Traditional Police

After a teenage boy is found dead on a Lenchester train, Detective Chief Inspector Whitney Walker believes they’re being targeted by the notorious Carriage Killer, who chooses a local rail network, commits four murders, and moves on. Against her wishes, Walker’s boss brings in officers from another force to help the investigation and prevent more deaths, but she’s forced to defend her team against this outside interference.

In this novel from best-selling author John Verdon, ingenious puzzle solver Dave Gurney puts under the magnifying glass a notorious serial murder case - one whose motives have been enshrined as law-enforcement dogma - and discovers that everyone has it wrong.

Here are 12 ingenious, witty mysteries showing the author at her best, including: the curious disappearance of Lord Listerdale, the strange meeting on a train of a feckless man and a beautiful girl, and Philomel Cottage and the extraordinary country house visit of Edward Robinson. Each is expertly narrated by Hugh Fraser.

Ninety-one-year-old Alice Hoffman died alone in her top floor flat. Social services say she slipped through the cracks in a failing system. But detectives Arthur Bryant and John May of the Peculiar Crimes Unit have their suspicions. Mrs. Hoffman was not as innocent as she appeared. A former government security expert, she had once worked for their own unit, but there's no one left who can remember her. When they uncover a link between her and a diplomat desperate to leave the country, it begins to look as if someone might have committed an impossible murder.

The third book in the recently revamped Nantucket mystery series. When two children make a grisly discovery on Sconset beach, Detective Meredith Folger finds herself with a perplexing case on her hands. The crime lab can tell her only that the newly unearthed skeletal remains belonged to a woman who was strangled to death somewhere between two and 10 years ago - a conclusion that sends Merry sifting through old missing-persons files. But then a shocking piece of news changes everything.

When children Josh and Dilys find a body in the woods on the outskirts of their small Cotswold village, they are too terrified to report it. But when, as adults, Josh discovers that his sister has kept a memento - the victim's charm bracelet - he feels compelled to share the secret. When Josh unburdens himself to retired superintendent Alan Markby, his instincts tell him that this is linked to a missing person, a case long grown cold. The missing girl was last seen in the region currently under the jurisdiction of Superintendent Ian Carter and Inspector Jess Campbell.

The house called Sunset has been Marcia's summer home for her entire life. Both of her parents died there, and she and her brother spent their youth exploring its rambling hallways and seaside grounds. They love the old house, but Marcia's sister-in-law has never taken to it. Juliette loathes the sea, and soon comes to loathe her husband as well. After they divorce, Juliette pays a final visit to Sunset, demanding alimony. She is there for a few tense days before she disappears. It takes them a week to find her body.

Slumped on a seat under an oak tree is old Sampson Warrenby, with a bullet through his brain. He is discovered by his anxious niece, Mavis, who is just one of the 10 people in the village in the running for chief suspect, having just cause to dislike Warrenby intensely. Only Chief Inspector Hemingway can uncover which of the 10 has turned hatred into murder.

On the hottest day in living memory, Richard Mallory Tindall, the owner of a patent firm, does not return home to Cleete village. When a man is found crushed to death, Tindall's case goes from missing person to homicide. In the course of solving murder cases, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan has seen all manner of ugly death. But there's something particularly gruesome about this one, the body crushed beneath the marble and iron of an old Saxon church tower. With rubble blocking off access to the crime scene, no one can get close enough to inspect the body.

When the San Angelo drifts into port in the Thames Estuary, telephones begin to ring across the capital and an intricate series of events is set in motion. Beset by dreadful storms in the Bay of Biscay, the ship, along with the 'mixed cargo' it carries, is late. Unaware of the machinations of avaricious importers, wayward captains and unscrupulous traders, Harry Reed and June Harvey are thrust together by a riverside accident, before being swept into the current of a dark plot developing on the dockside.

A peaceful demonstration in the normally quiet town of Eastvale ended with 50 arrests---and the brutal stabbing death of a young constable. But Chief Inspector Alan Banks fears there is worse violence in the offing. For CID superintendent Richard "Dirty Dick" Burgess has arrived from London to take charge of the investigation, fueled by professional outrage and volatile, long-simmering hatreds.

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.

When Laurence Harford, a prominent businessman and philanthropist is found murdered in the historic Rocks area of Sydney, Detective Chief Inspector Fitzjohn is asked to solve the crime quickly and discreetly. After barely starting his investigation, uncovering a discarded mistress and disgruntled employees, a second killing occurs. Meanwhile, Laurence’s nephew, Nicholas Harford, has his certainties in life shaken when he becomes a suspect in his uncle’s death, and receives a mysterious gold locket that starts a chain of events unravelling his family’s dark truths.

Autumn in Paradise, Massachusetts, is usually an idyllic time - but not this year. A Hollywood movie company has come to town, and brought with it a huge cast, crew, and a troubled star. Marisol Hinton is very beautiful, reasonably talented, and scared out of her wits that her estranged husband's jealousy might take a dangerous turn. When she becomes the subject of a death threat, Jesse and the rest of the Paradise police department go on high alert.

The death of unpopular Herbert Terrell seems accidental - although this expert mountain climber plunged off a mere hill in Czechoslovakia. The saddest part of the tragedy is that no one cares, not his ex-wife, his step daughter Tossa at Oxford, or his colleagues at a British scientific institute...until Tossa is shocked into emotion by a mysterious note suggesting Terrell was murdered.

The leaders of the free world descend on Scotland for an international conference, and every cop in the country is needed for front-line duty - except one. John Rebus' reputation precedes him, and his bosses don't want him anywhere near Presidents Bush and Putin, which explains why he's manning an abandoned police station when a call comes in. During a preconference dinner at Edinburgh Castle, a delegate has fallen to his death. Accident, suicide, or something altogether more sinister?

Thea Osborne and her trusty spaniel, Hepzie, have been asked by the Montgomerys to look after their house in Blockley while they take a much-needed holiday. Their elderly mother, Granny Gardner, shouldn't be any trouble - although she is slightly forgetful. Thea's got far more to worry about when a body is discovered in the house next door.

The woman lies dead at the foot of the stairs. It's obvious what happened: she tripped and fell. But PC D'Arblay, called to the dilapidated West London villa by an anonymous tip-off, can't shake the feeling that's exactly what someone wants him to think. It was the deep head wound that killed her - but her dying fall left no blood trail. DCI Slider, of the Shepherd's Bush murder squad, is soon convinced D'Arblay's right. But with no motive, no murder weapon and no idea even who the victim is, Slider faces steep odds to get a result.

Net curtains twitch furiously, and neighbours have observations to make to Chief Inspector Purbright and Sergeant Love about the inhabitants of 14, Beatrice Avenue. Nice Gordon Periam, the mild-mannered tobacconist, and his rather less nice (in fact a bit of a bounder) lodger Brian Hopjoy had apparently shared the house amicably. But now neither man is to be found, and something very disagreeable seems to be lurking in the drains.... Then a couple of government spooks turn up, one with an eye for the ladies - the drama is acquiring overtones of a Bond movie!

Nothing ever happens in Maggody, Arkansas, population 755. Aside from handling the occasional barroom brawl or exploding still, Chief of Police Arly Hanks spends her days sipping coffee and squashing flies. She returned to Maggody two years ago, licking her wounds after a bad Manhattan divorce, and she fell backward into the role of sheriff. From Hizzoner the Moron to Ruby Bee Hanks, the people of Maggody are all crazy in their own ways, and that craziness is about to turn deadly.