International Police Procedurals

A woman is found murdered after an Internet date. The marks left on her body show the police that they are dealing with a particularly vicious killer. Under pressure from the media to find the murderer, the force know there's only one man for the job. But Harry Hole is reluctant to return to the place that almost took everything from him. Until he starts to suspect a connection between this killing and his one failed case.

The body of an unidentified woman has been discovered in a remote forest. A large, unique scar on one side of her face should make the identification easy, but nobody has reported her missing. Louise Rick, the new commander of the Missing Persons Department, waits four long days before pulling off a risky move: Releasing a photo of the victim to the media, jeopardizing the integrity of the investigation in hopes of finding anyone who knew her. The gamble pays off when a woman recognizes the victim as Lisemette, a child she cared for in the state mental institution many years ago.

August: The air over Provence shimmers in suffocating heat. Capitaine Roger Blanc and his colleague Marius Tonon are called to the Camargue. A black fighting bull has escaped from the pasture and has gored a cyclist. A bizarre accident, or so it initially seems. Until Blanc discovers evidence that someone left the gate open intentionally. The deceased is Albert Cohen, political magazine reporter, fashion intellectual from Paris, TV personality. He was in the Camargue to write a major article on Vincent van Gogh. Yet what has that got to do with the attack?

Amos Decker, David Baldacci's unique special agent, who suffered a head injury that resulted in giving him the gift of a remarkable memory together with a condition called synaesthesia, takes on another case in The Fix. Walter Dabney is a family man. A loving husband and the father of four grown daughters, he's built a life many would be proud of. But then the unthinkable happens. Standing outside the FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, Dabney shoots schoolteacher Anne Berkshire in cold blood....

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.

During a stifling summer in Sydney, the body of a chaplain’s daughter is found wrapped in black plastic on the deserted grounds of an elite boarding school. Is it the work of the killer who’s been stalking the privileged neighborhoods along the Parramatta River? Gut instinct tells Detective Sergeant Rose Riley something even more devious might be at play.

What was supposed to be an Italian vacation for forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver and his wife turns into a busman's holiday when their hosts' only child goes missing - and nearby construction workers unearth human bones. The family awaits Oliver's conclusions with both dread and cautious hope. But along the way, he'll expose some extraordinary deceptions that lay bare the long-hidden secrets at the dark heart of a highborn family.

When a former soldier and recluse murders two 17-year-old students at a posh Edinburgh boarding school, Inspector John Rebus immediately suspects there is more to the case than meets the eye.

Former FBI profiler Hugo Marston has just become head of security at the US Embassy in London. He's asked to protect a famous movie-star couple, Dayton Harper and Ginny Ferro, who, while filming a movie in rural England, killed a local man in a hit-and-run. The task turns from routine to disastrous almost immediately. Before Hugo even meets them, he finds out that Ferro has disappeared, and her body has been found hanging from an oak tree in a London cemetery. Hours later a distraught Harper gives Hugo the slip, and Hugo has no idea where he's run off to.

Six Four. The nightmare no parent could endure. The case no detective could solve. The twist no listener could predict. For five days in January 1989, the parents of a seven-year-old Tokyo schoolgirl sat and listened to the demands of their daughter's kidnapper. They would never learn his identity. They would never see their daughter again. For the 14 years that followed, the Japanese public listened to the police's apologies. They would never forget the botched investigation that became known as Six Four.

After the senseless murder of his wife, Detective Superintendent Thomas Lynley retreated to Cornwall, where he has spent six solitary weeks hiking the bleak and rugged coastline. On the 43rd day of his walk, at the base of a cliff, Lynley discovers the body of a young man who appears to have fallen to his death.

Ari Thór Arason is a local policeman whose tumultuous past and uneasy relationships with the villagers in an idyllically quiet fishing village in Northern Iceland - where no one locks their doors - continue to haunt him. The peace of this close-knit community is shattered by the murder of a policeman - shot at point-blank range in the dead of night in a deserted house. With a killer on the loose and the dark Arctic winter closing in, it falls to Ari Thór to piece together a puzzle that involves tangled local politics, a compromised new mayor, and a psychiatric ward.

After the perils of a case that landed much too close to home, Hana Westerman turned in her badge and abandoned her career as a detective in the Auckland CIB. Hoping that civilian life will offer her the opportunity to rest and recalibrate, she returns to her hometown of Tata Bay, where she moves back in with her beloved father, Eru. Yet the memories of the past are everywhere, and as she goes for her daily run on the beach, Hana passes a local monument to Paige, a high school classmate who was murdered more than twenty years ago and hidden in the dunes overlooking the sea.

When a hit-and-run accident leaves eight-year-old Lee Sanders in critical condition, DI Freya Bloom and DS Ben Savage arrive on the scene in rural Lincolnshire. But the investigation they thought would be simple, soon develops into something far more sinister. The driver of the car is found in a nearby ditch, and she didn't die of natural causes. Poppy Gray, a nineteen-year-old girl with a bright future ahead of her, had only one known friend, a troubled boy who rarely speaks. Leading a simple life, Poppy had been filled with the joys of spring. But she knew something.

DCI Lesley Clarke is a busy woman. She's dealing with the reopened investigation into DCI Mackie's death, supporting DS Dennis Frampton through recurring mental health problems, and making plans for her own future. And then prominent crime boss Arthur Kelvin is found dead at a local beauty spot. Who killed him? Could it have been a member of his own gang? A rival, from within Dorset or further afield? Or maybe one of Kelvin's many victims? When Lesley starts to suspect that someone close to her might be involved, her world turns on its head.

You are Dead is the 11th thrilling crime novel in Peter James' Roy Grace series, narrated by Daniel Weyman. They were marked for death. The last words Jamie Ball hears from his fiancée, Logan Somerville, are in a terrified mobile phone call. She has just driven into the underground car park beneath the block of flats where they live in Brighton. Then she screams and the phone goes dead.

When a long-serving Master at one of England's most prestigious public schools drowns in Bassenthwaite Lake, Detective Inspector Skelgill is summoned to investigate his apparent suicide. It soon becomes clear that senior members of staff are not all that they seem. As the school closes ranks, Skelgill realizes he is pitted against a sinister power struggle for control of its highly lucrative operation.

A society wedding at Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire becomes a crime scene when a man is murdered. After another body is found, the baffled local constabulary turns to Scotland Yard. Though the second crime had a witness, her description of the killer is so strange it's unbelievable. Despite his experience, Inspector Ian Rutledge has few answers of his own. The victims are so different that there is no rhyme or reason to their deaths. Nothing logically seems to connect them - except the killer. As the investigation widens, a clear suspect emerges. But for Rutledge, the facts still don't add up, leaving him to question his own judgment.

The Terrorists is the last Martin Beck mystery, finished just a few weeks before Per Wahlöö’s death. The book is, in effect, a marvelous summing up of the series. The story centers on the visit of an American senator to Stockholm. Martin Beck tries to protect him from an international gang of terrorists, while they decide that Beck too should be removed from the scene.

A woman is found murdered in her bathtub, and the murder has been made to look like a suicide. But a strange symbol found at the crime scene leads the local police to call Commissaire Adamsberg and his team. When the symbol is found near the body of a second disguised suicide, a pattern begins to emerge: Both victims were part of a disastrous expedition to Iceland over 10 years ago where a group of tourists found themselves trapped on a deserted island.