Traditional Police

The best mysteries have one thing in common: a memorable perpetrator. For every Sherlock Holmes or Sam Spade in noble pursuit, there's a Count Dracula, a Lester Leith, or a Jimmy Valentine. These are the rogues and villains who haunt our imaginations - and who often have more in common with their heroic counterparts than we might expect. Now, for the first time ever, Otto Penzler gathers the iconic traitors, thieves, con men, sociopaths, and killers who have crept through the mystery canon over the past 150 years, captivating and horrifying readers in equal measure.

A call for help from a former colleague leads Maine game warden investigator Mike Bowditch and his girlfriend Stacey Stevens on a sea kayaking trip to a research station far off the coast. Stacey spent summers interning on the island, a sanctuary for endangered seabirds, and they are shocked by the atmosphere of tension they encounter when they come ashore. The biologists are being threatened and stalked by a mysterious boatman who they suspect is trespassing on the refuge late at night.

Two deaths, the suicide of a newly laid-off worker and an unscrupulous businessman found murdered, lead Inspector Montalbano to inspect the Halcyon, a nearly abandoned mysterious ship with no passengers.

An illegal immigrant is found murdered in an Edinburgh housing scheme. Is it a racist attack, or something else? Rebus is drawn into the case, but he has other problems: his old police station has closed, and his masters would rather he retire than stick around. As Rebus investigates, he must visit an asylum seekers' detention centre, deal with the sleazy Edinburgh underworld, and maybe even fall in love. Meanwhile, Siobhan has problems of her own.

London, 1851. With the opening of the Great Exhibition at hand, interest in mounting in the engineering triumphs of the railways, but not everyone feels like celebrating. In an audacious attack, the London to Birmingham mail train is robbed and derailed, causing many casualties. Planned with military precision, this crime proves a challenge to Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck who fights to untangle a web of murder, blackmail and destruction.

A body discovered in the river in the centre of Cardiff with its tongue amputated leads to more deaths in the Polish community. John Marco and his team have to delve into the East European immigrant community and uncover the murky world of people trafficking. But what is it that links all the deaths together?

Who said retirement was easy? After 25 years of dedicated service, one ill-fated meeting over an unsolved missing person’s case sees London police officer Jack Griffin forced into resignation, effective immediately. Now, with more free time than he had planned, Jack takes on the role of lead investigator as a newly-assigned Met Police Cold Case Team puts him in their crosshairs. The case? Patricia Lucas disappeared from Notting Hill five years ago and Griffin was the first officer on scene.

Rebus is off the case, quite literally. A few days into a murder inquiry following the brutal death of an Edinburgh art dealer, Rebus blows up at his superior, DCS Gill Templer, and is sent into purdah - which, in his case, means the Scottish Police College, sited on the edge of a village in central Scotland. Rebus has been sent there for "retraining". In other words, it's his Last Chance Saloon. He is not alone. At the college, he is put into a group of similar officers.

With the tourist season well and truly over in South Devon, Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson is looking forward to a quieter month in the CID. But when a man is shot dead on Bonfire Night, he finds he has a disturbing and complex murder case on his hands. The body of Patrick North was found in woodland connected to Nesbaraton Hall, a grand estate dating back to the eighteenth century. North worked for the Smithson family who now own the estate.

Roderick Alleyn is back in this unique crime novel begun by Ngaio Marsh during the Second World War and now completed by Stella Duffy. It's business as usual for Mr Glossop as he does his regular round delivering wages to government buildings scattered across New Zealand's lonely Canterbury plains. But when his car breaks down, he is stranded for the night at the isolated Mount Seager Hospital, with the telephone lines down, a storm on its way and the nearby river about to burst its banks....

The CID's Andrew Dalziel prefers simple killers. Not a crackpot who fancies himself Hamlet and taunts authorities with lofty quotes from the Bard. Dubbed the Yorkshire Choker, he's already taken three lives in four weeks and promises more tragedy to come. To help nab the serial strangler, Peter Pascoe has enlisted the help of linguistics professors, psychologists, and psychics-all of it nonsense to the grounded Dalziel.

Sent to London for a rest by his doctor, Wexford can’t resist getting involved in the investigation of a mysterious murder. Read by TV’s Chief Inspector Wexford.

Interpol have tried and failed to find the terrorist, Witch. Now the combined forces of Scotland Yard and MI5 must try the impossible to prevent a major international incident. Dominic Elder carries her autograph wherever he goes. Witch is his passion, his obsession. And being retired is no bar to his willingness to restart the hunt. MI5 know that the man who wrote the Witch file is the key to catching their quarry. But the truth isn't easy to spot.

Since his retirement from King's University, life has been rather quiet for Professor Daly. When he is invited back to King's University to deliver a series of prestigious lectures, his heart leaps. But on arrival he discovers that he has not been called back to the university on account of his literary knowledge. Somebody has been sending the president of King's threatening letters. Somebody within the university, it seems, wants him dead. Perhaps aware of his own arrogant, materialistic, and bullying nature and the effects it may produce, President Bradley seems genuinely worried.

When the body of a homeless man is found at the foot of a church steeple in the middle of the harshest winters Cardiff has seen for years Inspector Marco’s superior wants the inquiry finished quickly. Even if it means the killer evades justice. But Marco isn’t happy, and he knows from bitter personal experience how tough life can be.

When notorious millionaire banker Lars Anderson hangs himself from the old oak tree in front of his Kent mansion his death attracts no sympathy. But the legacy of a lifetime of self-serving is widespread, the carnage most acute amongst those he ought to be protecting: his family. Meanwhile, in a wealthy suburb of Glasgow, a young woman is found savagely murdered in her home. The genteel community is stunned by what appears a vicious, random attack.

'He hadn't seen her arrive. She had stopped on the pavement a few steps away from him and was peering into the courtyard of the Police Judiciaire, where the small staff cars were parked. She ventured as far as the entrance, looked the officer up and down, then turned round and walked away towards the Pont-Neuf.' When an old lady tells Maigret someone has been moving things in her apartment, she is dismissed as a fantasist - until a shocking event proves otherwise.

It’s late evening when the Regional Control Centre receives a mysterious 999 call. No one speaks, but the call location is somewhere along a narrow, hardly used tree-lined stretch of road that leads nowhere. With no uniformed officers free to investigate, they pass the call on to DC Judy Lane at Llangwelli station. Lane informs DS Norman Norman who, concerned it may be a trap, agrees to meet her at the scene. But when Norman arrives, he finds a dead motorcyclist sitting against a tree, and the young detective unconscious nearby.

DI Nick Dixon is on the hunt for a vicious serial killer, following a trail of fingerprints and DNA across west Somerset. When the body of a young woman is found on the building site of a nuclear power station, work grinds to a halt. The body bears all the hallmarks of yet another random murder at the hands of the escaped killer. Then Dixon finds a motive. Fighting for his place on the Major Investigation Team, he soon uncovers a family’s desperate search for the truth, exposing a web of corruption and death that will shake the billion-pound construction project to its foundations.

In a small Adirondack Mountain town, secrets are closely guarded. And outsiders with crazy ideas are not welcome. So Police Chief Frank Bennett has his hands full when a group of environmental activists shows up in Trout Run, New York, trying to close down Raging Rapids, a popular tourist attraction. Frank thinks they're all noise. Until their leader turns up with a bullet in his heart. Now Frank must figure out why this group targeted Trout Run. And how they're connected to a feral family who lives off the grid.