Traditional Police

Winner of the British Book Awards, Crime Thriller of the Year, 2007.
It's now a crucial time for Rebus. His superiors are getting increasingly impatient with his erratic behaviour, and his relationship with Siobhan becomes ever more complicated. And, most worryingly of all, as Rebus grows older, he is starting to feel closer to the criminals he fights than the force he works for.

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....

Ellery Hathaway knows a thing or two about serial killers, but not through her police training. She's an officer in sleepy Woodbury, Massachusetts, where a bicycle theft still makes the newspapers. No one there knows she was once victim number 17 in the grisly story of serial killer Francis Michael Coben. The only victim who lived. When three people disappear from her town in three years, all around her birthday - the day she was kidnapped so long ago - Ellery fears someone knows her secret. Someone very dangerous.

Fred Underhill is a young cop on the rise in Los Angeles in the early 1950s - a town blinded to its own grime by Hollywood glitter; a society nourished by newspaper lies that wants its heroes all-American and squeaky clean. A chance to lead on a possible serial killing is all it takes to fuel Underhill's reckless ambition - and it propels him into a dangerous alliance with certain mad and unstable elements of the law enforcement hierarchy. When the case implodes with disastrous consequences, it is Fred Underhill who takes the fall. His life is in ruins, his promising future suddenly a dream of the past.

In 1921, the bloodied bodies of Colonel Fletcher, his wife and two staff are found in a manor house in Surrey. The police have put the murders down to a violent robbery, but Detective Inspector Madden from Scotland Yard has his own suspicions. In the meantime the killer is plotting his second strike.

As Valentine's Day and Chinese New Year approach, the ancient city of York is busier than ever, and so is Detective Chief Inspector John Shadow. First, he has the theft of valuable Roman artifacts from a museum.

'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.

Constable Nick has come to know and love the host of characters who live and work on the beautiful North Yorkshire Moors. The amiable constable handles every encounter with his characteristic humor and professionalism, whether he’s investigating a plot to scare away a troublesome suitor or helping a neighbor return his late wife’s ashes to her beloved moors. But when Ted Williamson’s sheep start disappearing, can Rhea find the culprit without making enemies of the farmers of Yorkshire?

When the manager of a residential home for adults with learning difficulties is found dead in the freezer, the police investigation must tread carefully. Many of the residents are vulnerable. But could one of them be the killer? Detective Inspector Winter Meadows leads the inquiry. He begins to uncover some irregularities: in the finances, in the standards of care and with the account of events that staff and residents give to the police. The neighbours of the care home are troubled with all the goings-on.

Most days, the counters at Maish's Deli on Chicago's North Side are crowded with elderly Jewish men who trade stories and crack wise. But today, the mood at Maish's is grim. Someone has vandalized the local temple - the fifth in a row - and stolen a priceless Torah, and only Abe Lieberman can set things right. A veteran cop whose low-key attitude and sardonic humor conceal an intense commitment to justice, Lieberman is taking the break-in very personally - the synagogue's president just happens to be his wife.

DCI Warren Jones is deep into the investigation into an apparent murder-suicide when another case is thrust onto his desk. Winnie Palmer, missing for two months, has been found dead, her body stripped and propped against a tree in the woods. Two cases are more than enough to handle—but things get even harder for the team when they realise the cases might be linked. And when a third suspicious death is added to the pile, it raises a horrible question. Is there a serial killer on the loose?

The woman lies dead at the foot of the stairs. It's obvious what happened: she tripped and fell. But PC D'Arblay, called to the dilapidated West London villa by an anonymous tip-off, can't shake the feeling that's exactly what someone wants him to think. It was the deep head wound that killed her - but her dying fall left no blood trail. DCI Slider, of the Shepherd's Bush murder squad, is soon convinced D'Arblay's right. But with no motive, no murder weapon and no idea even who the victim is, Slider faces steep odds to get a result.

Love and need make unexpected bedfellows, and both are blind. As the grip of a long hard winter tightens on Lydmouth, a dead woman calls the dying in a seance behind net curtains. Two provincial newspapers are in the throes of a bitter circulation war. A lorry driver broods, and an office boy loses his heart. Britain is basking in the warm glow of postwar tranquillity, but in the quiet town of Lydmouth, darker forces are at play. The rats are fed on bread and milk, a gentleman's yellow kid glove is mislaid on a train and something disgusting is happening at Mr Prout's toy shop.

When the body of Rufus Moorcroft, a middle-aged widower with a distinguished war record, is found in his summerhouse, the verdict is suicide. But both reporter Jill Francis and her lover, Detective Richard Thornhill, approaching the case from different angles, discover there's more to it than that. The sixth instalment in the acclaimed Lydmouth series.

For Inspector Esa Khattak and Sergeant Rachel Getty, the Syrian refugee crisis is about to become personal. Esa's childhood friend, Nathan Clare, calls him in distress: his sister, Audrey, has vanished from a Greek island where the siblings run an NGO. Audrey had been working to fast-track refugees to Canada, but now, she is implicated in the double-murder of a French Interpol agent and a young man who had fled the devastation in Syria. Esa and Rachel arrive in Greece to a shocking scene, witnessing for themselves the massive fallout of the Syrian war in the wretched refugee camps.

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.

Muriel Ethel Galloway passed away at home, twitching and grasping at objects only she could see. Her family mourns, sad but unsurprised that an old woman suffering from heart disease should die suddenly. But when Mrs. Galloway's son receives an anonymous call alerting him that his mother's life was put in jeopardy by her doctors, he demands action from the Calleshire police.

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.

In Edinburgh's old Parliament House, an armed robbery trial is about to take a macabre turn. While the lawyers tussle over the evidence, the judge suddenly collapses in mortal agony--the victim of an apparent heart attack.

A shooting incident at a private school just north of Edinburgh. Two 17-year olds killed by an ex-Army loner who has gone off the rails. As Detective Inspector John Rebus puts it, "there's no mystery"...except the why. But this question takes Rebus into the heart of a shattered community. Ex-Army himself, Rebus becomes fascinated by the killer, and finds he is not alone.