Crime Mystery Fiction

Every city has an underworld leader. In the Kingpin series, we will visit eight cities and ride along with that city's kingpin as he rules the streets. The story starts out in Miami with Nikki Turner and will end with a compilation of all kingpins, written by New York Times best-selling author Carl Weber.

On Memorial Day, 1992, three decorated navy officers disappeared in the sleepy beach town of Hansville, Washington. Thirty years later, their medals were found in the marshlands of Foulweather Bluff. So were their bones. For private investigator Thomas Austin, this case hits close to home. The son of a JAG lawyer, Austin grew up around the navy. To solve the case, he must piece together clues buried in the marshlands and dark secrets hidden in navy history.

Drawing strong comparisons to the work of James Lee Burke and Tony Hillerman, William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor mysteries never fail to please fans. Here Cork joins the search for a country-western singer who has disappeared in the wilderness along the American/Canadian border.

C. J. Box's best-selling Joe Pickett novels have earned him a spot on every serious suspense fan's shortlist of favorites. The tightly constructed Out of Range brings game warden Joe to a new, remote beat in Wyoming's vast countryside to investigate the suspicious death of the previous warden.

It's their usual Thursday girls' night in, and best friends Skye, Elena, and London are enjoying hanging out at Skye's house in New Mexico, eating junk food, drinking wine, and playing with Skye's little children, Carter and Abigail. Until the intruders arrive. Hearing the horrific screams from Elena and Skye, London hides the children, tiptoes out to see what has happened . . . and disappears. After Carter raises the alarm, Detective Alyssa Wyatt is called in to investigate a bloodbath that appears to have no motive, no evidence, and worse still—no sign of London.

When Kate Fox receives a late-night phone call, her seemingly perfect life on the Nebraska prairie shatters in an instant. Eldon, shirt-tail relative and owner of one of the largest cattle ranches in Grand County, has been killed. Kate's husband, Ted, the Grand County sheriff, has been shot and may never walk again. And worst of all, Ted is the prime suspect in Eldon’s murder. Desperate to clear Ted's name, Kate throws herself headlong into the hunt for the real killer. When she finds herself the victim of several mysterious “accidents”, she knows she’s running out of time.

Nevada Barr quickly attracted the attention of mystery fans when her first Anna Pigeon mystery, Track of the Cat, appeared. Now she immerses the intrepid park ranger in a perilous search that will take her far below the waters of Lake Superior. As Anna spends her days patrolling its shores, the surface of Lake Superior fills with tourists. In the depths below lie an ancient ship and the bones of its sailors.

Rain slicked streets, riots, murder, chaos. It’s July 1992 and the Troubles in Northern Ireland are still grinding on after twenty-five apocalyptic years. Detective Inspector Sean Duffy got his family safely over the water to Scotland, to “Shortbread Land”. Duffy’s a part-timer now, only returning to Belfast six days a month to get his pension. It’s an easy gig, if he can keep his head down.

Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the infamous case of January Jacobs, who was discovered in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January—and they were next-door neighbors. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist. But she’s always been haunted by the feeling that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice.

It's the early 1980s in Belfast. Sean Duffy, a conflicted Catholic cop in the Protestant RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary), is recruited by MI5 to hunt down Dermot McCann, an IRA master bomber who has made a daring escape from the notorious Maze prison. In the course of his investigations Sean discovers a woman who may hold the key to Dermot's whereabouts; she herself wants justice for her daughter who died in mysterious circumstances in a pub locked from the inside.

In rural, impoverished Burgoyne County, New York, a pattern of strange deaths begins to emerge: Adolescent boys and girls are found murdered, their corpses left hanging in gruesome, ritualistic fashion. Senior law enforcement officials are quick to blame a serial killer, but their efforts to apprehend this criminal are peculiarly ineffective.

They were just kids when Claudette McPhearson took them all in. Eight of them all together. All different races and ethnic makeups, but she loved them as her own. One woman taught them how to love, trust, and respect one another. She was the only glue that kept them together, the only one they wanted to please and never let down. She had been their light at the end of a long troublesome tunnel - it shined so bright. Then, one dreadful day, it all came to a crashing halt.

Detective Sara Hirst has moved from London to Norfolk Police's Serious Crimes Unit. She wants to know the truth about her father, who has connections to the area. Her mother won't tell her the real story. A new job. A new place. Same old problems. Sara's first call-out is to a decomposing body discovered in a ditch on a local farm. How does the murder relate to a recent spate of thefts? Who wanted the victim dead? Then the case grows very personal.

The plane circled in the dark. Joe Pickett could just make out down below a figure in the snow and timber, and then three other figures closing in. There was nothing he could do about it. And Joe knew that he might be their next target. The Cates family had always been a bad lot. Game warden Joe Pickett had been able to strike a fierce blow against them when the life of his daughter April had been endangered, but he'd always wondered if there'd be a day of reckoning.

A young man's mutilated body is found on top of the Agglestone. It seems that he was involved in a human trafficking and prostitution gang. But why is DCI Sophie Allen keeping something back from her team? Is it linked to the extraordinary discovery of her own father's body at the bottom of a disused mineshaft, more than 40 years after he disappeared? Find out.

When Matt Ballard was starting out his career, three boys were murdered in the same area, the remote and bleak Gibbet Fen. When the main suspect was killed in a hit-and-run, the killings stopped. But Matt was not satisfied that the real murderer had been caught. Over 25 years later, Matt gets a photo in an unmarked envelope. It's of the Gibbet Fen crime scene. And the picture was taken before the murder took place. More photos arrive, relating to the historic murders, as well as intimate pictures of Matt's very secret private life.

Debauched, divorced, and courting death, Billy Ray Schafer is a comedian who has forgotten how to laugh. Over the course of seven spun-out days across the American Southwest, he travels from from hell gig to hell gig in search of a reason to keep living in this bleak and violent glimpse into the psyche of a thoroughly ruined man. Ex-inmate, ex-husband, ex-father - comedian is the only title Schafer has left. Trapped in the wreckage of his wasted career, Billy Ray knows the answer to the question: What happens when the opportunity doesn't come - or worse - it comes and goes?

The lights are on at the Singleton vacation home on Lopez Island, Washington, illuminating the horror within. The family is found dead, and the police's main suspect - the property caretaker - has disappeared. In her secluded vineyard home two hours away, Laura Gretchell is on edge. Her husband is out of town on business, and the children are understandably shaken. Laura tries to tell herself there's no reason to fear. Then the door handle rattles, and the real terror begins.

My dog once took a bullet that was intended for me. A bullet that ripped through his chest, narrowly missing his heart, and exited through his shoulder blade. This left him unconscious on the floor of my home. Amazingly, this bullet did not kill him. Ten years ago, I adopted Blue after I broke up with my boyfriend one hot, early summer night with the windows open and the neighborhood listening. The next morning I went straight to the pound in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Articles on buying your first dog tell you never to buy a dog on impulse.

Dave Robicheaux had begun to put the pieces of his broken life together again when an old friend turned up on his doorstep, dredging up old memories and new threats.