Women Police Mystery

When Bailey Ruth Raeburn passed over into the great beyond, she was delighted to discover her sleuthing days would last an eternity. Joining Heaven's Department of Good Intentions, she uses her advantages as a ghost - sometimes you see her, sometimes you don't - to help those in need and ensure the wicked get their just deserts. However, on this latest mission, Bailey Ruth finds it more difficult than ever to keep up with her boss Wiggins' rules for good spirit deportment.

Hillsborough, North Carolina is a town with a dark history, one that was hidden until investigative journalist Laura Chambers pulled it into the light. Nearly a year has passed since her deadly encounter with a serial killer’s twisted progeny, a brutal confrontation that left her physically and emotionally scarred. She’s ready to put the past behind her, but the past has other plans.

When an ex-police officer from the murder squad is found shot dead in a dank squat, Detective Anna Travis is pulled into the case he was working on—the hunt for Alexander Fitzpatrick, a drug-trafficker with a vast fortune, and one of the most wanted men in the Western world. But there have been no sightings of Fitzpatrick for over a decade. As the body count rises, and with no sign of Fitzpatrick, the investigation takes a horrifying turn. Anna and her team learn that Fitzpatrick, wherever he is, may have access to one of the most lethal drugs in existence.

When a witness in a witness protection program is killed, US Marshal Alexa Chase assumes it’s related to the case. But when she hits dead ends and the mystery becomes far more complex, she realizes a serial killer may be at work. What is his pattern? Can she connect the dots in time?

Fresh from maternity leave, Detective Elma finds herself confronted with a complex case, when a man is found murdered in a holiday cottage in the depths of the Icelandic countryside - the victim of a frenzied knife attack, with a shocking message scrawled on the wall above him.

When the call comes in about Lucy, a 17-year-old girl murdered after the secret party she held in her parents’ home, Detective Lottie Parker is first on the scene. As Lottie breaks the news to Lucy’s heartbroken parents and the devastated partygoers, she discovers that hours before her death Lucy had revealed a terrible secret about her friend Hannah. And when Lottie finds Lucy’s bloodstained clothing hidden in Hannah’s bedroom, she has no option but to bring the shy, frightened girl into custody. But Hannah claims to have no memory of the night Lucy died.

Blood Orchid is the third adventure of one of Stuart Woods' most engaging characters, Chief of Police Holly Barker. This time out, Holly is trying to get her life back together after the shattering loss of her fiancé. With the help of her wily Doberman, Daisy, and her father, Ham, she throws herself back into the job with a vengeance. At a local restaurant, Holly and Ham meet a gentleman new to the area, rich and dapper developer Ed Shine, who has found an evocative name for both his favorite flower and his latest real-estate venture: the "Blood Orchid".

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?

Lieutenant Abby Mullen is no stranger to crisis. As the hostage negotiation instructor for the NYPD, she deals with worst-case scenarios every day. Nothing fazes her anymore. That all changes when she gets a call from Eden Fletcher, a fellow survivor of the infamous Wilcox cult. The two haven’t spoken since the night of a tragic, fiery massacre, when their paths diverged. But now Eden needs Abby’s help: someone has kidnapped her son and is demanding a $5 million ransom. As Abby throws herself into the case, she can’t help but wonder why the kidnapper has targeted Eden.

DCI Matilda Darke and her team have been restricted under special measures after a series of calamitous scandals nearly brought down the South Yorkshire police force. Now Matilda is on the trail of another murderer, an expert in avoiding detection with no obvious motive but one obvious method. When his latest victim survives the attack despite her vocal cords being severed, Matilda is more convinced than ever of the guilt of her key suspect. If only she had a way to prove it.

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.

In the silent pre-dawn city hours - alone with his thoughts about Rina Lazarus, the woman he loves, 3,000 miles away in New York - L.A.P.D. detective Peter Decker finds a small child, abandoned and covered in blood that is not his. It is a sobering discovery, and a perplexing one, for nobody in the development where she was found steps forward to claim the little girl. Obsessed more deeply by this case than he imagined possible, Decker is determined to follow the scant clues to an answer.

Fourteen years ago, Kaitlin Roe was the lone witness to the abduction of her cousin Gina. She still remembers that lonely Virginia road. She can still see the masked stranger and hear Gina’s screams. And she still suffers the guilt of running away in fear and resents being interrogated as a suspect in the immediate aftermath. Now Kaitlin has only one way to assuage the pain and nightmares—by interviewing everyone associated with the unsolved crime for a podcast that could finally bring closure to a case gone cold.

New York Times best-selling author Deborah Crombie pens suspenseful English mysteries that have drawn favorable comparisons to the best of P. D. James and Ruth Rendell. Her novel Dreaming of the Bones made the Independent Mystery Booksellers of America’s list of the 100 Best Crime Novels of the 20th Century.

Vowing to make a fresh start, Sarah McAdams has come home to renovate the old Victorian mansion where she grew up. Her daughters, Jade and Gracie, aren’t impressed by the rundown property on the shores of Oregon’s wild Columbia River. As soon as they pull up the isolated drive, Sarah, too, is beset by uneasy memories - of her cold, distant mother, of the half-sister who vanished without a trace, and of a long-ago night when Sarah was found on the widow’s walk, feverish and delirious.

When small-town police officers discover the grave of a young boy, they’re quick to pin the crime on a convicted criminal who lives nearby. But when it comes to murder, Officer Susan Marlan never trusts a simple explanation, so she’s just getting started. Meanwhile, college professor Eric Evans hallucinates a young boy in overalls: a symptom of his schizophrenia - or so he thinks. But when more bodies turn up, Eric has more visions, and they mirror details of the murder case.

When David Barney was acquitted in the shooting death of his wealthy wife, Isabelle, a good many thought that justice had not been served, including Kenneth Voight, Isabelle's former husband. Now, five years later, Voight is the plaintiff in a civil suit in which Barney stands accused of Isabelle's wrongful death. The stakes are high, but time is running short. Enter sexy, savvy ex-cop-turned-P.I. Kinsey Millhone, brought in by Voight to gather the necessary damning evidence.

Imagine your husband was murdered. Imagine everything you thought you knew about the past was a lie. Two children sneak out on a freezing winter night, hoping to see a ghost. But instead they witness something far more terrifying. A man dumping a body... DS Ava Merry and DI Jim Neal are called in to investigate this perplexing murder. Eventually the dead man’s wife is identified. But Laura Cameron’s husband turns out to have kept many secrets from her.

Oslo, 2018. Former long-distance runner Sonja Nordstrøm never shows at the launch of her controversial autobiography, Always Number One. When celebrity blogger Emma Ramm visits Nordstrøm’s home later that day, she finds the door unlocked and signs of a struggle inside. A bib with the number one has been pinned to the TV. Police officer Alexander Blix is appointed to head up the missing-persons investigation, but he still bears the emotional scars of a hostage situation 19 years earlier, when he killed the father of a five-year-old girl.

While investigating the hit-and-run death of a young boy, Seattle homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite makes a startling discovery: the suspect is an active-duty serviceman at a local naval base. After a key piece of case evidence goes missing, he is cleared of charges in a military court. But Tracy knows she can't turn her back on this kind of injustice.