Showing titles in Crime Fiction

When a small-time crook is shot down in the street, all signs point to a lone wolf, a sniper who has seemingly vanished into thin air. Down-and-out detective, Bob Oz is sitting in a dive bar in Minneapolis when he gets the call: there’s been another murder, and they don’t think it will be the last. As the body count grows, Oz suspects that something more sinister is at play. And the closer he gets the more disturbed he becomes. Because the serial killer reminds him of someone: himself.

Harry Grimm is starting to feel like a local–almost. But when his quiet happiness is interrupted by a confused 80-year-old detectorist claiming to have seen Medieval knights fighting in a nearby ruined castle, the chief inspector is forced to investigate the bizarre claims. However, his focus is soon split to a second case when a teen and her boyfriend disappear without a trace.

Former chief inspector Gamache has been hunting killers his entire career, and as the new commander of the Sûreté Academy, he is given the chance to combat the corruption and brutality that have been rife throughout the force. But when a former colleague and professor of the Sûreté Academy is found murdered, with a mysterious map of Three Pines in his possession, Gamache has an even tougher task ahead of him.

DS Lucas Walker is on assignment for the AFP, and it couldn't be more personal. This is his last chance to take down Stefan Markovich - the Vandals leader who tried to have him killed after Walker uncovered his drug operation, and has evaded justice for years. Having tracked Markovich to Berlin, Walker heads to Germany lure his nemesis out of hiding and into custody. And there is another draw for Walker in Berlin: he finally gets to see Barbara again.

John Rebus stands accused: on trial for a crime that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. Although it's not the first time the legendary detective has taken the law into his own hands, it might be the last. What drove a good man to cross the line? Or have times changed, and the rules with them? Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke faces Edinburgh's most explosive case in years, as a corrupt cop goes missing after claiming to harbour secrets that could sink the city's police force.

In the office at MI5 where he works, they call Jonas Merrick 'the eternal flame'. It isn't a compliment. It's because he never goes out. He never goes undercover, never does surveillance, never goes with the teams that kick down the doors or seize the suspects off the street. He commutes into work and sits at his desk and then he goes home. But Jonas has qualities the hot-shots fail to notice: a steely concentration, a ruthless ability to focus and find the enemy hiding in plain sight.

'It is an axiom of behavioural science that vampires are territorial while cannibals range widely.' Hannibal killed nine people before he was caught. And five on his escape. Two of his victims survived - one of them is in an asylum; but the other craves revenge. Mason Verger, a paraplegic confined to a respirator since his encounter with Dr Lecter, can move only the fingers of his crippled right hand across the soft blanket that covers his lifeless body.

A brutal attack at Fakenham Racecourse plunges DI Ashley Knight into the competitive world of horse racing, where fortunes are won and lost in the blink of an eye. As the investigation unfolds, a chilling discovery reveals a darker side to this glamorous sport. In these high-stakes arenas, where winning is everything and everyone has something to hide, a few are willing to cross the ultimate line.

Rebus is juggling four cases trying to nail one killer - who might just lead back to the infamous Bible John. And he's doing it under the scrutiny of an internal inquiry led by a man he has just accused of taking backhanders from Glasgow's Mr Big. As if this wasn't enough, there are TV cameras at his back investigating a miscarriage of justice, making Rebus a criminal in the eyes of a million or more viewers. Just one mistake is likely to mean an unpleasant and not particularly speedy death or, worse still, losing his job.

As DS Lucas Walker recovers from his injuries, he heads from Caloodie, Queensland, to the Gold Coast. Surfer's Paradise: a seaside city where gleaming high rises fringe sparkling surf beaches, sunny days lead to wild nights, and criminals and bikie gangs mingle with tourists and dignitaries at five star hotels, clubs and casinos. Before long, Walker is part of a team trying to solve a horrific home invasion and murder that has claimed the life of a young mother and left her nine-year-old daughter fighting to survive. Can he help them find the perpetrators, and keep the young girl safe?

When frantic, dishevelled Edie Ledwell appears in the office begging to speak to her, private detective Robin Ellacott doesn't know quite what to make of the situation. The co-creator of a popular cartoon, The Ink Black Heart, Edie is being persecuted by a mysterious online figure who goes by the pseudonym of Anomie. Edie is desperate to uncover Anomie's true identity. Robin decides that the agency can't help with this—and thinks nothing more of it until a few days later, when she reads the shocking news that Edie has been tasered and then murdered in Highgate Cemetery.

The past is coming for Chief Inspector Taleb. He may not know it but he will soon enough. And the past in Algeria is venomous, vengeful and relentless, designed to consume the unwary traveller. He will soon find himself looking down the barrel of a thirty-year-old mystery, which, if he’s not careful, will be aimed squarely at him.

In Richmond, Virginia, young lovers are dying. So far, four couples in the area have disappeared, only to be found months later as mutilated corpses. When the daughter of the president's newest drug czar vanishes along with her boyfriend, Dr Kay Scarpetta knows time is short. Following a macabre trail of evidence that ties the present homicides to a grisly crime in the past, Kay must draw upon her own personal resources to track down a murderer who is as skilled at eliminating clues as Kay is at finding them.

The young man with the shock of white-blond hair lay spread-eagled on the floor, surrounded by fallen books. His hand reached out to the scattered pages, as though he was trying to tell her something. But who is he? How did he come to be killed in Flora’s ordinary little bookshop? Flora finds out he was staying at the Priory Hotel, and when the gardener suddenly dies in its beautiful grounds only a few days later, she is certain that something untoward is happening in her quiet village by the sea.

On New Year’s Day, Shetland lies buried beneath a deep layer of snow. Trudging home, Fran Hunter's eye is drawn to a vivid splash of colour on the white ground, ravens circling above. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbour. As Fran opens her mouth to scream, the ravens continue their deadly dance. The body is found close to the home of a lonely outcast and local suspicion falls firmly on him. But when Inspector Jimmy Perez insists on broadening the search for suspects, a veil of distrust and fear is thrown over the entire community.

When Shetland detective Jimmy Perez finds a body in a hut used by fishermen, it seems to be a straightforward case of suicide. He recognises the victim - a stranger with amnesia who had disrupted a local party the night before his death. Yet this is no desperate act of anguish but the work of a cold and calculating killer. As Perez investigates, he finds himself mired in the hidden secrets of the small Biddista community. Then another body is found. Perez knows he must break the cycle before another death occurs. But this is a crazy time of year, when night blurs into day and nothing is quite as it seems....

When a teenage couple go missing, the police aren’t too concerned. Young lovers often make bad choices. Then a body is found near a Suffolk lighthouse, and shortly after, two girls seem to vanish into thin air. Freshly promoted DI Ashley Knight knows she has a battle on her hands to keep the public safe, and she’s going to need expert help. Ashley turns to her old protégé, Hector Fade, seconded from The Met to analyse an avalanche of data. But neither Hector nor Ashley are prepared for the chilling connection his work uncovers to the body by the lighthouse.

It is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident--an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander--until he becomes a suspect. With Case Histories, Kate Atkinson showed how brilliantly she could explore the crime genre and make it her own. In One Good Turn, she takes her masterful plotting one step further.

When a woman's body is discovered in a cathedral and hours later a young man is found hanging from a tree outside his home, Detective Lottie Parker is called in to lead the investigation. Both bodies have the same distinctive tattoo clumsily inscribed on their legs. It's clear the pair are connected, but how? The trail leads Lottie to St Angela's, a former children's home, with a dark connection to her own family history. Suddenly the case just got personal.

Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Québec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning.