British Crime Mystery

It's the end of the summer season in the harbour town of Estepona. The holiday makers are heading home, leaving the British expats to reclaim their little corner of paradise. Among them is art restorer Astrid Swift's estranged father. She's sailed into town to reunite with him but has instead been tasked with catching an internet troll who's been threatening his wife online. Soon Astrid is entwined in the lives of these expats, from the boozy local heckler to the socially awkward beachcomber. And then she discovers a body in the bunker of the golf course.

On a cold November evening, Guido Brunetti and Paola are up late when a call from his colleague Ispettore Vianello arrives, alerting the Commissario that a hand has been seen in one of Venice's canals. The body is soon found, and Brunetti is assigned to investigate the murder of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant. Because no official record of the man's presence in Venice exists, Brunetti is forced to use the city's far richer sources of information: gossip and the memories of people who knew the victim.

Early one morning, DS Robin Butler is summoned to a crime scene. Not as a policeman, but as best friend to renowned meteorologist, Dr Finn Mason. The morning after studying an enormous storm, Finn has locked himself in a van. Bloodied, confused, and with no memory of how he came to be there. And alongside him - a dead body.

Teenager Cordelia Mathison went missing during a gap year trip in 2017. When her freshly dumped body is found three years later, in fields less than a mile from her home, local police are baffled. Detective Inspector Nate Lawrence is new to his posting on the east Essex coast. His first case here will challenge him like no other. The investigation takes him to a remote Mediterranean island and throws him together with Bridie Croft and her parents; an intriguing local family who may just hold the key to unlocking what seems like an impossible mystery.

If Alison Girling, former principal of England's Holm Coultram College, died in an avalanche in Austria, why has her skeleton been unearthed on campus? While no love is lost between conservative detective Andrew Dalziel and the entirety of Liberal Arts, his attention to the grim discovery must be paid. But when he and Peter Pascoe scour the ivory tower for answers, they discover that the shady faculty and creepy student body have more to bury than just one corpse. Try two-and counting.

Still grieving the death of his long-time partner, Chase reunites with his dear friend and fellow Anglophile Billie Mondreau for a seacoast holiday of historic sightseeing. Assigned a pair of guides from the tour company Wanderers, Chase and Billie join seven other like-minded Americans looking forward to an English getaway. All except for Ronald Gretz. The wealthy entrepreneur behind the international Golden Sunset nursing-home chain doesn’t like anything about walking, touring, or England.

Mulligan Returns Captain Lockhart thought the horrors of the First World War were behind him when an injury sends him across the Atlantic to recuperate at the picturesque Augusta Golf Course. Invited by his old friend Philip Beauchamp, Lockhart expects rest and tranquility—but instead discovers an atmosphere fraught with tension beneath the idyllic surface. At the heart of this simmering unease is Mrs Palmer, Philip’s enigmatic stepmother, and her new husband, Frank. When Mrs Palmer is tragically poisoned, suspicion inevitably turns to those closest to her, plunging the family into ...

Two years ago, Miff Ferguson chose to opt out of the rat race. Since then he's been living rough and happily so. Until now. For as the first signs of winter approach, everything in his life is uprooted. While looking for shelter, Miff stumbles across the corpse of a young woman in a dilapidated warehouse. Quickly realizing he is not alone, and has been spotted, Miff becomes embroiled in a game of cat-and-mouse with a killer that forces him to abandon his life and take refuge with his aunt and uncle in the village of Weston St. Ambrose.

As changes loom at Bexford police station, Detective Sergeant Guy Poole seeks a distraction and finds it in the camaraderie of a village pub team. But when one of his new friends is murdered, Poole quickly realizes that he and his new partner must learn to work together seamlessly, or risk letting the killer slip through their fingers. “This final book of the series is one of the best. It’s packed with action and has so many characters that it’s a challenge to figure out who the murderer is. I thoroughly enjoyed this series and highly recommend it to everyone.”

Ending his secondment to London’s Met Police, Roy Grace gets a tip-off about a county lines drugs mastermind operating out of Brighton. On his first day back in his old job in Sussex, he is called to a seemingly senseless murder. Separately, Meg Magellan finally has her life back together, five years after the car crash that killed her husband and their son. Her daughter, Laura, now 18, is on her gap year travelling in South America with a friend, and Meg misses her badly. Laura is all she has in the world....

When a woman is abducted from a quiet suburban street and bundled into the back of a white van, the only witness to the crime is a child with a reputation for telling tall tales. The police doubt the girl’s story, except for Detective Karen Hart, who is determined to follow her instincts—perhaps because the shy little girl reminds her of the daughter she’s still grieving. When a playing card is found at the scene, Karen finds her first clue. And when a second card is found at the home of a missing woman, Tamara, Karen finds her victim.

The girl in the bar had been very pretty. And had the sort of body Howarth knew would interfere with his sleeping if he thought about it too much in the night. And once he’d set eyes on her he knew that he was going to think about her a lot in the night, because there had been an unspoken promise in the way she’d looked back at him when she’d caught him watching her surreptitiously, covetously, and he’d felt he had to get to know her better. Howarth was still young enough to have his head turned that quickly by a pretty girl and feel he was able to do something about it. That was ...

After Arthur Penfold’s wife reveals she is leaving him to care for her ailing aunt, he sets upon a path of murder and deceit to avoid the social embarrassment of a second marital breakdown. But the purchase of a poetry book triggers a sequence of events that begins to unravel both Arthur and a seemingly open-and-shut murder case.

A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The driver behind is spared. But only for a while.

Fifty years ago, a group of teenagers spent a weekend on Holy Island, forging a bond that has lasted a lifetime. Now, they still return every five years to celebrate their friendship and remember the friend they lost to the rising waters of the causeway at the first reunion. Now, when one of them is found hanged, Vera is called in. Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the friends are hiding and whether the events of many years before could have led to murder then, and now.

1850: Charles Dickens is in Manchester, performing at the Queen's Theatre with his acting group. But his career on the stage is cut short when a man is shot dead - on set. With Dickens himself caught with the gun in his hands, he is immediately arrested. Along with the help of his good friend Superintendent Sam Jones, Dickens must do all he can to find the real killer, before he is locked up for a crime he didn't commit. Can Dickens convince the authorities of his innocence? Will he unmask the true assassin?

Melissa Craig is struggling with her new novel, so when the invitation arrives to visit a nearby country house for some writing time, she decides a bit of peace and quiet is just what she needs. The house is everything she could have hoped for, even if the staff do seem rather unsettled. She has barely unpacked when the owner of the house persuades Melissa to investigate some threatening notes he has received. But before she can do any digging, he is found murdered in his own orchard.

It's New Year's Eve and the stage is set for a lavish party in one of Edinburgh's best postcodes. It's a moment for old friends to set the past to rights-and move on. The night sky is alive with fireworks and the champagne is flowing. But the celebration fails to materialize. Because someone at this party is going to die tonight. Midnight approaches and the countdown begins—but it seems one of the guests doesn't want a resolution. They want revenge.

When Amelia is invited to an all-expenses-paid retreat on a private island, the mysterious offer is too good to refuse. Along with six other strangers, she’s told they’re here to test a brand-new product for Timeo Technologies. But the guests’ excitement soon turns to terror when the real reason for their summons becomes clear. Each guest has a guilty secret. And when they’re all forced to wear a memory-tracking device that reveals their dark and shameful deeds to their fellow guests, there’s no hiding from the past. This is no luxury retreat - it’s a trap.

Inspired by the author’s own experience, The Vicar introduces Terry Nolan, an MI5 operative who, when he discovers his cover is blown and millions of lives are at stake, will do whatever it takes to stop enemy forces. Terry Nolan, an off-the-books MI5 operative known as the Vicar, has been officially dead for the past thirty years. But when Nolan is attacked in Boston, it becomes clear his cover is blown. Even worse, his Parishioners—the network of spies who work under the Vicar—have all been compromised.