Police Fiction

Amazing news has spread across the Scottish countryside. The most famous of highland bachelors, police sergeant Hamish Macbeth, may actually marry at last. The entire village of Lochdubh adores Macbeth's bride-to-be. Josie McSween is Hamish's new constable, and she is a pretty little thing, with glossy brown hair and big brown eyes. The local folk think that Josie is quite a catch, but Hamish couldn't be more miserable.

Mourning the loss of his wife, Rita, former NYPD homicide detective Nico Doyle moves to her hometown of Gravigna in the winesoaked region of Chianti. Half Italian and half Irish, Nico finds himself able to get by in the region with the help of Rita’s relatives, but he still feels alone and out of place. He isn’t sure if it’s peace he’s seeking, but it isn’t what he finds. Early one morning, he hears a gunshot and a dog's cries near his cabin and walks out to discover a dead body in the woods, flashily dressed in gold tennis shoes.

Detective Jack Mackinnon has his work cut out trying to track down missing student, Anya Blonski. As Mackinnon follows the trail of obsession and murder to the shady owners of the Star Academy, who thrive on society's obsession with reality TV shows, he realises the fame they offer comes at a price. When a second girl goes missing, Mackinnon is forced to consider a serial killer may be stalking the city.

Two police officers are about to head home after a long night shift when they receive one last call. En route to investigate, the patrol car spins off the road, killing one of the exhausted cops and leaving the other in critical condition. Detective Peter Diamond is assigned to look into the case. His supervisor is desperately hoping Diamond will not discover the officers were at fault. Instead Diamond discovers something even worse - a civilian on a motorized tricycle was involved in the crash and has been lying on the side of the road for hours.

At an auction house in Bath, England, a large slab of carved stone is up for sale. At the height of what turns into very competitive bidding, there is a holdup attempt by three masked raiders who are trying to steal the stone. They shoot and kill the highest bidder, a professor who has recognized the female figure carved in the stone as the Wife of Bath from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The masked would-be thieves flee, leaving the stone behind.

Nellie Cavendish has very good reasons to seek out her roots-and not only because she has no memory of her mother, and hardly knew the father who left her upbringing to paid caregivers. In the eight years since her 21st birthday, very odd things have begun to happen. Crows gather near her wherever she goes, electronics short out when she touches them, and when she's upset, really upset, it storms. At first, she chalked up the unusual happenings to coincidence, but that explanation doesn't begin to cover the vivid nightmares that torment her.

A young "national model worker," renowned for her adherence to the principles of the Communist Party, turns up dead in a Shanghai canal. As Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Special Cases Bureau struggles to trace the hidden threads of her past, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. Chen must tiptoe around his superiors if he wants to get to the bottom of this crime, and risk his career-perhaps even his life-to see justice done.

The Fitzjohn Mystery Series THE CELTIC DAGGER University professor Alex Wearing is found murdered in his study by the Post Graduate Co-coordinator, Vera Trenbath, a nosey interfering busybody. Assigned to the case is Detective Chief Inspector Alistair Fitzjohn. Fitzjohn is a detective from the old guard, whose methodical, painstaking methods are viewed by some as archaic. His relentless pursuit for the killer zeros in on Alex’s brother, James, as a key suspect in his investigation. Compelled to clear himself of suspicion, James starts his own investigation and finds himself immersed in a ...

VBI (Vermont Bureau of Investigation) head Joe Gunther and his team are called in to investigate a series of violent deaths that appear unrelated until telltale clues reveal a linkage between them and that all of the deaths are, in fact, murders. However, apart from a single drop of unexplained blood left at each crime scene, there are no obvious connections between the victims or the cases. In the search for the elusive truth, the VBI must plumb the depths of every suspect's past.

When, in the course of a week, a young heroin addict is gunned down while trying to rob a convenience store, a narcotics dealer is found hanging from a bridge, and the granddaughter of a political bigwig dies of an overdose, Vermont detective Joe Gunther vows to stop the flow of drugs into his beloved state.

