International Police Procedurals

When novelist Manuel Ortigosa learns that his husband, Álvaro, has been killed in a car crash, it comes as a devastating shock. It won’t be the last. He’s now arrived in Galicia. It’s where Álvaro died. It’s where the case has already been quickly closed as a tragic accident. It’s also where Álvaro hid his secrets. The man to whom Manuel was married for fifteen years was not the unassuming man he knew.

When Armand Gamache receives a letter inviting him to an abandoned farmhouse outside of Three Pines, the former head of the Sûreté du Québec discovers that a complete stranger has named him as an executor of her will. Armand never knew the elderly woman, and the bequests are so wildly unlikely that he suspects the woman must have been delusional - until a body is found, and the terms of the bizarre will suddenly seem far more menacing. But it isn't the only menace Gamache is facing.

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.

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.

Inspector John Rebus has messed up badly this time, so badly that he's been sent to a kind of reform school for damaged cops. While there among the last-chancers known as "resurrection men," he joins a covert mission to gain evidence of a drug heist orchestrated by three of his classmates. But the group has been assigned an unsolved murder that may have resulted from Rebus's own mistake.

Vaka sits on the cold steps of her new school. Her father appears to have forgotten to pick her up, her mother has forgotten to give her this week’s pocket money, and the school is already locked for the day. With no way to call home, she resigns herself to waiting on the steps until her father remembers her. When a girl approaches, Vaka recognizes her immediately from class and from her unusual appearance: two of her fingers are missing. The girl lives at the back of the school, and Vaka asks to call her father from the girl's house. That afternoon is the last time anyone sees Vaka.

When an Israeli tech executive disappears from Charles de Gaulle airport with a woman in red at his side, logic dictates youthful indiscretion. But Israel is on a state of high alert nonetheless. And for Commissaire Léger of the Paris Police Force, all coincidences are suspect. When a second young Israeli from the flight is kidnapped, this time at gunpoint from his hotel room, his suspicions are confirmed - and a diplomatic crisis looms.

Six months ago Harry Bosch left the LAPD before they could fire him and then hired maverick defense attorney Mickey Haller to sue the department for forcing him out. Although it wasn't the way he wanted to go, Harry has to admit that being out of the game has its benefits. Until Mickey asks him to help on one of his cases, and suddenly Harry is back where he belongs, right in the centre of a particularly puzzling murder mystery.

A billion-dollar deal is about to go badly wrong. A lavish night out is about to end in murder. And the British government is about to be plunged into crisis. Lord Hartley, the latest in a line of peers going back over two hundred years, lies dying. But his will triggers an inheritance with explosive consequences.

Along the picturesque Belon River, home of the world famous oyster beds, between steep cliffs, ominous forests, and the Atlantic Ocean, a stubborn elderly film actress discovers a corpse. By the time Commissaire Dupin arrives at the scene, the body has disappeared. A little while later, he receives a phone call from the mystical hills of Monts d'Arree, where legends of fairies and the devil abound: Another unidentified body has turned up. Dupin quickly realizes this may be his most difficult and confounding case yet.

Detective Jamie Johansson is finally finding normality in Stockholm when a phone call from her estranged mother draws her back to the UK. The bodies of two women have been discovered in the Brecon Beacons, badly beaten and buried shallow, and rumors of a trafficking ring are swirling. But when a crucial piece of evidence is accidentally destroyed, suspicion falls on those handling the case.

Haunted by personal demons, Detective Erlunder decides to take a short leave of absence, putting his female assistant, Elinborg, in charge while he is gone. When a disturbing case lands on her desk, Elinborg is quickly thrust into a world of violent crime. A serial rapist is on the loose, and the clock is ticking as the police race to catch him before he strikes again. With exceptional prose, heart pounding suspense, and a mystery that is not solved until the last minute, Indridason fans everywhere will be thrilled to return to Reykjavik in this outstanding crime novel.

Sonchai Jitpleecheep, the devout Buddhist Royal Thai Police detective who led us through the best sellers Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo, returns in this blistering novel. Sonchai has seen virtually everything on his beat in Bangkok's District 8, but nothing like the snuff film he's just been sent anonymously. Furiously fast-paced and laced through with an erotic ghost story that gives a new dark twist to the life of our hero, Bangkok Haunts more than lives up to the smart and darkly funny originality of its predecessors.

Railway cop and former Marine Sydney Parnell is on the hunt. So is a killer she knows only as the Alpha. They’re in a race to find Malik, an 11-year-old Iraqi boy with secrets to guard. Sydney wants to help him. The Alpha wants him dead. From the dark alleys of Mexico City to the mean streets of Denver, Sydney and her K9 partner, Clyde, use their wits and determination to chase down the ruthless killer. But when their path collides with his, Sydney realizes just how far-reaching and sinister the Alpha’s past is. And how far he’s willing to go to save his secrets.

Reykjavik, August 1941. When a travelling sales rep is found murdered in a Reykjavik flat, killed by a bullet from a Colt 45, the police initially suspect a member of the Allied occupation force. The British are in the process of handing over to the Americans, and the streets of Reykjavik are crawling with servicemen whose relations with the local women are a major cause for concern. Flovent, Reykjavik's sole detective, is joined by the young military policeman Thorson, the son of Icelandic emigrants to Canada.

Murders are rare in the beautiful Cayman Islands, so when a woman's body is discovered near a secluded trail, the police launch an exhaustive investigation. Their first hurdle is identifying the victim, and the next…will be finding her missing newborn.

A burned corpse is a disturbing mystery for Beijing detective Li Yan until he enlists forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell. Having abandoned a broken life in Chicago for her work, she's as determined as Li to ask difficult questions about the man's death. But some questions have answers they'd rather not hear - facts that others are desperate to conceal. The Firemaker is the first in the acclaimed China series from Peter May, author of Runaway, Entry Island and the internationally best-selling Lewis Trilogy.

When forced to choose between the law and the party line, Police Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has a disturbing tendency to fight for justice, and that has won him no friends at the Kremlin. Now his enemies in the KGB have arranged a transfer to the lowest rungs of Moscow law enforcement, a backwater department assigned to only the most hopeless cases, one of which is about to take Rostnikov deep into Siberia.

The body of a young woman is found by a river outside Belfast and Detective Sergeant Ryan McBride makes a heart-wrenching discovery at the scene, a discovery he chooses to hide even though it could cost him the investigation—and his career. The victim was a loner but well-liked. Why would someone want to harm her? And is her murder connected to a rapist who's stalking the local pubs? As Ryan untangles a web of deception and lies, his suspects die one by one, leading him to a dangerous family secret and a murderer who will stop at nothing to keep it.

It's Alys Pugh's birthday and her mates are organizing a little surprise for her. When she doesn't show up, they realize something's wrong. Later, her body is found in the cold waters of Llyn y Fan. On searching Alys' house, detectives discover an array of seaside objects and suspect they are some sort of message left by the killer. With everyone seemingly harboring a secret, tempers fray and suspicion grows. And when similar trinkets are found in another of their houses, those underlying tensions bubble to the surface. Then someone else in the group is killed.