Crime Fiction Police Procedural Suspense

Helen Carter has just landed her first case as a detective: a murder in an abandoned cinema. A mysterious clock-like symbol is drawn on the wall...in blood. Stranger still is what the killer left behind: the business card of an ex-cop. Since being promoted from WPC, Helen is having trouble making her mark in the male-dominated Edinburgh CID, working under Inspector Jack Craven. He’s not happy about having a woman on his team. Witnesses won’t talk to her; her colleagues don’t take her seriously.

When Inspector James Hardy learns the body of a young woman discovered in the River Thames is that of a friend, his life goes into a tail-spin. The victim’s flatmate is on the run for her life. She could be the key to catching the killer. In a race against time, Hardy must track her down before the killer does. As the truth behind the investigation unfolds, Hardy’s own family come under threat. With two young daughters to protect and an investigation that twists and turns, Hardy finds himself pushed to the limit.

In the wake of an earthquake, the water level of an Icelandic lake drops suddenly, revealing the skeleton of a man half-buried in its sandy bed. It is clear immediately that it has been there for many years. There is a large hole in the skull. Yet more mysteriously, a heavy communication device is attached to it, possibly some sort of radio transmitter, bearing inscriptions in Russian. The police are called in and Erlendur, Elinborg, and Sigurdur Olii begin their investigation, which gradually leads them back to the time of the Cold War when bright, left-wing students would be sent from Iceland to study in the "heavenly state" of communist East Germany.

When a torched body is found in a country lane, DI Bliss and Chandler are called in to investigate. The detectives are drawn towards recent missing person reports and believe their victim will prove to be one of them. Bliss thinks he knows which and fears the outcome if he is proven right. Soon the body is identified, and Bliss and Chandler discover evidence suggesting this murder might be a terrorist attack. Meanwhile, someone from Bliss’ past needs his help, and soon he is juggling his personal life with the demanding case.

Anthropology Professor Gideon Oliver would prefer to keep his mind on his beautiful new bride, Julie, during their English honeymoon, but one intrusive question will not stop nagging at him: Who would want to steal a 30,000-year-old parieto-occipital calvarial fragment? Yet someone has lifted this chunk of prehistoric human skull from a musty museum in Dorchester. Then, 30 miles away, an archaeology student is murdered, increasing tension and suspicion at a dig that had already seethed with suspicion, rivalry, and mistrust.

Delia Williamson, a waitress and mother of two young girls, is reported missing. She is soon found in a public park, hanging from the crossbar of a children's swing set. The postmortem reveals that she has been murdered. Her current partner, her ex-husband, and a traveling salesman who frequented her restaurant are all suspects. Before Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond can solve the mystery, more will die. But even as he pursues a killer, he finds himself pursued by a secret admirer.

On a hot Saturday night in Manhattan, Father Duffy sits in a confessional, growing alarmed as he listens to the voice of a distraught young man who speaks of bloody hair and a dead woman and a compulsion to do things with a hammer that he does not understand. Before the priest can persuade the man to confess to the police, the killer flees, still clutching the hammer.

A body, wrapped in plastic, is discovered in a ditch along a secluded country road. Detective Jade Monroe and her partner Jack Steele arrive at the scene in minutes. Suspicious-looking evidence gives the impression that this young woman has been held captive. As days pass, more local women vanish without a trace. Jade and her team of detectives fear the worst. With precious time slipping away, Jade needs to pull out all stops to find this perpetrator, even if that means putting herself directly in harm's way.

As the youngest bureau chief and head of the Chicago Police Department's Major Case Squad, Boone Drake seems to have it all under control. Only those closest to him know that just a few short years ago, he lost everything that mattered to him in a tragic accident. After years of healing, his life is back on track. He recently married a wonderful woman named Haeley, adopted her son, bought a beautiful home, and rediscovered his faith. But Boone can't fight the feeling that something is about to go terribly wrong...again.

In the hilarious new novel in the best-selling Detective Varg series, an eminent art historian is framed and the ace investigators of the department of sensitive crimes are on the case.

