Showing results by publisher "Tantor Audio" in Police Procedurals

New York, August 1896. A "hot wave" has settled on the city with no end in sight, leaving tempers short and the streets littered with dead horses felled by the heat. In this presidential election year, the gulf between rich and poor has political passions flaring, while anti-immigrant sentiment has turned virulent. At police headquarters, the gruff, politically ambitious commissioner Theodore Roosevelt has been struggling to reform his notoriously corrupt department.

He sends you the clues . . . and leaves his victims in pieces. When forensic psychologist Harriet Quinn receives the random pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, she knows they hold the key to identifying a sadistic killer's next victim. A victim who hasn't yet been taken. Racing to identify the intended target, she realizes that she has been chosen as Puzzle Master in a deadly game concocted by a twisted serial killer. Teaming up with DI Drew Haskell, she must put personal differences aside if she is to save a life.

DI Drew Haskell is a no-nonsense detective recovering from a devastating personal loss. When a number of young people are found dead in a sleepy Yorkshire village, Haskell believes a murderer is on the loose. But his boss isn't so sure and won't authorize an investigation. Breaking the rules is Haskell's only chance at solving this case.

Special agent Mia Shields thinks she's seen it all. But nothing prepares her for the terror that descends upon the idyllic bayside community of St. Dennis, Maryland, where a depraved killer has left a grisly surprise for Chief of Police Gabriel Beck: the body of an unidentified woman, naked and completely encased in plastic wrap, stretched across the back seat of Beck's car. Hidden in the wrapping is a tape recording of the victim's last, gasping words. Soon the body count begins to rise as more victims are found, all gruesomely cocooned, their final pleas also captured on tape.

Andrew Myers was wrongly convicted of killing his wife by slashing her throat. Finally freed, but not exonerated, he just wants a quiet life far from where the tragedy happened. He goes to work as a forester on an isolated estate in Yorkshire. Andrew has a terrible chainsaw accident while cutting trees. He manages to staunch the bleeding while he drives himself to hospital. His erratic control of his car attracts a policewoman, Lisa Andrews, to stop and help him. But she soon finds out there is more to him than just a hermit-like forester living in the woods.

The Treadwater Estate has become the epicenter of a series of strange events. People go missing. Bodies are found—buried and wrapped in clingfilm. Yet there appears to be no connection between the victims and no motive for the crimes. The estate looks anonymous, its residents inscrutable. Door-to-door inquiries fall flat. No one has seen anything, everyone resents the police presence. Someone must be hiding in plain sight.

Wibble & Pplimz, the Crucible's most unusual private investigators, must set off from their office in Hub City to clear the name of a former client. Along the way, their investigation broadens from a simple accusation of theft to include a missing person, a potential murder, and a highly unusual gem.

Elizabeth Sims presents Book 6 in the Lillian Byrd Crime series.

Detective Chief Inspector John Shadow is doing his best to ignore the madness of York's annual Viking Festival when duty calls. The body of a wealthy businessman, who was playing the role of the Viking king, is found slain by his own ancient sword. The murder scene looks staged, but before Shadow can compile a list of people to question a second body is found. Shadow doesn't have to look far for suspects-the victims were by no means model citizens.

Beautiful, shrewd, and lethal, Daria Villalobos is on a mission. Determined to be the first woman to take the reins of her father's notorious organization, she hatches a plot to eliminate Veranda, framing a rival to take the fall. Veranda Cruz is on a mission of her own. Intent on destroying the powerful Villalobos criminal empire, Veranda battles her department and her personal demons as she takes on Daria.

Phoenix detective Veranda Cruz has vowed to bring the Villalobos crime family to justice, but when a wave of violence in the city escalates, she is forced to confront her darkest fear. Adolfo Villalobos is a crime boss who's determined to stake his claim. To prove that he's ready to run his family's sprawling criminal empire, he devises a plan to silence his siblings and destroy Veranda, leaving a trail of destruction through downtown Phoenix that makes national headlines.

Since his wife's death at sea, San Francisco Police Detective Michael O'Higgins has been paralyzed by grief and shame. Almost a year after his wife's death, O'Higgins takes a ferry ride as part of his therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. On the boat, he meets a charming Indian family: successful young husband, two lovely daughters, and a kind, beautiful wife and mother.

Michael and Maggie Butler are found naked and dead in a Wisconsin wheat field, murdered by two vicious shotgun blasts. But no one gets murdered in Kickapoo Falls, a peaceful, picturesque vacation retreat on the edge of the Wisconsin Dells, home of the politically powerful Kickapoo Gunn Club. Deputy Pennington is convinced the answer lies back in the wheat field. But the town's ruling elite closes ranks and turns on him as he zeroes in on the truth. What appears to be a husband-wife murder-suicide soon opens doors into a deadly conspiracy set for election night.

Ex-detective Ray Flowers thinks that all he has to worry about is his overgrown honeysuckle until an unexpected phone call shatters his complacence. The drug supplier known as Angel Eyes is back on the streets. They called him Angel Eyes, after the insignia he left behind at every crime scene. A pair of innocent blue eyes on a shred of paper. Angel Eyes vanished without a trace. But the lives he destroyed are still in ruins.

After a glamorous model plunges to her death from a Miami high-rise, investigative reporter Veronica Lee receives a horrifying video that reveals the killer's ruthless quest for vengeance. State Prosecutor Riley Odell is suddenly drawn into the murder investigation when her estranged sister seeks refuge in the small Florida town of Willow Bay. And as the town's new chief of police scrambles to catch the killer before he claims another victim, the trail leads to a faraway grave that holds the clue to the twisted predator's shocking past.

Putting out fires is what Lieutenant Charlie McMahon does best. The streets of Chicago keep him busy and provide a respite from his family's chaos. But everything changes when his rescue squad is called to a house where female victims are found chained to a wall and burned alive. The terror becomes personal as the women are identified, leaving Charlie to reel over one, haunting question: What have I done?

Kali Māhoe, Hawaiian cultural expert and detective with the Maui Police Department, has been called to a bizarre crime scene. In the recesses of a deep trench on Lana'i Island, a derelict refrigerator has been unearthed. Entombed inside are the skeletal remains of someone buried decades ago. Identification is a challenge. The body is headless, the skull replaced with a chilling adornment: a large, ornately carved wooden pineapple.

Arriving in Little Havana in Miami, Cole creates a list of potential victims while Warren tracks down an old confidential informant. Desperate to reach a reclusive financier, Cole then makes an unusual friend, who leads her on a wild-goose chase through Miami. All the while, news is breaking around the world that implicates Cole and Warren in the killings, and a mysterious pair has followed them to Miami.

When young wife and mother Zoe Kruller is found brutally murdered, the police target two suspects: her estranged husband, Delray Kruller, and her longtime lover, Eddy Diehl. In turn, the Krullers' son, Aaron, and Diehl's daughter, Krista, become obsessed with each other, each believing the other's father guilty. By novel's end, the fated lovers are at last ready to exorcise the ghosts of the past and come to terms with their legacy of guilt, misplaced love, and redemptive yearning.

If any day calls for a soothing glass of wine, it's today. One moment, Capitol Hill lobbyist Karina Cardinal is having a heated discussion with Senator Harper, who just torpedoed her latest health care legislation initiative. The next, after a cryptic remark, the senator is dead at her feet. Hours later, she's still so rattled she wakes to a freezing apartment because she forgot to close her back door. Or did she?