. Could his death be linked to his sister’s disappearance? For DI Peter Shaw and DS George Valentine, the case proves their most intriguing yet.

Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands is caught off guard one night in 1933 by a phone call from a distressed boy named Jackie Drummond, who just might be the illegitimate son Joe never knew he had....

After his ex-wife bled to death in a bathtub, covered in his fingerprints, the case against Aleksander Kaminski seemed open and shut. Though sentenced to life in prison, he swears he's innocent, a claim supported by his current wife. Private investigator Dylan Scott finds himself drawn back to dreary Lancashire in a search for justice.

Ten months ago, Samantha Hunt set off for work…and was never seen again. Despite the statistics of cold cases, Dylan Scott wants to believe the young woman's alive - and not just because her father, his client, is desperate to find his missing daughter before he dies of cancer. By all accounts Sam was a lovely girl, devoted to her younger stepsisters, well-liked at her work, in love with her boyfriend. But as usual not everything is as it seems in sleepy Dawson's Clough. Sam's boyfriend has a violent past.

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the second Inspector French audiobook by Freeman Wills Crofts, once dubbed 'The King of Detective Story Writers'. When young Maxwell Cheyne discovers that a series of mishaps are the result of unwelcome attention from a dangerous gang of criminals, he teams up with a young woman who is determined to help him outwit them. But when she disappears, he finally decides to go to Scotland Yard for help. Concerned by the developing situation, Inspector Joseph French takes charge of the investigation.