Women Detectives

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 a body is found in one of London's poorest districts, the coroner's report identifies the victim as young, black and female, but impossibly anonymous. One thing is clear to Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison about this victim - that news of her murder will tear apart a city already cracking with racial tensions, hurling Scotland Yard and Tennison herself into a maelstrom of shocking accusations and sudden, wrenching violence.

A pretty, popular teenager never returned from her secret tryst in Skeleton Canyon. Perhaps it was a youthful rage or savage passion that ripped the life from a child of privilege and abandoned her broken body to the cold Arizona night. Or maybe she stumbled onto something terrible, something too dangerous to know. Now dark secrets about a future hideously destroyed are pulling Sheriff Joanna Brady of Cochise County into a lethal nest of lies and greed.

Two bodies have been found in a park in the fashionable London neighborhood of Callander Square. While Inspector Thomas Pitt is fighting to get the square’s aristocratic residents to speak with him, his pretty, well-born wife, Charlotte, decides to do some detective work of her own. Soon she is unearthing secrets in every house on the square, while Thomas tries to discover what would drive a person to murder.

When Donna branches out from floristry to private investigation and opens The Edge of the World Detective Agency, the last thing she expects is to have a murder fall into her lap almost immediately. Now, normally she wouldn’t be one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but there’s one significant problem with the case – all the evidence points to Donna as the murderer!

Two detectives under fire. One missing student. No answers. When gunfire erupts outside Southampton Crown Court, DS Gabe Martin and DI Juliet Stern are caught in the crossfire, narrowly escaping the assailant who disappears without a trace. Injured but unyielding, Gabe takes on the case of missing art student Henry Garside. But as she probes deeper, the lines between a simple vanishing and a complex conspiracy blur. Pressured by Juliet to track down their assailant, Gabe's dedication teeters on the edge of obsession, threatening to pull her over a perilous line...

Fifteen years ago, a serial killer was on a rampage murdering young women in Middlehampton. Then, suddenly, the killings stopped, and the murderer was never found… So when the body of another young woman is found bearing the twisted killer’s unique hallmark—the overpowering stench of lavender and an origami heart—DS Kat Ballantyne knows this can only mean one thing: the killer is back.

Summer in the Twin Cities is hard to beat, and Detective Kate Rosetti is excited to show FBI Agent Jack Russo a nice, relaxing time while he’s back in town. Unfortunately, her plans go belly up when Tommy “Two-Toed” Bianchi is found floating face-down in Kate’s favorite lake. To complicate matters, Alastair Gem turns up with a brand-new girlfriend...which is all fine and dandy until his girlfriend goes missing. Gem begs the already-strapped-for-time detective for help, and Kate can’t refuse.

When a true-crime podcast turns into a true crime, Abby and her fellow FBI investigators are shocked when a young woman is murdered during a live broadcast. With no clue as to the victim’s identity or location, the team must rely on Abby’s intuition to hone in on the victim. When they discover the girl’s remains at the University of Texas, the team can barely catch their breath before another female student falls victim to the same killer.

Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series has become a worldwide phenomenon thanks to the appeal of endearing protagonist Precious Ramotswe and the author’s charmingly quirky prose. In this 13th installment, Mma Ramotswe’s attention is focused on a pesky disciplinary problem at her adopted daughter’s school - while Grace Makutsi adjusts to wedded bliss and the famed Clovis Andersen arrives in Botswana looking for more than bush tea.

On a winding mountain road into the town of Denton, Pennsylvania, Detective Josie Quinn finds the body of a local teenage girl, Dina Hale. The sight of plum-colored bruises gathering around the girl’s neck pierces Josie’s heart, but the discovery of a second girl’s empty purse in the dirt nearby gives her a flicker of hope that one person, at least, made a lucky escape. Dina’s parents are grief-stricken as the town rallies together in a desperate search for the second girl, who waitressed with Dina. The two best friends were on their way to a shift when they were attacked.

From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars and The Painter, a luminous, masterful novel of suspense - the story of Celine, an elegant, aristocratic private eye who specializes in reuniting families, trying to make amends for a loss in her own past.

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.

A murderer who drinks his victim’s blood? FBI profiler Zoe Bentley and Agent Tatum Gray thought they’d seen it all, but this young woman’s barbaric murder is especially hard to stomach. They didn’t expect to work this case. But vampirism aside, the murderer’s MO is identical to that of Rod Glover - the serial killer who’s been pursuing Zoe since childhood. Forensics reveals the murder to be his work, but not his alone; desperate to fulfill his sick purpose, he has taken on an equally depraved partner.

After an eventful first few months in Provence, it seems Penelope is finally settling into her delightful new life, complete with a gorgeous love interest in the mayor of St. Merlot. When Penelope and the mayor attend a glamorous gallery opening, Penelope’s biggest worry is embarrassing herself in front of her date. But the evening takes a horrifying turn when a controversial expat painter, Roland Doncaster, chokes to death.

FBI Agent Lucy Kincaid is dead-set on solving a cold case - even if the original investigators stonewall her every step of the way. A violent storm has uncovered the remains of a family that authorities assumed fled the country years ago to avoid prosecution. But the body of the youngest Albright son never turned up. If the child is dead, why wasn’t his body found with his parents? If he’s alive, where has he been...and what does he know? Now, Lucy and her partner, Nate, must reconstruct an old crime to find a missing child in the present day.

Homicide detective Frank Bennett has a new partner - dark, beautiful, coldly efficient Eden Archer. Frank doesn’t know what to make of her, or her brother Eric, who’s also on the police force. Their methods are... unusual. But when a graveyard full of large steel toolboxes filled with body parts is found at the bottom of Sydney harbor, unusual is the least of their worries. For Eden and Eric, the case holds chilling links to a scarred childhood - and the murderer who raised them. For Frank, each clue brings him closer to something he’s not sure he wants to face.

In 2009, Edie had New York’s social world in her thrall. Mercurial and beguiling, she was the shining star of a group of recent graduates living in a Brooklyn loft and treating New York like their playground. When Edie’s body was found near a suicide note at the end of a long, drunken night, no one could believe it. Grief, shock, and resentment scattered the group and brought the era to an abrupt end.

After a long Labor Day weekend, 73-year-old Eugene Washington is found dead in his Leimert Park home. At first blush, his death seems unremarkable- heat wave combined with food poisoning from a holiday barbecue. But something in the way Washington died doesn’t make sense. LAPD Homicide Detective Elouise "Lou" Norton is called to investigate the death and learns that the only family Washington had was the 6,000-member congregation of Blessed Mission Ministries, led by Bishop Solomon Tate. But something wicked is lurking among the congregants of this church.

It’s the worst possible time for Detective Kerri Devlin to be involved in an all-consuming double-homicide case. She’s locked in a bitter struggle with her ex-husband and teenage daughter, and her reckless new partner is anything but trustworthy. Still, she has a job to do: There’s a killer at large, and a pregnant woman has gone missing. Once Devlin and her partner get to work, they quickly unearth secrets involving Birmingham’s most esteemed citizens. Each new layer of the investigation brings Devlin closer to the killer and the missing woman.