Police Detective

When another resident of the Rosemary House care home is found dead in her chair one Saturday evening in December, no one is very surprised - not until the results of a routine post-mortem reveal something extraordinary. Sergeant DC Smith and his team have to tread carefully as they investigate what took place, and Smith himself has to confront some difficult memories. Others, meanwhile, seem intent on getting him to leave the force altogether.

Thirty years ago, a group of five child detectives: Tommy, Luke, Tess, Jane and Daniel, along with their dog, Dexter, made the national press with their crime solving. Nicknamed the Magpies, their adventures were written up as novels by author Reginald Troughton and released to children around the world, including a ten-year-old Declan Walsh. But now, someone is targeting the Magpies, with Reginald brutally murdered while writing a last "lost" adventure.

Before Jack the Ripper terrorised London, Police Inspector Samuel Ravenscroft patrolled the streets of Whitechapel. Clever and hard-working, Ravenscroft nonetheless has the worst record in the force. He lets a murderer escape during a chase and is banished to the spa town of Malvern for a water treatment to cure his asthma. Ravenscroft accepts a dinner invitation from a new acquaintance, Jabez Pitzer. Before dinner, the maid finds Pitzer slumped over his desk - dead. Ravenscroft immediately recognises the signs - Pitzer has been poisoned.

Charlie Hills, former desk sergeant at Kings Lake Central, is in trouble. He hasn't told Smith, his old friend and sparring partner, but someone has, and now the two former policemen are about to embark on a difficult and potentially dangerous search for the truth. For one of them, it could be life-changing.

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.

When a worker goes missing from a North Sea gas platform, there seem to be just two possible explanations - it was a tragic accident or a suicide. It does not take Smith and his detectives long, however, to discover that James Bell led a double life back onshore in Kings Lake, a life complicated enough to make him at least one dangerous enemy. Before the case can be unraveled, Smith must get a new team working together.

Detective Sergeant James Henderson's remarkable gut instincts have put him on a three-year fast track to becoming an inspector. But the advancement of his career has come at a cost. Gay, posh and eager to prove himself in the Metropolitan Police, James has allowed himself few chances for romance. But when the murder of barrister Maria Curzon-Whyte lands in his lap, all that changes. His investigation leads him to a circle of irresistibly charming men. And though he knows better, James finds himself enticed into their company.

Readers who enjoy James Patterson, Elmore Leonard, and Robert B. Parker should love every moment of this collection. Danny Acuff, a badass detective and prior Force Recon Marine, isn't afraid to stick his nose where it doesn't belong. And in both Take Down (Book 1) and Gravel Road (Book 2), he ends up in the fights of his life.

The new Kings Lake Central murder squad is about to spend its first morning on team-building exercises and reviewing cold cases when the call comes in that the body of one of the city's rough sleepers has been found in a shop doorway. It happens, someone says, he isn't the first to die on the streets and he won't be the last, but the story the new team begins to uncover is far from routine.

Gemma James is adjusting to professional and personal changes - and a future now intricately entwined with Duncan Kincaid. But her new responsibilities are put to the test when she is placed in charge of a particularly brutal homicide: The lovely young wife of a wealthy antiques dealer has been found murdered on fashionable Notting Hill. This case sets off warning bells for Duncan: It's far too similar to an unsolved murder in which an antiques dealer was killed in precisely the same way.

Ten years ago, DCI Patrick Walsh found himself hunting The Red Reaper; a serial killer so cunning that every body found with his calling card was reluctantly classed as a suicide.

Recipient of the British Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger, Gold Dagger, and Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement, Peter Lovesey has also won Anthony and Macavity Awards for his splendid mysteries. In The Headhunters, an innocent discussion about killing the boss leads friends Gemma and Jo into real-life murder.

When Logan's daughter goes missing, abducted by a family member. Riley does everything in her power to find her. Not long after that, a string of murdered victims are found in the woods. From a camper to a fisherman, and many others killed in bizarre manners. Faced with a string of gruesome murders, and a case beyond her jurisdiction, Riley must navigate this difficult terrain and perform the most difficult balancing act of her career.

A collapsed ceiling. A dead body. What starts as a routine 999 call takes an unexpected twist when Erika Foster arrives on the scene and discovers the body of a woman in an empty flat, with all DNA evidence scrubbed away. When forensics find cocaine residue coating every surface of the ceiling, Erika calls in the drug dogs, who lead her to a mysterious parcel locker on the outside wall of the property. Chasing down the locker’s owner leads Erika back where she never expected to be–staring into the eyes of Jerome Goodman, the drug dealer who murdered her husband, Mark, ten years ago.

Detective Riley Quinn left the big city to return to her hometown. A sleepy town, where the origins of the many mysteries of her life began. When she is called to a missing person's case involving a young woman. She never expected the strange twists of events that would soon unfold.

In the peace and tranquility of the woods at Pinehills on a Saturday afternoon, a mobile phone begins to ring. The phone belongs to DC Smith, and it isn't unusual that the call is from Kings Lake Central police station; what is unusual is the fact that he seems to be the subject of an investigation rather than taking part in one. What can the links be between a prisoner's violent death in another county, the disappearance of two teenagers, and the highest profile case in Kings Lake for many years?

When 14-year-old Zoe Johnson doesn't come home on a Monday night in early December, the alarm bells in Kings Lake Central police station do not ring straight away - after all, she's from the Dockmills, one of the toughest estates in the town. But for Detective Sergeant DC Smith, due to retire in just three weeks' time, there are some strange echoes of the case that has haunted him for the past 13 years. Maybe it's simply his over-developed sense of irony, or maybe, in his final days as a police officer, Smith must look once more into the eyes of a serial killer.

Change is afoot at Kings Lake Central police station. A most unexpected new detective inspector takes up his post this Monday morning, and the oldest detective in the place takes a momentous decision. Around them, other officers are considering their own situations, and even the building itself seems to be facing an uncertain future. But life and death go on, nevertheless, and by lunchtime someone will make a grim discovery on the Norfolk saltmarshes. A stranger seems to have suffered a slow and agonizing death out there.

Sleepy little North Bend just woke up. The newly promoted Sergeant Jade Monroe and her partner, detective Jack Steele, have just been informed of an unidentified male body found at a local lake. The town is in an uproar. The victim was nearly decapitated, and murder simply doesn't happen in North Bend. As more bodies turn up, the single connection between all of the victims becomes clear - it's Jade, herself. With each new victim getting one step closer to Jade, time begins to tick away. She must find the person responsible before her loved ones, or herself, are targeted next.

Gabriel Kensington and his wife, Lydia, have been brutally slain in their luxurious home in New Mexico. A frantic, whispered phone call from their teenage daughter, Addis, and her best friend, Emerson, quickly alerts the authorities to the killings. But when detective Alyssa Wyatt and the squad appear at the house, the unthinkable has happened. The girls are nowhere to be found...and neither is the killer. In a race against time, it's up to Alyssa Wyatt and her partner, Cord, to find the missing girls - and discover just why the Kensingtons have been targeted.