Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Police Procedurals

Florence, October 1966. The rain is never-ending. When a young boy vanishes on his way home from school the police fear the worst, and Inspector Bordelli begins an increasingly desperate investigation. Then the flood hits. During the night of 4th November the swollen River Arno, already lapping the arches of the Ponte Vecchio, breaks its banks and overwhelms the city. Streets become rushing torrents, the force of the water sweeping away cars and trees, doors, shutters and anything else in its wake.

The 26th instalment of the internationally best-selling DCI Banks series. When the body of a teenage boy is found stuffed into a wheely bin on the East Side Estate, Banks and Annie have a homegrown murder case to solve. But Banks' attention is also on Zelda, who, in helping him track down his old enemy, has put herself in danger and alerted the stone-cold Eastern European sex traffickers who brought her to the UK.

When Karen Drew is found sitting in her wheelchair staring out to sea with her throat cut one chilly morning, DI Annie Cabbot, on loan to Eastern Area, gets lumbered with the case. Back in Eastvale, that same Sunday morning, 19-year-old Hayley Daniels is found raped and strangled in the Maze, a tangle of narrow alleys behind Eastvale's market square, after a drunken night on the town with a group of friends, and DCI Alan Banks is called in. Banks finds suspects galore, while Annie seems to hit a brick wall - until she reaches a breakthrough....

When a young Vietnamese girl goes missing in Scotland, DI Birch knows there is more to the case than meets the eye. Her colleagues won't take it seriously - but Helen's instinct tells her that Linh is in mortal danger. Beatrice knows something terrible has happened to three young people in Edinburgh. She can see them in her mind's eye - frightened and alone, desperate for help. Ever since she was a child, she's had visions of the future - and she's ignored them before, with dangerous consequences. This time, she must help the police find Linh.

At 8 a.m., the first shots are fired. At 1 p.m., the police establish the gunman has a hostage. By 5 p.m., a siege is underway. At 9 p.m., DI Helen Birch walks, alone and unarmed, into an abandoned Borders farmhouse to negotiate with the killer. One day. One woman. One chance to get everyone out alive.

Why would a mathematics professor from Cambridge University, renting a holiday home outside Cape Town, require a false identity and three bodyguards? And where is he, now that they are dead? The only clue to the bodyguards' murder is the snake engraved on the shell casings of the bullets that killed them. Investigating the massacre, Benny Griessel and his team find themselves being drawn into an international conspiracy with shocking implications.

A disgraced college lecturer is found murdered with £5,000 in his pocket on a disused railway line near his home. Since being dismissed from his job for sexual misconduct four years previously, he has been living a poverty-stricken and hermit-like existence in this isolated spot. The suspects range from several individuals at the college where he used to teach to a woman who knew the victim back in the early '70s at Essex University, then a hotbed of political activism.

Robertson Bennet returns to Edinburgh after a 25-year absence in search of his parents and his inheritance. But both have disappeared. A quick, routine police check should be enough - and Detective Inspector Helen Birch has enough on her plate trying to help her brother, Charlie, after an assault in prison. But all her instincts tell her not to let this case go. And so she digs. George and Phamie Bennet were together for a long time. No one can ever really know the secrets kept between husband and wife.

A woman's body is found in a river just outside of Lisbon. Inspectors Isabel Reis and Aleksandr Voronov identify the murder victim as Marta Nunes—a youth centre worker who, like Isabel, classifies as Gifted. Born with special abilities, the Gifted are often looked at with a certain level of suspicion. In the search for her killer, Reis digs into Marta's past. She soon discovers that she is connected to a number of missing women. All young, all telepathic Gifted, all vanished off the face of the earth.

Christie Doyle is living the dream: she has a beautiful mansion on the South Downs with an infinity pool and stables, and her husband, Kenny, spoils her rotten. It's her birthday and she is the centre of the most amazing party. And then the bombshell drops. Kenny confesses to an affair and asks for a divorce. Worse is to come when the 'other woman' - Lara, nineteen years old and pregnant with Kenny's child - is found dead. Suspicion falls on Christie and the Doyles' life is ripped apart as the police hunt for evidence.

