Woman Detective Mysteries

When her late grandfather’s dying deputy calls Mercy to his side, she and Elvis inherit the cold case that haunted him - and may have killed him. But finding Beth Kilgore 20 years after she disappeared is more than a lost cause. It’s a Pandora’s box releasing a rain of evil on the very people Mercy and Elvis hold most dear. With her grandmother Patience gone missing and Elvis’s future uncertain, Mercy faces the prospect of losing her most treasured allies, the only ones she believes truly love and understand her.

When Alison Osman takes her children on a trip to Cadbury World, she thinks their squabbling is her worst problem. But when she turns to find them gone, she's plunged into every mother's worst nightmare. And then the message arrives, telling Alison she has three days to choose one of her children. Detective Inspector Zoe Finch and her team need to find answers, and fast. Why is Alison's police officer husband behaving suspiciously? If the children's father died in a climbing accident, why was there no body?

When two men are found mutilated in Birmingham's gay village just before Christmas, DI Zoe Finch and her team are perplexed. Did their attacker mean to kill one of the men, or simply injure them both? And who would have the surgical skills for such a precise mutilation? When more bodies are found with the same injuries, the city's gay population is rightfully scared. And then someone close to Zoe becomes a target... Can Zoe and her team find the killer before it's too late? And will the new members of the team help crack the case, or make things worse?

When a corrupt detective is murdered, alarm bells start ringing for DI Zoe Finch and her team. Was the victim connected to organised crime boss Trevor Hamm? Was he in league with Zoe's former colleague Ian Osman? And why is CID boss David Randle trying to curtail the investigation? With her mentor off sick and a new boss breathing down her neck, Zoe must investigate without drawing attention to herself. Can she prove what she knows about Detective Superintendent Randle? Will she escape suspicion herself? And can she protect the people she cares about from the threat of retribution?

Almost bigamy and absolute murder - Agatha Raisin's life is never dull.... The morning of Agatha's longed-for marriage to James Lacey dawns bright and clear. But her luck runs out in the church when Jimmy, the husband she had believed long dead, turns up large as life and twice as ugly. Agatha has a go at strangling him. It's all too much for James, who breaks off the engagement. So when Jimmy is found murdered the next day, Agatha and James are both suspects. And they'll have to work together in order to clear their names....

Detective Margot Phalen has spent years running from her father’s shadow—and the awful truth of her own past as the daughter of a serial killer. But then she receives a message from him. He’s willing to share his darkest secret—but only with her. Now, as she sits across from the empty chair waiting for Ed Finch to be led in, Margot closes her eyes and steels herself for what lies ahead. The key to solving one of California’s most infamous missing persons cases is here, in the one place she fears most: her father’s cell.

The Christmas season brings strange guests to the medieval nunnery of St. Frideswide's. They bear with them the badly mangled body of a villager, swearing they found the drunken fool lying in a ditch. But Meg, the victim's wife and a scullery maid of the cloister, thinks there are far fouler deeds afoot. As the players rehearse for the nativity, ancient scandals lick at their heels and dark desperation haunts Meg's steps as she finds cruel feudal laws threatening to strip away the lands that would support both her and her sons in the wake of her husband's death.

>In July of 1923, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple travels to Henley-on-Thames to visit her aunt and uncle, as well as to work on her latest writing assignment: covering the Henley Royal Regatta for an American magazine. Daisy plans a simple trip researching her article, enjoying the races, and, come the weekend, having a pleasant time with her fiancé, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard. But the tensions between the Ambrose team's coxswain, Horace Bott - a shopkeeper's son and scholarship student at Oxford - and rower Basil DeLancey - the younger son of an earl and all-around bounder - are constantly threatening to erupt into violence.

In the small village of Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland, Natalie's Bistro has always been warm and welcoming. Nowadays, 22-year-old Siobhan O'Sullivan runs the family bistro named for her mother, along with her five siblings, after the death of their parents in a car crash almost a year ago. It's been a rough year for the O'Sullivans, but it's about to get rougher. One morning, as they're opening the bistro, they discover a man seated at a table with a pair of hot pink barber scissors protruding from his chest.

