International Police Procedurals

A best-selling author’s wife has been found dead in a gorgeous black evening gown, sitting at the head of an empty dining table. Her most chilling feature - her face is frozen in a ghastly smile. At first it seems as though a deranged psychopath is reenacting the gruesome murders from the Witch Hunt trilogy, best sellers written by the victim’s husband. But investigator Jessica Niemi soon realizes she’s not looking for a single killer but rather for dozens of believers in a sinister form of witchcraft who know her every move and are always one step ahead.

In February 1986, the Halland police receive a call from a man who claims to have attacked his first victim. I’m going to do it again, he says before the line cuts off. By the time police officer Sven Jörgensson reaches the crime scene, the woman is taking her last breath. For Sven, this will prove a decisive moment. On the same night, Sweden plunges into a state of shock after the murder of the prime minister. Could there possibly be a connection?

One year after moving to his late wife’s Tuscan hometown of Gravigna, Nico Doyle has fully settled into life there, seeing friends in the course of daily errands and helping to serve and test recipes at his in-laws’ restaurant. But the town is shaken by the arrival of wine critic Michele Mantelli in his flashy Jaguar. Mantelli holds his influential culinary magazine and blog over Gravigna’s vintners and restaurateurs. Mantelli’s lavish, larger-than-life, and often vindictive personality has made him many enemies, and when he is poisoned, Maresciallo Perillo needs help....

Oslo, New Year’s Eve. The annual firework celebration is rocked by an explosion, and the city is put on terrorist alert. Police officer Alexander Blix and blogger Emma Ramm are on the scene, and when a severely injured survivor is pulled from the icy harbour, she is identified as the mother of two-year-old Patricia Smeplass, who was kidnapped on her way home from kindergarten 10 years earlier and never found. Blix and Ramm join forces to investigate the unsolved case.

Oslo, 2018. Former long-distance runner Sonja Nordstrøm never shows at the launch of her controversial autobiography, Always Number One. When celebrity blogger Emma Ramm visits Nordstrøm’s home later that day, she finds the door unlocked and signs of a struggle inside. A bib with the number one has been pinned to the TV. Police officer Alexander Blix is appointed to head up the missing-persons investigation, but he still bears the emotional scars of a hostage situation 19 years earlier, when he killed the father of a five-year-old girl.

In Victorian England, a divisive election is fast approaching. Passions are so enflamed that Thomas Pitt, shrewd mainstay of the London police, has been ordered not to solve a crime but to prevent a national disaster. The aristocratic Tory candidate—and Pitt’s archenemy—is Charles Voisey. The Liberal candidate is Aubrey Serracold, whose wife’s dalliance with spiritualism threatens his chances.

Special Agent Stan Powell of the Portland, Oregon office of the FBI is brought in to consult on a case involving human remains discovered in the remote wilderness near Mount Hood. Little does Powell know, but what follows is the case of his young career and a roller coaster ride through the dark underworld of the tennis industry, with more twists and turns than he can count.

When a corrupt detective is murdered, alarm bells start ringing for DI Zoe Finch and her team. Was the victim connected to organised crime boss Trevor Hamm? Was he in league with Zoe's former colleague Ian Osman? And why is CID boss David Randle trying to curtail the investigation? With her mentor off sick and a new boss breathing down her neck, Zoe must investigate without drawing attention to herself. Can she prove what she knows about Detective Superintendent Randle? Will she escape suspicion herself? And can she protect the people she cares about from the threat of retribution?

In the 17th installment in Peter Lovesey's timeless British detective series, Peter Diamond digs deep into Bath history to ferret out the secrets of one of its most famous (and scandalous) icons: Richard "Beau" Nash, who might have been the victim of a centuries-old murder.

A young woman is murdered in her Oslo flat. One finger has been severed from her left hand, and behind her eyelid is secreted a tiny red diamond in the shape of a five-pointed star - a pentagram, the devil’s star. Detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case with his long-time adversary Tom Waaler and initially wants no part in it. But Harry is already on notice to quit the force and is left with little alternative but to drag himself out of his alcoholic stupor and get to work. A wave of similar murders is on the horizon....

