Traditional Police

Detective Inspector Peter Diamond is keen to get his teeth into a new case. So, when a call comes in that a woman's body has been found in one of Bath's parks, he arrives quickly at the scene - only to discover that the victim is his wife.

This second volume of a must-listen collection contains 15 bibliomysteries by best-selling and award-winning authors.

An evil-tempered forensic scientist is put to death, putting many of his colleagues out of misery. Dr. Lorrimer appeared to be the picture of a bloodless, coldly efficient scientist. Only when his brutally slain body is discovered and his secret past dissected does the image begin to change. Once again, Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh learns that there is more to human beings than meets the eye and more to solving a murder than the obvious clues.

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.

Qui a tiré un coup de revolver, en pleine nuit, dans l'hôtel particulier de la puissante famille Gendreau-Balthazar, rue Chaptal ? Tout jeune secrétaire du commissariat du quartier Saint-Georges, Jules Maigret se voit confier une enquête officieuse - car on n'attaque pas de front ces gens de la haute société aux relations influentes. Maigret va habilement débrouiller l'écheveau des secrets de la famille Gendreau.

Un coup de téléphone de Porquerolles informe Maigret du meurtre d'un certain Marcellin qui, peu de temps avant sa mort, a prétendu être un "ami" du commissaire. En fait, Maigret l'a connu autrefois, lorsqu'il a fait admettre au sanatorium son amie Ginette qui était tuberculeuse (alors que Marcellin lui-même était en prison). Maigret se rend sur place, en compagnie de l'inspecteur Pyke, de Scotland Yard, venu en France pour étudier les méthodes du célèbre commissaire parisien.

A young woman is found dead in a college while the students demonstrate. It turns out she was the principal's secretary, and there was more to her than meets the eye. Who wanted her dead and why? And what does it have to do with the student revolt led by a charismatic firebrand from Iraq? Inspector John Crow is called in and has little doubt who's responsible, but a series of surprises will make him reconsider everything. Many of the faculty seem to have things to hide.

Life is good for DI Dan Hellier until the discovery of two headless, handless bodies buried in a bog on Dartmoor. How can he identify the victims when nobody has reported them missing? The tension mounts when the death of a young man plunges Hellier into the murky world of the Garrett family. Could the peaceful, family-run Animal Rescue Centre really be a cover for murder and other criminal activity? Hellier is about to learn just how far people will go to get what they want, as he races to catch a murderer before it’s too late.

Scotland Yard’s Inspector Ian Rutledge brought the Great War home with him, and its horrors haunt him still. On New Year’s Eve 1919, he finds a brass cartridge casing, similar to countless others he’d seen on the battlefield, on the steps of a friend’s house. Soon there are more, purposely placed where he is sure to discover them. Unexpectedly drawn away from London to a small Northamptonshire village, he investigates the strange case of a local constable shot with a bow and arrow.

London, 1879. Crowds have gathered at Islington's chilly Agricultural Hall to place their bets on who will become the next world champion in a six-day, 500-mile speed-walking race, the wobble. When one of the highly favored contenders dies under suspicious circumstances, Sergeant Cribb also has a race on his hands - to pursue a ruthless murderer.

Ninety-one-year-old Alice Hoffman died alone in her top floor flat. Social services say she slipped through the cracks in a failing system. But detectives Arthur Bryant and John May of the Peculiar Crimes Unit have their suspicions. Mrs. Hoffman was not as innocent as she appeared. A former government security expert, she had once worked for their own unit, but there's no one left who can remember her. When they uncover a link between her and a diplomat desperate to leave the country, it begins to look as if someone might have committed an impossible murder.

When 18-year-old Chloe Emery returns to her West London home she finds her mother missing, the house covered in blood. Everything points to murder, except for one thing: there’s no sign of the body. London detective Maeve Kerrigan and the homicide team turn their attention to the neighbours. The ultra-religious Norrises are acting suspiciously; their teenage daughter and Chloe Emery definitely have something to hide. Then there’s William Turner, once accused of stabbing a schoolmate and the neighborhood’s favorite criminal. Is he merely a scapegoat?

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.

What's the secret of Patrick Aldermann's success? Well, he was bequeathed his aunt's gardened estate after her sudden death; his wife's wealthy father died leaving the couple a hefty inheritance; and several fatal mishaps among colleagues have allowed the milquetoast to rise in his company with alarming speed. His boss fears he's hired a serial killer-a suspicion that's compelled the CID's Andrew Dalziel and Peter Pascoe to investigate. Is it possible the mild-mannered accountant, whose only real side passion seems to be roses, has a thorny edge?

The weathered remains of Eleanor Gray are found on a Scottish mountainside, and her mother, the domineering Lady Maude Gray, requires delicate treatment. This is a case that will lead Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard to Scotland, where his harrowing journey to find the truth will drag him back through the fires of his past into secrets that still have the power to kill.

A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge kills the wrong person. The young woman in the car behind is spared. But only for a while... A few weeks later, George Marshalson lives every father's worst nightmare: he discovers the murdered body of his eighteen-year-old daughter on the side of the road. Wexford steps into the case but soon a second teenage girl is murdered - a victim unquestionably linked to the first - and another family is shattered...

Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, takes a city break in Vienna, where his favorite film, The Third Man, was set, but everything goes wrong, and his companion, Paloma, calls a halt to their relationship. Meanwhile, strange things are happening to jobbing musician Mel Farran, who finds himself scouted by methods closer to the spy world than the concert platform. The chance of joining a once-famous string quartet in a residency at Bath Spa University is too tempting for Mel to refuse. Then a body is found in the city canal, and the only clue to the dead woman’s identity is the tattoo of a music note on one of her teeth.

A dedicated man is dead in the Yorkshire dales---a former university professor, wealthy historian, and archaeologist who loved his adopted village. It is a particularly heinous slaying, considering the esteem in which the victim, Harry Steadman, was held by his neighbors and colleagues---by everyone, it seems, except the one person who bludgeoned the life out of the respected scholar and left him half-buried in a farmer's field.

When local fisherman Horace Boller decided to row his boat out on the tidal backwash of the river one morning, he couldn't have meant to land a catch like this. What he ended up with was a body floating on the river's surface. And judging by the state of the corpse, the death was not a recent one. The strange thing is, the coroner report indicates that drowning was not the cause of death. It's up to the intrepid C. D. Sloan - and his markedly less intrepid assistant, Constable Crosby - to investigate.

When Harold Merefield returned home in the early hours of a winter morning from a festive little party at that popular nightclub, the Naxos, he was startled by a gruesome discovery. On his bed was a corpse. There was nothing to show the identity of the dead man or the cause of his death. At the inquest, the jury found a verdict of ‘death from natural causes’ - perhaps they were right, but yet?