Pub owner Maura Donovan hasn't seen her mother for over 20 years, so when she suddenly shows up in Maura's pub, Maura's not sure what to expect. Her mother is trying to find a life for herself back home and has taken up a position working with the new owners of the Crann Mor hotel just outside Skibbereen. That is until her new boss is found dead in the gardens, dumped down the hillside behind the hotel.

In this fifth installment in the critically acclaimed Irene Huss series, three men are found brutally executed in one of Goteborg's most fashionable neighborhoods. All three men were involved in an online poker company, but that's all they appear to have in common. The complex investigation immerses Detective Inspector Irene Huss and her colleagues into a world of expensive cars, fancy homes, and impressive castles in the air. Meanwhile, the normally peaceful atmosphere of the Huss family is disturbed by marital tension as Irene suspects her husband, Krister, of a having an affair with a younger woman.

It was just an ordinary Wednesday lunchtime when Detective Martha Munro's life changed forever. Her sergeant is speaking, but she barely hears what he's telling her. Your mother has been shot dead. Your four-year-old daughter has been taken. There are no leads. Who would want to hurt her family? Martha realizes it's time to ask herself some hard questions about her late father. He led the anti-corruption squad at Scotland Yard. It's rumored he kept a list of everyone who worked for him, from coppers to criminals. And just being on the list was a sure-fire way to lower your life expectancy.

The year is 1933. Maisie Dobbs is contacted by an Indian gentleman who has come to England in the hopes of finding out who killed his sister two months ago. Scotland Yard failed to make any arrest in the case, and there is reason to believe they failed to conduct a thorough investigation. The case becomes even more challenging when another Indian woman is murdered just hours before a scheduled interview. Meanwhile, unfinished business from a previous case becomes a distraction, as does a new development in Maisie's personal life.

When Detective Maria Miller walks up creaking stairs into the attic of the old brownstone she senses this isn’t an ordinary crime scene. The brutality of the murder is enough to shock even an experienced detective like Maria. But there’s something else. An unsettling presence seems to lurk in the shadows sending a chill through Maria’s bones, making her desperate to run back down the stairs and never return. The killing is identical to the murder of an actress sixty years before, a crime that tore a family apart and sent shockwaves through New York City.

Precious Ramotswe's comfortable existence as the only detective in Botswana is suddenly rattled when the Satisfaction Guaranteed Detective Agency opens, and its brochure proclaims, "Don't take any chances! Entrust your enquiries to a MAN!" As if the development isn't enough, Mma Ramotswe has also taken on two difficult cases, one of which hits close to home. But with wisdom on her side, Mma Ramotswe figures to crack both cases and upstage her competition.

When a mummified body is discovered in a renovated building, the gruesome discovery leads Detective Kay Hunter and her team into a complex murder investigation. The subsequent police inquiry exposes corruption, lies and organised crime within the tight-knit community–and Kay’s determination to seek justice for the young murder victim could ruin the reputations of men who will do anything to protect their business interests.

A timeless murder mystery with the fascinating, glamorous Mitford sisters at its heart, The Mitford Trial is the fourth installment in the Mitford Murders series from Jessica Fellowes, inspired by a real-life murder in a story full of intrigue, affairs and betrayal....

After years of bullying and cajoling others as a high-flying public relations boss, Agatha Raisin’s early retirement to the picture-postcard village of Carsley in the Cotswolds is a dream come true. And how better to begin making herself a local leading light than by entering the village quiche-making competition? Unburdened by old-fashioned ideas of fair play, the ruthless Agatha decides to ensure she wins by buying her entry from a London delicatessen.

Private detective Cordelia Gray is invited to the sunlit island of Courcy to protect the vainly beautiful actress Clarissa Lisle from veiled threats on her life. Within the rose red walls of a fairy-tale castle, she finds the stage is set for death.

It's summertime on the Riviera, where the Jazz Age is busily reinventing the holiday delights of warm days on golden sand and cool nights on terraces and dance floors. Just up the coast lies a more traditional pleasure ground: Monte Carlo, where fortunes are won, lost, stolen, and hidden away. So when Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes happen across the Côte d'Azur in this summer of 1925, they find themselves pulled between the young and the old, hot sun and cool jazz, new friendships and old loyalties, childlike pleasures and very grownup sins...