Traditional Police

After being married for 25 years, I realized that I no longer wanted to be married. What should I do? The simple answer was file for divorce, but life was seldom that simple, and mine certainly wasn't. There was the house to consider, two cars, the jewelry - and the safe deposit box. I thought about the options and finally decided that murder was the best solution - not the easiest, but the best - and I knew just how to do it.

Two nights ago a young woman brought her husband into the emergency room of the Sriphat Hospital in Thailand, where he passed away. A guard thinks she remembers her coming in before but with a different husband - one who also died. Ladarat Patalung, for one, would have been happier without a serial murderer - if there is one - loose in her hospital. Then again, she never expected to be a detective in the first place.

With his usual knack of getting into trouble, Ben the tramp finds himself hunted by the law and the lawless in this breathless adventure. Returning home to his Cockney roots after a trip to Spain, Ben meets a mysterious stranger on a cross-Channel steamer and is promised a job. On arrival at Southampton, they take a taxi. Ben gets out to post a letter but on returning to the cab finds the stranger has been murdered!

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Club's first short story anthology is based around a London detective club and includes three newly discovered tales unpublished for 100 years, plus a story bearing an uncanny resemblance to a Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes story but written some seven years earlier.

Detective John Coffin must find out who killed the man belonging to the severed human head found in an urn on the church steps.

"The Adventure of the Red Circle" is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and one of eight stories in the volume, His Last Bow. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (May 22, 1859 - July 7, 1930) was a British author most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction.

Jack Frost was supposed to be on holiday, but with one child dead and another reported missing, there was no chance, no matter how much it pained Chief Superintendent Mullett to recall his scruffiest, most irreverent officer to duty. Had the same person taken both boys? Was there any connection with the pervert who silently entered houses at night to stab babies in their cots? Questions, questions and more questions. And so very few answers.

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.

Six corpses have appeared in the cobbled backstreets of St. Andrews in recent times, all known spousal abusers who suffered the same gruesome fate: stabbed to death in the left eye. But with no new leads left to explore, DCI Andy Gilchrist is forced off the case. What is the significance of the left eye? Gilchrist can't seem to focus on anything else, and with his career and his reputation on the line, he vows to catch the Stabber even if it means he must do it alone.

Anne Scott's address was scribbled on a crumpled note in the pocket of Morse's smartest suit....He turned the corner of Canal Street, Jericho, on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 3rd. He hadn't planned a second visit. But he was back later the same day - as the officer in charge of a suicide investigation.

London, April 1912. The third Irish Home Rule Bill is passing through Parliament, and the situation is growing ever more tense. Closely involved in the negotiations, cabinet minister Edmund Latimer finds himself under growing pressure, which only intensifies when his seven-month-old niece, Lucy, is snatched away in her pram in Regent's Park. Could there be a connection between Lucy’s kidnapping and the Irish talks? With her husband under intolerable strain, Edmund's wife, Alice, makes it her business to find out.

When a man is found in the middle of Alfreton Road in the early hours of a Sunday morning, stark naked and bleeding heavily from a chest wound, he is the latest victim in a series of vicious attacks on men. But enquiries in the mean streets of Nottingham's red-light district have brought the investigations to a dead end. But Charlie Resnick is the man for the job.

Wycliffe takles a case which reaches back down the generations.... When Cedric Tremain is charged with murdering his father by booby-trapping his fishing boat, all the locals are agreed that he is an unlikely murderer. But the case against him is strong: he has the motive, the opportunity, and the know-how; not to mention the fact that there is some hard circumstantial evidence against him.

London. A newspaper editor is horrifically murdered, his death quickly followed by a series of more brutal and often bizarre slayings. The police are baffled, the only clear link between the murders being a single blood-red rose left at the scene of every killing. Why? What does the rose mean? What connects the killer to each bloody corpse? Scotland Yard detective Alan Winters leads a hunt for the elusive prey.

Rickie Alleyn, son of the famed detective Roderick Alleyn had taken to the peaceful Channel Island village of Deep Cove to write his book. However, soon enough the tedium of provincial life threatens to send him packing until, that is, he finds a dead stablehand and sleepy community's world is upturned. His father is called to take proceedings into hand, but as a darker side to island life emerges, one of illegal drugs and smuggling, Rickie goes missing. Will Ngaio Marsh's stalwart detective be able to find his son in time?

In una libreria antiquaria di via Corridoni viene trovato il cadavere del senatore Ugo Magni, chirurgo molto noto a Milano, uomo bello, elegante, fortunato con le donne: insomma, "un vittorioso, un fortunato della vita". La saracinesca del negozio è sbarrata "Ma come avrà fatto ad entrare l'assassino?" si domanda Gualmo, dipendente della libreria. Dalla libreria manca un unico volume, la "Zaffetta", un poema erotico stampato nel 1531 e attribuito a Pietro Aretino.

Detective Abish “Abbie” Taylor returned to the mountain town of Pleasant View, Utah, hoping for a quiet life. But that hope dissipates like a dream when she wakes up to an unsettling phone call. Arriving at the scene of a fatal car accident, she discovers that the victim was one of the most beloved leaders of the Church - and an old family friend.

Fitness trainer Erik Lingoss is found dead in his West London flat, his head smashed by one of his own dumbbells. His heartlessly dumped girlfriend, blood on her clothes and hands, is the prime suspect. She had means, opportunity and motive. But is the case as clear-cut as it seems? Handsome Erik Lingoss had clients in his places; and he seemed to engender powerful emotions. If it was a crime of passion, there was plenty of that to go round: love strong as death, jealousy cruel as the grave.

September 1940. As the Blitz takes its nightly toll on London and Hitler prepares his invasion fleet just across the Channel in occupied France, Britain is full of talk about enemy agents. Suspicion is at an all-time high, and no one is sure who can be trusted. In Canning Town, rescue workers are unsettled when they return to a damaged street and discover a body that shouldn’t be there. When closer examination of the corpse reveals death by strangling, Detective Inspector John Jago is called upon to investigate.

When DS Josie Masters is called out to a house in North Oxford to investigate a serious incident, things take a personal turn. The body is Harry’s - her friend and former colleague. Josie thought Harry lived alone, but evidence suggests he’d had a lodger - a young woman who has fled the scene.