Into Keldale's pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton. Along with the redoubtable Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a savage murder that has stunned the peaceful countryside. For fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found in her best dress, an ax in her lap, seated in the old stone barn beside her father's headless corpse. Her first and last words were "I did it. And I'm not sorry".

Rebecca Heilshorn lies stabbed to death in her bed in a remote upstate New York farmhouse. Rookie detective Brendan Healy is called in to investigate. All hell breaks loose when her brother bursts onto the scene. Rebecca turns out to have many secrets and connections to a sordid network mixing power, wealth, and sex. Detective Brendan Healy, trying to put his demons behind him, pursues a dangerous investigation that will risk both his life and his sanity.

George Arrow, a good-looking, independently wealthym and single man of 36, has just been diagnosed with a weak heart. A heart so weak, his doctor tells him, he must go to extraordinary lengths to avoid putting the slightest strain upon it. On his doctor's advice, George packs up his life in Dublin and boards a train to the Bay of Galway where he intends to live quietly in a hotel and await the inevitable end. On the train, he meets John Burden, and as they chat, George realizes that his new acquaintance is an odious man.

Mike and Callie Simpkins moved north to restart their lives and get their finances back on track. Their son Braxton immerses himself in an online game-world of crime and gangs. When he decides to meet some of the players in the real world, tragedy strikes. Detective John Swift must untangle a web of virtual and real crimes in order to solve this complex mystery. And as the family copes with unimaginable grief, even Braxton’s stepfather, Mike, comes under suspicion.

The small, friendly town of Gladstone, Tennessee seems the ideal place to raise a family - until two teenagers are found tortured to death. Sheriff Miranda Knight will do anything to make her small town safe again, even if it means calling in Noah Bishop, the FBI’s psychic profiler. The last time she and Noah combined their psychic powers, she was almost destroyed. Now she must learn to trust him again, or she will most certainly die at the hands of the monster who’s stalking her town.

Some call him friend or boss. Some call him husband or dad. Some call him son, even a favorite son. But the only title that matters to him is the one the media has given him: the Poet. A name he earned from the written words he leaves behind after he kills that are as dark and mysterious as the reason he chooses his victims. One word, two, three, a story in a poem, a secret that only Detective Samantha Jazz can solve. Because, he’s writing this story for her.

Twelve years after he left Peterborough under a cloud, DI Bliss returns to the city and the major crimes team. Having spent years policing organised crime, Bliss is plunged straight into the heart of a serial murder investigation. Meanwhile, Penny Chandler has been promoted to DS and has been working in London on the Met’s sexual crimes team. But when two rapes are reported on her old patch in Peterborough, Chandler volunteers to interview the victims. Chandler joins the hunt for the attacker and soon notices a possible link between the rapes and Bliss’ murder investigation. Could the same man be responsible?

Detectives Hannah and Bernard are called to investigate the violent death of Jacqueline Mune. But what seems to be a straightforward case of a shooting in a bad neighborhood turns out to be a lot more complicated. Jacqueline had been a psychic, doing tarot readings and selling mystic medicines and oils. And it seems like everyone around her had a reason to want her dead.

Rookie crime reporter Jason Wade, a troubled loner from the wrong side of the tracks, pursues the story of a murdered Seattle nun. The case leads him to a hermit nun who founded a mysterious religious order; and ultimately to the dark secret that has tormented his ex-cop father for decades. It culminates in a life and death struggle against the clock. With time running out, Jason and his father battle the odds to confront a terrible truth.

When Dave Mansford, founding member of 80's band Alternator is electrocuted live on stage during a comeback concert, DI Declan Walsh and the team of the Last Chance Saloon are brought in to investigate whether it was a simple accident, or vicious murder. However, as they investigate further they find the surviving members of Alternator in the middle of a multi-million-dollar rights sale, a band whose lead singer disappeared in 1998 and has never been declared dead, and whose biggest success, the 1987 album Secrets and Lies seems to be cursed.