A picture-perfect murder? A photographer is killed and abandoned in a macabre display on the banks of the Hay River. Constable Ezra McCann’s home is nearby and his celebrity family feel like they're targets. McCann is on the alert. He also has a strong suspicion that the new nanny is not who she seems, and that’s one more thing keeping him awake at night. Can Inspector Hilary Casgrain and the small Elk Ridge Police Department handle a crime with international overtones? Or is this really a homegrown killer stalking anyone who gets in his way? When a second body is discovered nearby, ...

On the Swedish coastline, the bodies of two victims of grisly torture and cold execution are discovered in a life raft. With no witnesses, no motives, and no crime scene, Detective Kurt Wallander is frustrated and uncertain that he has the ability to solve the case. After the victims are traced to Latvia, Major Liepa of the Riga police takes over the investigation. Thinking his work is done, Wallander slips back into his routine - until he is suddenly called to Riga and plunged into an alien world.

Detective Constable Kate Wolfe is sent to a Cheshire backwater after falling foul of a disciplinary hearing in London. But before she even has a chance to settle in, Kate finds herself in a situation from which there's no coming back. She's reported as a troublemaker to her new boss, Detective Chief Inspector Helen Taylor, a no-nonsense veteran who once had an esteemed, high-profile career. The pair investigates a spate of arson attacks, a dead body found in a burnt-out building, and a missing architect while fighting their growing attraction for each other.

A crime of passion strikes close to home when Gemma and her best friend, Hazel Cavendish, travel to Scotland, a land of mists and fine whiskey, of hidden pasts and dangerous secrets, or so Gemma discovers when an unexpected meeting with Hazel's old flame yields shocking—and mortal—consequences. Hazel is the logical suspect, but Gemma knows nothing is simple in this place of secrets and long-seething hatreds.

Her marriage over and career gone bust, Arly Hanks flees Manhattan for her hometown: Maggody, Arkansas. In a town this size, nothing much ever happens, so Arly figures she's safe as the town's first female chief of police - until the husband of one of the local barmaids escapes from state prison and heads for town. And that's not all. An EPA official with ties to polluting the local fishing hole has suddenly vanished off the face of the earth.

Nestled in the heart of the Adirondacks, Miller's Kill, New York is about as safe as it gets. That's why Episcopal minister Clare Fergusson is shocked when the July Fourth weekend brings a rash of vicious assaults to the scenic town. Even Clare's good friend, police chief Russ Van Alstyne, is shaken by the brutality of the crimes - especially when it appears that the victims were chosen because they are gay.

The small, friendly town of Gladstone, Tennessee seems the ideal place to raise a family - until two teenagers are found tortured to death. Sheriff Miranda Knight will do anything to make her small town safe again, even if it means calling in Noah Bishop, the FBI’s psychic profiler. The last time she and Noah combined their psychic powers, she was almost destroyed. Now she must learn to trust him again, or she will most certainly die at the hands of the monster who’s stalking her town.

The name's John Taylor. I work the garish streets of the Nightside - the hidden heart of London where it's always three a.m., where inhuman creatures and otherworldly gods walk side by side in the endless darkness of the soul. I have a talent for finding things. People...property...no problem. But now I'm after something different. A local diva called the Nightingale has cut herself off from her family and friends, and I've been hired to find out the reason. I'm also wondering why her suicide-prone fans think she has a voice to die for. Literally.

Joe Gunther and his team - the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) - are usually called in on major cases by local Vermont enforcement whenever they need expertise and backup. But after the state is devastated by Hurricane Irene, the police from one end of the state are taxed to their limits, leaving Joe Gunther involved in an odd and seemingly unrelated series of cases. In the wake of the hurricane, a seventeen-year-old gravesite is exposed, revealing a coffin that had been filled with rocks instead of the expected remains.

All Detective Sergeant Peter Grant wanted was a nice holiday up in Scotland. He'll need one once this is over...