Woman Detective Mysteries

Ten years ago, 15-year-old Scarlett Rainsford vanished while on a family holiday in Greece. Lou Smith worked the case as a police constable, and failing to find Scarlett has been one of the biggest regrets of her career. No one is more shocked than Lou to learn that Scarlett has unexpectedly been found during a Special Branch raid of a brothel in Briarstone. Lou and her Major Crime team are already stretched working two troubling cases: 19-year-old Ian Palmer was found badly beaten; and soon after, bar owner Carl McVey was found half-buried in the woods.

Maggie Hope has come a long way since serving as a typist for Winston Churchill. Now she's working undercover for the Special Operations Executive in the elegant but eerily silent city of Paris, where SS officers prowl the streets in their Mercedes and the Ritz is draped with swastika banners. Walking among the enemy is tense and terrifying, and even though she's disguised in chic Chanel, Maggie can't help longing for home.

High up in the mountains of Clear Creek Forest, where mist clings to the pines, the bodies of Millie Woodward and Jolie Marin are discovered by their fading campfire. Could this be the work of the notorious Fawn Lake Killer? This forest was once his hunting ground. And Freya knows the tattered, red woolen scarf wound tightly around Jolie’s neck is hiding his chilling MO. Her throat has been cut.

The fifth novel in New York Times best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith's beloved Isabel Dalhousie series has the ethical problem solver from Edinburgh finding comforts in unlikely places.

DCI Matilda Darke has returned to work after a nine-month absence. A shadow of her former self, she is tasked with reopening a cold case: the terrifyingly brutal murders of Miranda and Stefan Harkness. The only witness was their 11-year-old son, Jonathan, who was too deeply traumatised to speak a word. Then a dead body is discovered, and the investigation leads back to Matilda's case. Suddenly the past and present converge, and it seems a killer may have come back for more....

The next book in the perennially adored No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series sees Precious Ramotswe calling upon all her maternal instincts when she's faced with a two-ton case. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but can Mma. Ramotswe and the rest of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency come together to raise a pipsqueak pachyderm? We may find out in this novel. We may not. Who can say?

When his uncle dies, Liam Taggart reluctantly returns to his childhood home in Northern Ireland for the funeral—a home he left years ago after a bitter confrontation with his family, never to look back. But when he arrives, Liam learns that not only was his uncle shot to death, but that he’d anticipated his own murder: In an astonishing last will and testament, Uncle Fergus has left his entire estate to a secret trust, directing that no distributions be made to any person until the killer is found.

World War II rages on across Europe, but Maggie Hope has finally found a moment of rest on the pastoral coast of western Scotland. Home from an undercover mission in Berlin, she settles down to teach at her old spy training camp, and to heal from scars on both her body and heart. Yet instead of enjoying the quieter pace of life, Maggie is quickly drawn into another web of danger and intrigue.

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?

When a young woman is found murdered in a Painters Mill motel, Chief of Police Kate Burkholder is shocked to discover she once knew the victim. Rachael Schwartz was a charming but troubled Amish girl who left the fold years ago and fled Painters Mill. Why was she back in town? And who would kill her so brutally?

DI Sheridan Holler is used to solving crimes on Liverpool’s streets, but after a decayed corpse turns up in a cemetery, she finds herself reopening not one but two cold cases. Seven years earlier, two women were gunned down and the only suspect, small-time drug dealer John Lively, was never seen again. Case closed. Until the body in the cemetery is identified as his.

January 1922, and the Bangalore constabulary is on high alert. Edward, Prince of Wales, is scheduled to visit the city, seeking to redeem his reputation after disastrous visits to Bombay and Calcutta which were marked by violent anti-British riots. Kaveri has none of these concerns on her mind; she's excited as she and her husband Ramu have been given VIP tickets to the famous Bangalore circus. But when a celebrity magician disappears into thin air and his son pleads with Kaveri to find his vanished father, she is stunned to discover Inspector Ismail telling her to leave the case well alone.

In this latest installment of Alexander McCall Smith's ever-delightful and perennially best-selling series, amateur sleuth and philosopher Isabel Dalhousie is called upon to help when a matchmaker begins to question her latest match. Rosemary is something of a matchmaker and has brought together a cosmetic surgeon and a successful banker at her most recent dinner party. But new information comes to light about the cosmetic surgeon that causes Rosemary to doubt the auspiciousness of the match.

At the foot of a tree shattered by shelling and gunfire, stretcher bearers find an exhausted officer shivering with cold and a loss of blood from several wounds. The soldier is brought to battlefield nurse Bess Crawford's aid station, where she stabilizes him and treats his injuries before he is sent to a rear hospital. The odd thing is the officer isn't British - he's French. But in a moment of anger and stress, he shouts at Bess in German.

September, 1923. Despite closing her first case, high society lady detective Olive Belgrave hasn’t found a new client. She’s taken a job as a hat model to pay for her poky boarding house room. But then a job offer comes her way—make discreet inquiries about a famous author who’s disappeared. Olive travels to the English countryside to hunt for the missing mystery author. But soon after she arrives in the sleepy village, a body is discovered. Then a second murder focuses the police’s attention on Olive, and she must clear her name before the murderer pens a plot that frames her.

Daphne Marriott strolls into Clover Ridge and informs librarian Carrie Singleton that she's a psychic. But if she had foreseen what fate awaited her, Daphne would have steered clear of the quaint Connecticut town. Evelyn, the library ghost, tells Carrie that there's more to Daphne than she lets on. The mysterious woman grew up in Clover Ridge with her no-good dad, who apparently met his end at the hands of Daphne's brother, Billy. Still, Daphne proves a welcome distraction when Carrie's overbearing mother hits town. Mom's much younger husband, Tom, is in a movie that's lensing locally.

After surviving a car accident on an icy road in Hagen, North Dakota, Lily Baker regains consciousness with no idea where or who she is. Scattered Bible verses and the image of a man lying in a pool of blood haunt her memory. The same night of the accident, a young woman is murdered and tossed in a dumpster. Kylie Milliard, Hagen's only detective, doesn't immediately recognize the victim, but Kylie soon discovers that Lily and the dead woman share a dark past...if only Lily could remember what it was.

Shortly before midnight, four teenagers broke into the old abandoned psychiatric hospital on Beacon Hill. Only three came out again. The missing girl—Riley Holt—is the seventeen-year-old daughter of the local police chief and she appears to have vanished into thin air. Called from Manhattan to take over the case, Detective Maria Miller and her partner Frankie Conroy uncover the sinister past of the abandoned hospital, which was once the hiding place of the notorious College Kid Killer, who never revealed the burial site of his final victim.

Ruth Lennox, housewife and mother of three, is found dead in a pool of her own blood. Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson can’t piece together a motive and calls in Frieda, hoping her talents will offer a new angle on the case. When it emerges that the mother was hiding a scandalous secret, her family closes ranks. Frieda herself is distracted, still reeling from an attempt on her life, and struggling with her own rare feelings of vulnerability. Then a patient’s chance remark sends Frieda down a dangerous path that seems to lead to a serial killer who’s long escaped detection.

From a master of suspense comes a chilling novel that explores the dangers lurking closer than you think. Because even in the perfect family, you never know what is going on behind closed doors….