During a remote meeting, an official watches from Lisbon as his colleague, Inácio Machado, a Portuguese diplomat based in London's Portuguese embassy, dies of what looks to be a heart attack. When no one comes into the room to Inácio's aid, he tries frantically to contact the embassy to get immediate help. He tries and tries again, but no one picks up the phone and he's forced to call the British emergency services. When local police arrive, they walk into a disturbing scene. Everyone inside the building is dead, all seemingly from the same cause.

In the Gare do Oriente, a body sits, slumped, in a stationary train. A high-profile man appears to have died by throwing himself repeatedly against the glass. But according to witnesses, he may not have done this of his own accord. Lisbon 2021. A small percentage of the population are diagnosed as Gifted. Along with the power comes stigma and suspicion. In a prejudiced city, Gifted Inspector Isabel Reis is hiding her own secrets while putting her life on the line to stop an ingenious killer.

It starts with a body - a young woman found dead in an Iowa cornfield, on one of the few family farms still managing to compete with the giants of Big Agriculture. For Sergeant Riley Fisher, newly promoted to head of investigations at the Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office, an already horrific crime takes on a personal edge when she discovers the victim is an old friend, from a dark past she thought she'd left behind.

The Sunday Times best-selling first instalment in the Hull-based DS Aector McAvoy series. Meet DS Aector McAvoy, and begin David Mark's addictive crime series. DS Aector McAvoy is a man with a troubled past. His unwavering belief in justice has made him an outsider in the police force he serves, a good man among the lazy and corrupt. Then on a cold day in December he is the first cop on the scene when a young girl is killed in Hull's historic church - and the only one to see the murderer.

Vintage Peter Robinson: a standalone LAPD crime thriller, written and set 20 years ago - never before available in the United Kingdom. In 1980s Hollywood, the beautiful star of a hit TV cop show is being sent strange letters. At first Sarah Broughton dismisses the letters as the ramblings of a lonely fan. But when the letters take on a disturbing tone, and Sarah discovers a body in the sand outside her Malibu beach house, the experts are brought in.

In the 1970s, a terrifying serial killer stalked the streets of Tynemouth. The press called him the Joker. The crimes stopped - but the man was never caught. And now he's back. A body has been found in a sleazy motel room, murdered in exactly the same way as the Joker's first victims. Is it a copycat? A trick? Or is the Joker at work once more? It's only DI Jack Brady's first day back - and this will be his most twisted case yet.

Sadie Nicholls has been found dead, brutally and strangely murdered, in her South East London flat. Her little boy is missing. DI Alex Finn and DC Mattie Paulsen know that, in the case of a missing child, it's the first 24 hours that count. They don't have many left to find out where Sadie's son might be and the identity of her killer. Why would anyone want a struggling single mother, loved by many, dead?

A crime novel that's perfect for fans of Peter James or Peter Robinson. If you look him in the eye, you're dead. From the outside, Robert Naysmith is a successful businessman, handsome and charming. But for years he's been playing a deadly game. He doesn't choose his victims. Each is selected at random - the first person to make eye contact after he begins 'the game' will not have long to live. Their fate is sealed.

Three brutal attacks. One near-fatal beating. A deadly score to settle. DI Jack Brady is riding high after the successful outcome of his previous case, but his world is about to come crashing down. There's a serial rapist plaguing the streets of Whitley Bay. Three young women have been horribly abused, and his boss and the press are screaming for answers. Everything seems to point to his old friend and foe, gangster Martin Madley, though Brady still struggles to believe he's capable of such acts.

First he selects them. Strips them of their identity. Then he kills them. All for her... DS Harri Jacobs transferred to Newcastle from the Met in the hope of leaving her past behind: the moment where her stalker turned violent. He left her alive, saying that one day he would be back. And she ran. But a year later, she realises he has followed her from home. He'll prove his devotion. With blood...