Showing titles in Traditional Detectives

Two deaths, the suicide of a newly laid-off worker and an unscrupulous businessman found murdered, lead Inspector Montalbano to inspect the Halcyon, a nearly abandoned mysterious ship with no passengers.

Texas attorney and former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland has many secrets. Among them is Vernon Smother's son, Lucas, a now-teenaged boy about whom few know the truth: Lucas is really Billy Bob's illegitimate son. When Lucas is arrested for murder, Billy Bob must confront the past and serve as the boy's criminal attorney. As a result, he incurs enemies that are far more dangerous than any he faced as a Texas Ranger.

When the Australian Mystery Writers' Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. And I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn't pan out. The program is a who's who of crime writing royalty: the debut writer (me!), the forensic science writer, the blockbuster writer, the legal thriller writer, the literary writer and the psychological suspense writer. But when one of us is murdered, six authors quickly turn into five detectives.

Not-quite-newlywed Angela Marchmont is having a belated honeymoon on the idyllic Greek island of Rhodes, but has barely even unpacked her bathing-suit before an unwelcome encounter with the dead body of a young archaeologist draws her into a tangled web of murder and blackmail.

The Lord Peter Wimsey and Detective Alan Grant Collection is a collection of 11 detective novels and stories from Dorothy L. Sayers and Josephine Tey, read by award-winning narrators Karen Cass and Jonathan Keeble.

The heist was legendary, still talked about 20 years after the priceless paintings disappeared from one of Boston's premier art museums. Most thought the art was lost forever, buried deep, sold off overseas, or, worse, destroyed as incriminating evidence. But when paint chips from the most valuable piece stolen, Gentlemen in Black by a Spanish master, arrives at the desk of a Boston journalist, the museum finds hope and enlists Spenser's help.

The Railway Detective faces his most dangerous adversary yet. It is 1852, and Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant Sergeant Victor Leeming are faced with their most complex and difficult case to date. As a train speeds over the Sankey Viaduct, a man is hurled from a carriage and plummets into the canal below. It later transpires that he has been stabbed to death. With no papers by which to identify the man, the detectives' investigation is hampered from the start. Suspecting that the victim may have come from continental Europe, Colbeck and Leeming take the case to France where a new railway is being built by a British contractor.

Dashiell Hammett is best known as both pioneer and master of American hard-boiled detective fiction, but these dozen and a half stories both affirm that reputation and present him in a different light. Along with the full-length treatments On the Make and The Kiss-Off, this collection includes never before and rarely published stories that explore failed romance, courage in the face of uncertainty, hypocrisy, and crass opportunism.

Small-town police chief Arly Hanks takes on the New York Police Department to save her mother from a murder rap in this madcap police procedural.

Mr. Jelly's Business is one of the finest of Arthur Upfield's many distinguished stories about the career of Detective Inspector Napoleon ("Bony") Bonaparte. It takes Bony to the West Australian town of Burracoppin to investigate the disappearance of George Loftus, whose car was found wrecked near the longest fence in the world, the 1,500 mile Rabbit Fence. He meets Loftus's wife, who is anything but grief-stricken at her husband's disappearance; Loftus's hired man, singularly reticent about his own past history; and many of Burracoppin's numerous gossips.

On the eve of Newgate Prison's demolition, Watson spies Holmes leaving a public sale of the prison's miscellany in the company of a beautiful stranger, and in possession of an unusual trophy–the death mask of a woman who, more than 20 years earlier, had been executed for the murder of her three children. Holmes agrees to satisfy Watson's curiosity about the memento by recounting the decades-old history of its subject.

Still in the formative years of his career, Hercule Poirot faces a most taxing case: who killed Lord Cronshaw? Was Coco Courtenay's death on the same night a mere coincidence? And did she deliberately take an overdose of cocaine?

The client was young, blonde, and beautiful, and she wanted to disappear. The trouble was she wouldn't say why, and she wouldn't give her name. So Perry Mason agreed to a code of identification based on her measurements: 36-24-36. But according to Della Street, the figures were padded, and as it turned out, so was everything the client said. Certainly the bag full of cash she carries isn't shopping money.

Twelve friends sit down for supper at Strontfield Park, but only 11 survive the evening. After dinner, the host, William Fent, offers to drive one of his guests home, only to die behind the wheel in a violent accident. The autopsy shows that Fent ingested enough barbiturates to kill a horse. So begins a fresh tale of murder and deceit for Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, whose list of suspects begins and ends with the surviving dinner guests.

Derby Day at Epsom Downs and a multitude of people crowd to watch the races: dukes and dustmen, bishops and beggars, privileged ladies and prostitutes. The gamut of Victorian society, though, is also a hotbed for crime and crooks of all kinds. With the country a-flutter in the run-up to this national occasion, events reach fever pitch when a disembodied head is discovered on a passenger train at Crewe; the first in a murky course of events that takes in murder, fraud and race-fixing.

Like most women, Elizabeth Miles assumes many roles; unlike most, hers have made her a woman on the run. Living on the edge of society, Elizabeth uses her guile to relieve so-called respectable men of their ill-gotten gains. But brutal and greedy entrepreneur Oscar Thornton is out for blood. He's lost a great deal of money and is not going to forgive a woman for outwitting him. With his thugs hot on her trail, Elizabeth seizes the moment to blend in with a group of women who have an agenda of their own.

Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s deceptively mild spinster sleuth, is being treated to a few days’ holiday by her niece, staying at Bertram’s Hotel, a dignified, unostentatious establishment tucked away in a back street of busy Mayfair. Here is a place where sedate upper class ladies, retired military gentlemen and the higher echelons of the clergy can indulge in the comforts of a bygone age. But Miss Marple begins to feel uneasy. Something sinister lurks beneath the polished veneer.

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.

There's Rosemary, that's for remembrance. Published in 1945, "Sparkling Cyanide" is all about remembrance. It begins with six characters recalling the horrific death of Rosemary Barton, a beautiful but shallow young heiress poisoned by a cyanide-spiked glass of champagne whilst celebrating her birthday at a smart London restaurant.

Sherlock Holmes is no stranger to humanity's most fiendish crimes. In fourteen classic stories, Holmes and Dr. Watson confront exceptionally challenging and notoriously vicious cases. Can guilt be used as a murder weapon? When does beauty become a deadly lure? Are even the most seemingly innocent members of society capable of killing in cold blood? Cloaked in terror and tragedy, dangerous and often bloody, these are adventures which plunge Holmes and Watson into the realm of nightmares.