Crime Fiction Police Procedural Suspense

A dead body in a twisted car. A detective torn in two. DC Scott Cullen likes to play hard and fast with the rules. While it might antagonise his colleagues and superiors, it gets results. Resistance to his cowboy attitude, coupled with fears about a forthcoming police restructure, mean that things aren’t looking good for the maverick cop, especially when his personal life begins to crumble. The body of a young man found in a totalled car at the foot of a West Lothian shale bing looks like a straightforward case.

After nearly dying of a gunshot wound, Jonathan Stride has been on leave from the Duluth Police for more than a year. When his partner, Maggie Bei, gets called about a suspicious abduction involving a local lawyer, she tells Stride it’s time for him to come back.

Belfast, 1980, is the apocalypse. Bombings, riots, army on the streets, low flying helicopters, and ever-present rain. The grinding Northern Irish civil war between Protestants and Catholics has been going for a decade now. Hated by both sides are the police. Sean Duffy Year 1 takes us into that world. Newly promoted Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy is given his first command at Carrickfergus CID.

A popular young girl disappears without a trace, her skeletal remains discovered three years later in the ashes of a burned-out house. There's a suspect and compelling circumstantial evidence of his guilt, but no concrete proof. When he isn't indicted, he returns to mock the girl's family. And this isn't the first time he's been suspected of the murder of a young girl; nearly 20 years ago he was tried and released due to lack of evidence. Detective Chief Inspector Kusanagi of the Homicide Division of the Tokyo Police worked both cases.

In an African convent, four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are brutally murdered, and the death of the unknown woman is covered up by the local police. A year later in Sweden, Inspector Kurt Wallander is baffled and appalled by two strange murders with an elusive connection to the fifth woman.

Callum is lured to an isolated boathouse by an attractive older woman. When she gets him alone, she knocks him out with a single blow. Surrounded by hills and lakes, Still Waters is home to a close-knit community of wealthy retirees. It's an unlikely setting for violence. The police don't take Callum's disappearance seriously: he's 24-years-old, after all. But Callum's mother, a Still Waters resident, knows that something is very wrong. Then a body is discovered floating in the lake. Head bashed in. But it's not Callum. And someone tweets: Come out to play one last time, Alice.

Thinking that she has been summoned by German immigrant Agnes Otto to usher a new life into the world, midwife Sarah Brandt is greeted by the news of an untimely death instead. It seems that Agnes' beautiful younger sister, Gerda, had fallen into the life of a "charity girl". Caught up in the false glamour of the city's nightlife, she would trade her company and her favors for lavish gifts. And now she was dead - victim, no doubt, of one of her "gentlemen friends".

Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is quietly recovering from injuries sustained on his latest case when a rich doctor's baby is kidnapped and his peace is shattered. As suspicion builds that the doctor may have staged the baby’s disappearance, the relationship between the doctor and his wife and neighbors begins to disintegrate.

In Shadow Prey, the crackling sequel to Rules of Prey, Twin Cities sleuth Lucas Davenport teams up with NYPD Lieutenant Lily Rothenberg to track down an elusive killer known only as Shadow Love. Among the victims are a Minneapolis slumlord, a judge from Oklahoma City, and a Manhattan politician. The murder weapon is a Native American ceremonial knife.

New York Times best-selling author James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux novels began with this first hard-hitting entry in the series. In The Neon Rain, Detective Robicheaux fishes a prostitute's corpse from a New Orleans bayou and finds that no one, not even the law, cares about a dead hooker.

Perched on the soft tar of a New York City rooftop, a mysterious sniper fires a single round from a .50 caliber rifle. Five stories below, his target collapses on the marble steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dead. Crime reporter Jane Cole needs this story badly. Suspended NYPD cop Robert Warren is desperate to clear his name. They don't trust each other, but they make the perfect team. And as Cole and Warren track the killer, they uncover a plot so ruthless it shocks the conscience, a crime so expansive it will rock the world.

A career man, Edwin Murphy has always put more effort into his work than his family. Everything changes for Edwin when his wife files for divorce. On the brink of losing his home, his job and his little girl, Edwin orchestrates an intricate plan to eliminate his wife and regain his former lifestyle. The police are baffled when bodies begin to appear all over London with no apparent connection between them. Inspector David Morton must think outside the box as he investigates the deadly web of deceit behind the murders.

Jonathan Stride’s best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: He protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve’s yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull. Stride is pretty sure he knows who it is. Seven years ago, an out-of-town reporter disappeared while investigating anonymous allegations of rape against a prominent politician. Back then, the police believed that the reporter drowned at a dangerous swimming hole called the Deeps...but the discovery of the body changes everything.

Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, takes a city break in Vienna, where his favorite film, The Third Man, was set, but everything goes wrong, and his companion, Paloma, calls a halt to their relationship. Meanwhile, strange things are happening to jobbing musician Mel Farran, who finds himself scouted by methods closer to the spy world than the concert platform. The chance of joining a once-famous string quartet in a residency at Bath Spa University is too tempting for Mel to refuse. Then a body is found in the city canal, and the only clue to the dead woman’s identity is the tattoo of a music note on one of her teeth.

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.

An apparent accidental death turns out to be only the first of many murders. Ben Kendall was a troubled man. Coming back from Vietnam with PTSD and scars that no one else could see, he hid away from the world, filling his house with an ever-increasing amount of stuff, until finally the piles collapsed and he was found dead, crushed beneath his own belongings. But what on first glance looks to be the tragic accidental death of a hoarder maybe something much more - and much deadlier

A crime of passion strikes close to home when Gemma and her best friend, Hazel Cavendish, travel to Scotland, a land of mists and fine whiskey, of hidden pasts and dangerous secrets, or so Gemma discovers when an unexpected meeting with Hazel's old flame yields shocking—and mortal—consequences. Hazel is the logical suspect, but Gemma knows nothing is simple in this place of secrets and long-seething hatreds.

DS George Cross has always wondered why his mother left him when he was a child. Now she is back in his life, he suddenly has answers. But this unexpected reunion is not anything he's used to dealing with. When a disturbing case lands on his desk, he is almost thankful for the return to normality. The body of a monk is found savagely beaten to death in a woodland near Bristol. Nothing is known about Brother Dominic's past, which makes investigating difficult. How can Cross unpick a crime when they don't know anything about the victim? And why would someone want to harm a monk?

For DI Declan Walsh, life is finally returning to normal. Finding a home at DCI Alexander Monroe's Last Chance Saloon Crime Unit, Declan and his team - DS Anjli Kapoor, DC Billy Fitzwarren, Doctor Rosanna Marcos, and her assistant DC Joanne Davey - are still recovering from the fallout connected to their most recent case, while Declan is cleaning out his late father's home in order to move in.

Jonathan Hale is terrified. The wealthy property lawyer and money launderer is back home in Surrey after a nightmare experience in a U.S. jail. The police have him under secret surveillance. But Hales's fears lie elsewhere. His plea bargain has earned him the enmity of The Reptile, a notoriously cold-hearted gangster, now confined for life in a maximum-security jail in Arizona thanks to Hale. He's taken precautions, moved house, hidden his identity and installed security for his wife and family. But still… what if The Reptile escapes?