Showing results for "life" in Crime Thrillers

Why would a man escape from prison the day before he's due to be released? Audie Palmer has spent a decade in prison for an armed robbery in which four people died, including two of the gang. Seven million dollars has never been recovered and everybody believes that Audie knows where the money is. For 10 years he has been beaten, stabbed, throttled and threatened almost daily by prison guards, inmates and criminal gangs, who all want to answer this same question, but suddenly Audie vanishes, the day before he's due to be released.

On a freezing winter morning, fishermen pull a body from the sea. It is quickly discovered that the dead man was the prime suspect in a decade-old investigation, when a prominent civil servant disappeared without trace. DCI Karen Pirie was the last detective to review the file and is drawn into a sinister world of betrayal and dark secrets. But Karen is already grappling with another case, one with even more questions and fewer answers. A skeleton has been discovered in an abandoned camper van and all clues point to a killer who never faced justice - a killer who is still out there.

They are the most violent, blood-thirsty, and vicious of criminals. While hunting for them, FBI profilers call these monsters UNSUBS, short for "unknown subjects of ongoing investigations". At any given time, in the United States there are more than 50 serial killers at large, preying on vulnerable, unsuspecting victims. Until yesterday, no one knew Florida had another serial killer on the loose. Special Agent Tess Winnett calls this particularly elusive one the "Taker of Lives".

Newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison has elbowed her way into the Area Major Incident Pool, or AMIP, an elite team investigating non-domestic murders. With her new position, she hopes things will change: the rampant sexism, the snide remarks, the undermining. Then she gets her first assignment: a five-year-old cold case of a missing teenager no one else has any interest in investigating, and an assumed suicide Tennison suspects is, in fact, murder. But as Tennison gathers the crucial evidence to secure arrests, her new colleagues watch like vultures circling prey.

Dragged up on a council estate, Jason Rampling was determined to change his lot. Jason's a chancer, shameless with his good looks and his gift for earning a few quid. Life is easy when the money rolls in. Melissa thought she'd struck gold marrying Jason. Being on his arm meant she was finally a someone. But there's no glamour in waiting for your husband to come home or waiting for a knock on the door.

Stephen Leeds is schizophrenic (...probably...) and he's in demand. But not for his own skills - his clients want to tap in to the imaginary experts that populate his mind - and it's getting a bit crowded in there. One of his many 'aspects' is a trained soldier, another a psychological expert; a third is a librarian, and all of them want to help him solve problems, making him an exceptionally versatile intelligence agent. If you need a stolen corpse retrieved or a missing inventor found, Stephen Leeds is the man - or, rather, the team - for the job.

Big secrets run deep. Former FBI agent Jack McBride took the job as chief of police for Stillwater, Texas, to start a new life with his teenage son, Ethan, away from the suspicions that surrounded his wife's disappearance a year earlier. With a low crime rate and a five-man police force, he expected it to be a nice, easy gig; hot checks, traffic violations, some drugs, occasional domestic disturbances, and petty theft. Instead, within a week he is investigating a staged murder-suicide.

Detective Michael Bennett is back and the race is on to catch a deadly killer terrorising New York. The Teacher has a meticulous and calculated plan. Cold-hearted and cunning, no one knows who he is or where he came from. Until now. Now it is time for everyone to learn his name as he teaches New York a lesson it will never forget. Intent on exacting revenge and causing mass hysteria, he embarks on the worst killing spree the city has ever seen.

When a young man is found lying on a station platform with a hole in his head, DI Kate Young is called in to investigate the grisly murder. But the killing is no one-off. As bodies start to pile up, she is faced with what might be an impossible task - to hunt down a ruthless killer on a seemingly random rampage.

The gripping new thriller from the bestselling author of The Couple at No 9.

When journalist Ben Harper is asked to help re-examine an unsolved murder case from thirty years ago, he immediately agrees. It's not just that the victim was also a journalist, murdered after she'd published a series of shocking interviews with victims of domestic abuse. It's also that he understands all too well the need of victim's daughter, Doctor Uma Jha, for answers.

An archaeological dig at the old South Leith parish kirkyard has turned up a mysterious body dating from around 700 years ago. The experts wonder if she wasn't murdered and dumped, but some suspect that this gruesome discovery is a sacrifice, placed there for a specific purpose. Then a second body is unearthed. This victim went missing only 30 years ago—but the similarities between her death and the ancient body's suggest something even more disturbing.

The envelope is unremarkable. There is no return address. It contains a single folded sheet of white paper. The envelope drops through the mail slot like any other piece of post. But for the nine complete strangers who receive it—each of them recognising just one name, their own, on the enclosed list—it will be the most life altering letter they ever receive. It could also be the last, as one by one, they start to meet their end.

The tranquillity of a cruise along the Nile was shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway had been shot through the head. She was young, stylish, and beautiful. A girl who had everything...until she lost her life. Hercule Poirot recalled an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: "I'd like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger." Yet in this exotic setting nothing was ever quite what it seemed.

Twenty years ago: One rainy night, Olivia Rutherford is driving three friends home when a figure in the road causes her to swerve and crash. Regaining consciousness, she finds herself alone in the car—her friends have vanished. They are never seen again. Now: Journalist Jenna Halliday visits the close-knit community of Stafferbury to persuade Olivia to talk and solve the mystery of the girls' disappearance. But Olivia won't speak. What happened? Is Olivia hiding something? Why are the people of Stafferbury so frightened?

Nick Buckley was an unusual name for a pretty young woman. But then she had led an unusual life. First, on a treacherous Cornish hillside, the brakes on her car failed. Then, on a coastal path, a falling boulder missed her by inches. Later, an oil painting fell and almost crushed her in bed. Upon discovering a bullet-hole in Nick's sun hat, Hercule Poirot decides the girl needs his protection. At the same time, he begins to unravel the mystery of a murder that hasn't been committed. Yet.

New Delhi, three a.m. A speeding Mercedes jumps the kerb, and in the blink of an eye five people are dead. It's a rich man's car, but when the dust settles there is no rich man at all, just a shell-shocked servant who cannot explain the strange series of events that led to this crime. Nor can he foresee the dark drama that is about to unfold.

When Gemma Woodstock, homicide investigator in the large rural town of Smithson, views the body of her old school friend Rosalind splayed open on the autopsy table, she suffers the same feeling of inscrutability that has coloured her relationship with Rose for so long. Gemma, however, is hiding her own secrets. She has a four-year-old son, Ben, and has recently moved in with the boy's father, Scott. But the relationship is troubled, and she is having an affair with a colleague that she works closely with.

Judi Rifkin is one of the world’s most successful collectors of the weird and unnatural. In a London underworld filled with criminals with very special talents, Judi is a force to be reckoned with. And Gideon Sable—thief, rogue, and chancer—owes her a very large favor. Judi makes him an offer he can’t refuse: steal her the legendary Masque of Ra, kept safe in a Las Vegas casino, and she’ll wipe the slate clean. This isn’t Gideon’s first heist. But with old grudges, an unpredictable crew, and a formidable supernatural security team, this job might be a gamble too far.

As Sheriff Jenna Alton and her deputy David Kane rush into the remote pine forest surrounding Black Rock Falls, Jenna’s pulse races when she sees the glint of metal behind a line of trees: a prison bus, the lifeless body of its driver slumped over the steering wheel, and its four prisoners escaped into the wilderness… Jenna’s heart pounds at the thought of the violent murders each of the fugitives committed, among them the The Ice Pick Killer who drove women to remote locations before taking their innocent young lives. And worse, female warden, Amy Clark, is missing from the bus.