Traditional Police

The body of Joanna Franks was found at Duke's Cut on the Oxford Canal at about 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday, 22nd June 1859. At around 10:15 a.m. on a Saturday morning in 1989, the body of Chief Inspector Morse - though very much alive - was removed to Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital. Treatment for a perforated ulcer was later pronounced successful.

When Rusty Mason, scion of one of Nantucket's oldest and wealthiest families, is found dead in a flooded cranberry bog one foggy fall night, 32-year-old detective Meredith Folger is faced with her first murder case. Merry is the daughter of the local police chief and granddaughter of his predecessor; her father is a strict boss and Merry feels pressure to go the extra mile to prove her promotion to detective isn't just nepotism. But the Mason murder is a demanding first test.

A junkie lies dead in an Edinburgh squat, spreadeagled, cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, a five-pointed star daubed on the wall above. Just another dead addict - until John Rebus begins to chip away at the indifference, treachery, deceit and sleaze that lurks behind the facade of the Edinburgh familiar to tourists. Only Rebus seems to care about a death which looks more like a murder every day, about a seductive danger he can almost taste, appealing to the darkest corners of his mind.

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.

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.

Sam Earnshaw’s recovery from a year-long coma should be an occasion for celebration. Instead, he reveals that the hit and run incident that left him close to death was no accident. Someone deliberately pushed him into the path of a speeding vehicle. As DCI Tom Raven leads the investigation into the attempted murder, he soon uncovers a web of dark secrets and lies. The attempt on Sam’s life is not the first time a killer has struck.

On the day he retires, Inspector Ashwin Chopra inherits two unexpected mysteries. The first is the case of a drowned boy, whose suspicious death no one seems to want solved. And the second is a baby elephant. As his search for clues takes him across the teeming city of Mumbai, from its grand high rises to its sprawling slums and deep into its murky underworld, Chopra begins to suspect that there may be a great deal more to both his last case and his new ward than he thought.

As he leans over the body of an unidentified five-year-old girl shot in the back on a shabby London street, Superintendent Richard Jury knows he'll be facing one of the saddest investigations of his life. His colleague DI Johnny Blakeley, head of the pedophile unit of NSY, thinks he knows where this child came from - an iniquitous house on that same street, owned by well-known financier Viktor Baumann and fronted by a woman named Murchison. Blakeley has been trying to wreck their operation for a long time.

When flash floods unearth a human skeleton at a local beauty spot, DCI Tom Raven is called to investigate. Who is the dead man, and how did he end up there? Help is on hand from forensic anthropologist Dr Chandice Jones who enjoys the challenge of working with old bones. But is Raven one challenge too many for her?

December 1889. Fresh from debunking a 'ghostly' hound in Dartmoor, Sherlock Holmes has returned to London, only to find himself the target of a deadly vendetta. A beautiful client arrives with a tale of ghosts, kidnapping and dynamite on a whisky estate in Scotland, but brother Mycroft trumps all with an urgent assignment in the South of France. On the fabled Riviera, Holmes and Watson encounter treachery, explosions, rival French detective Jean Vidocq...and a terrible discovery.

In the 17th installment in Peter Lovesey's timeless British detective series, Peter Diamond digs deep into Bath history to ferret out the secrets of one of its most famous (and scandalous) icons: Richard "Beau" Nash, who might have been the victim of a centuries-old murder.

Slumped on a seat under an oak tree is old Sampson Warrenby, with a bullet through his brain. He is discovered by his anxious niece, Mavis, who is just one of the 10 people in the village in the running for chief suspect, having just cause to dislike Warrenby intensely. Only Chief Inspector Hemingway can uncover which of the 10 has turned hatred into murder.

Local police stations all over the Scottish Highlands are being threatened with closure. This presents the perfect opportunity for Detective Chief Inspector Blair, who would love nothing more than to get rid of Sergeant Hamish Macbeth. Blair suggests that Cyril Sessions, a keen young police officer, visit the town of Lochdubh to monitor exactly what Macbeth does every day. Macbeth hears about Blair's plan and is prepared to insure that Cyril returns back to headquarters with a full report. But Cyril is soon found dead and Hamish quickly becomes the prime suspect in his murder.

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.

Martin Walker presents his first collection of Bruno stories featuring all the familiar characters from the novels, the glories of the Périgord, and ample helpings of food and wine.

Lord Comstock is a barbarous newspaper tycoon with enemies in high places. His murder in the study of his country house poses a dilemma for the Home Secretary. In the hours before his death, Lord Comstock’s visitors included the government Chief Whip, an Archbishop, and the Assistant Commissioner for Scotland Yard. Suspicion falls upon them all and threatens the impartiality of any police investigation. Abandoning protocol, the Home Secretary invites four famous detectives to solve the case: Mrs Adela Bradley, Sir John Saumarez, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Mr Roger Sheringham.

For Oxford, the arrival of 27 American tourists is nothing out of the ordinary...until one of their number is found dead in Room 310 at the Randolph Hotel. It looks like a sudden - and tragic - accident. Only Chief Inspector Morse appears not to overlook the simultaneous theft of a jewel-encrusted antique from the victim's handbag.... Then, two days later, a naked and battered corpse is dragged from the River Cherwell. A coincidence? Maybe. But this time Morse is determined to prove the link....

Interpol have tried and failed to find her. Now the combined forces of Scotland Yard and MI5 must try the impossible to prevent a major international incident. For Dominic Elder, 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.

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...

"The dog came back." "This is a joke, right?" "No, it isn't.... So do you want to hear the rest of it?" Dumbly, Jury nodded. The rest of it is told by Harry Johnson, a stranger who sits down next to Richard Jury as he's drinking in a London pub called the Old Wine Shades. Over three successive nights Harry spins this complicated story about a good friend of his whose wife and son (and dog) disappeared one day as they were viewing property in Surrey.