Newly appointed police inspector Domenic Jejeune doesn't mind ruffling a few feathers. His success has elevated him into a poster boy for the police. The problem is Jejeune doesn't really want to be a detective at all; he much prefers watching birds. Recently reassigned to the small Norfolk town of Saltmarsh, Jejeune's two worlds collide with the grisly murder of a prominent ecological activist.

Gianni Peroni is at a loose end. He's got nothing urgent to do but he notices that the pathologist has a busy day ahead: during the night two corpses were picked out of the Tiber. At first glance, it seems that the similarities between the two men end there. But then Gianni notices something very strange...

Inspector Dupin and Claire are on a two-week vacation, but while Claire seems to enjoy the quiet of the beach, Commissaire Dupin takes every opportunity to leave the beach towel. The fabulous dinners on the hotel patio and the rumors about a stolen statue of a saint are the few interesting moments of his days on vacation. But then a tourist vanishes without trace, and there's an attack on a deputy to the local assembly, who is involved in confrontations with local farmers. Shortly after that, the Britanny beach resort is shocked by the discovery of a corpse.

Former Detective Hillary Greene and her cold case team are taking a fresh look at the unsolved murder of Michael Beck, found bludgeoned over the head and dead in a river near his home in 2012. Just twenty-two at the time, he'd recently finished a history degree and had his whole life ahead of him. Everyone said he was a pleasant sort of lad with a passion for the past, quietly living with his parents until he could afford a place of his own. But it quickly turned out that there were at least two people who might have wanted him dead.

It’s April 2020 and Edinburgh is in lockdown, but that doesn’t mean crime takes a holiday. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot—the streets all but empty, an hour’s outdoor exercise the maximum allowed—but when a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie’s team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it’s game on again. What unspools is a twisted game of betrayal and revenge, but no one quite expects how many twists it will turn out to have.

Harry Hole, drunkard, loner and brilliant detective is reassigned to surveillance after a high profile mistake. He’s bored by his new job until a report of a rare and unusual gun being fired sparks his interest because of its possible links to Neo Nazi activity. Then a former soldier is found with his throat cut. Next Harry’s former partner is murdered. Why had she been trying to reach Harry on the night her head was smashed in?

Police discover the lifeless body of a young woman on an abandoned yacht. The next day, a man is found hanging in his apartment. When Detectives Joona Linna and Saga Bauer uncover a surprising connection between the two deaths, they realize they are up against a brutal killer and a ruthless business tycoon who preys on his victims’ worst nightmares to achieve his sinister ends.

In 1975, a baby just minutes old is taken from its devastated mother. In 2010, the gruesome corpse of a nun is found in a Dublin public park. Detective Inspector Tom Reynolds and his team are on the scene and he’s convinced the murder is linked to historical events that took place in the infamous former Magdalene Laundries, institutions for “fallen women.” As Reynolds and his team follow the trail to an isolated convent, everything seems perfectly normal and it seems perhaps they’ve followed the wrong lead. But it soon becomes disturbingly clear that the killer is amongst them.

When the body of elderly Mr Winter is found in his modest terraced home, still in his pyjamas, Detective Dave Slater quickly decides there’s nothing suspicious to report. The old man fell and hit his head. It’s sad, but these things happen. A few days later, Mr Winter’s home is ransacked—and Slater is forced to change his mind. This was no opportunist break-in. Someone was looking for something specific. But what did the lonely old man have in his possession that could cost his life?

Soon to be divorced, attorney Nora Linde is finding her way as a single mother, and even falling in love again, when she's asked by her childhood friend Detective Thomas Andreasson to help in a disturbing investigation. Marcus Nielsen, a university student, has apparently committed suicide, but it's what he's left behind that's so suspicious and damning: his research into the Coastal Rangers, an elite military group where, in 1977, a young cadet died under questionable circumstances, a sadistic sergeant went free, and a case went cold.