Western Police Procedural Fiction

The statements before Inspector Morse appeared to confirm the bald, simple truth. After leaving home to return to school, teenager Valerie Taylor had completely vanished, and the trail had gone cold. Until two years, three months and two days after Valerie's disappearance, somebody decides to supply some surprising new evidence for the case....

In The Blue Last, Richard Jury finally faces the last thing in the world he wants to deal with - the war that killed his mother, his father, his childhood. Mickey Haggerty, a DCI with the London City police, has asked for Jury's help. Two skeletons have been unearthed in the City during the excavation of London's last bombsite, where once a pub stood called the The Blue Last. Mickey believes that a child who survived the bombing has been posing for over 50 years as a child who didn't.

The sweet countenance of Reason greeted Morse serenely when he woke and told him that it would be no bad idea to have a quiet look at the problem itself before galloping off to a solution. Chief Inspector Morse was alone among the congregation in suspecting continued unrest in the quiet parish of St Frideswide's. Most people could still remember the churchwarden's murder. A few could still recall the murderer's suicide. Now even the police had closed the case.

Detective Richard Jury is back in the 16th novel in Martha Grimes' extraordinary New York Times best-selling series - now enmeshed in a series of strange crimes and disappearances and an age-old tragedy that consumes his sidekick, Melrose Plant....

When a county employee is found shot to death in sun-drenched daylight while sitting in his county road grader, Undersheriff Bill Gastner is faced with puzzling questions. The simplest explanation - that an errant bullet from a careless target shooter’s rifle blew out Larry Zipoli’s brains - is soon discarded as inconsistencies surface. The fatal bullet shows no rifling marks, and investigation shows that the shooter walked directly toward the road grader, in full view of the victim - who did nothing to defend himself.

As he leans over the body of an unidentified five-year-old girl shot in the back on a shabby London street, Superintendent Richard Jury knows he'll be facing one of the saddest investigations of his life. His colleague DI Johnny Blakeley, head of the pedophile unit of NSY, thinks he knows where this child came from - an iniquitous house on that same street, owned by well-known financier Viktor Baumann and fronted by a woman named Murchison. Blakeley has been trying to wreck their operation for a long time.

No one liked Jake Kinsey. A rich man, he turned up out of nowhere, acquired Exmouth’s trophy penthouse flat, and then bought his way into the local rowing club. And now he’s dead. D/S Jimmy Suttle, a newcomer to the Devon and Cornwall force from his old job on Major Crimes in Portsmouth, is the one detective who suspects that Kinsey has been killed. His boss, beset by budget cuts and the pressure of other cases, needs to move on. The enquiry is dead in the water.

The once-charismatic Billy Maples was last seen in a club named Dust, before his murder in a trendy London hotel. Proving as inscrutable - and challenging - to Jury as the case is the beautiful chief inspecting officer. Before his death, Maples was a patron of London's finest art galleries and caretaker of author Henry James' house in Rye. It's there where Jury installs Melrose Plant, who takes his job to heart, as Jury closes in on the dark secrets behind Maples' friends and family.

Special Agent Tucker Snow knows there's big money roaming the fields under the wide Texas sky—and the cattle rustlers committing large-scale thefts on remote ranches know it, too. But when a prominent local rancher dies unexpectedly and his property is quietly sold to an unknown buyer, Tucker suspects there's something more sinister going on in his jurisdiction than the usual steal-and-resell racket. Still raw after the tragic death of his wife and young daughter, the lawman can't bear the thought of more innocent lives destroyed by people whose greed poisons everything around them.

Anne Scott's address was scribbled on a crumpled note in the pocket of Morse's smartest suit. He turned the corner of Canal Street, Jericho, on the afternoon of Wednesday, 3rd October. He hadn't planned a second visit. But he was back later the same day - as the officer in charge of a suicide investigation....

Life is good for DI Dan Hellier until the discovery of two headless, handless bodies buried in a bog on Dartmoor. How can he identify the victims when nobody has reported them missing? The tension mounts when the death of a young man plunges Hellier into the murky world of the Garrett family. Could the peaceful, family-run Animal Rescue Centre really be a cover for murder and other criminal activity? Hellier is about to learn just how far people will go to get what they want, as he races to catch a murderer before it’s too late.

Border patrol agents are being ambushed along the Big Bend region of West Texas, a notorious drug corridor running east and west across the Lone Star State. They’re not the only targets. A film production depicting human trafficking in the area has been attacked by a brutal drug cartel. Into this lawless frontier steps Texas Ranger Sonny Hawke, ready and willing to dispense his own brand of justice. It’s an all-out war with the thinnest line separating the good from the bad. Sonny knows the only way out is to aim straight and stand your ground....

After a dog walker discovers human remains in a badger sett in the idyllic Salisbury countryside, DI Ford is called in to lead the ensuing murder investigation. When a second victim turns up in a nearby pond, Ford is determined to find the connection. Both victims met their fate near the sprawling Alverchalke Estate, ancestral home of a decorated war hero and his family. One was a dogged eco-activist and vocal critic of Lord Baverstock. The other was a petty criminal and poacher, youngest brother of a notorious local crime family.

The death of Sylvia Kaye figured dramatically in Thursday afternoon's edition of the Oxford Mail. By Friday evening Inspector Morse had informed the nation that the police were looking for a dangerous man - facing charges of willful murder, sexual assault and rape. But as the obvious leads fade into twilight and darkness, Morse becomes more and more convinced that passion holds the key....

Posadas County, sitting along New Mexico's southern border, has enjoyed a surge in visitors, jobs, and prosperity since rancher Miles Waddell used much of his inherited half billion to create an internationally renowned astronomy complex atop Torrance Mesa. Passion, not profit, drives Waddell. Yet benefits include a narrow-gauge train linking the village of Posadas to NightZone. But a ripple of unease is felt across the county with the arrival of developer - no, speculator - Kyle Thompson.

The governor of Wyoming has given game warden Joe Pickett the thankless assignment of taking a tech baron on a hunting trip. But unbeknownst to them, as they trek further into the wilderness, a hunter is hot on their heels. Joe must rely on his wits and his knowledge of the outdoors to protect himself and his charge. Meanwhile, when Joe's closest friend, Nate Romanowski, and his own daughter, Sheridan, learn of the threat to his life, they follow him into the woods to rescue him, and all three come together for one final showdown.

A father is found dead in his posh West London home. Stabbed to death. By somebody who couldn’t stop. There are seven or eight puncture wounds. There’s no time to relax for recently married DI Rob Miller. Now a second man is found brutally murdered in the same frenzied manner. Do the police have a serial killer on their hands?

From Craig Johnson, author of the acclaimed novel The Cold Dish, comes this enthralling Sheriff Walt Longmire mystery that received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews. With a distinctive literary flair, Johnson leads us into the wide open space of Absaroka County, Wyoming. When an elderly local woman is found poisoned, Longmire begins an investigation that soon has him ensnared in a deadly spider's web.

Investigator James Creed has finally settled into life in San Francisco with his found family, the Brotherhood of the Golden Cog. Though he misses his adult daughter, he has a criminal leader to track down—an outlaw who murders innocents, enslaves the downtrodden, and uses machines to alter the bodies and minds of his many victims.

Chief Inspector Morse seldom allowed himself to be caught up in New Year celebrations. So the murder inquiry in the festive hotel had a certain appeal. It was a crime worthy of the season. The corpse was still in fancy dress. And hardly a single guest at the Haworth had registered under a genuine name....