Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Police Procedurals

Detective Inspector Irene Huss hasn't seen Sophie Malmborg for over 15 years, but she's still haunted by the strange young ballerina's role in the fire that killed her stepfather. Why had she refused to speak to Irene and the other case workers? Could an 11-year-old - even one as disturbed and aloof as Sophie - truly be capable of setting her own house on fire? Irene's questions resurface 15 years later, when Sophie disappears and the charred remains of a dancer are found in an abandoned warehouse. Irene has a startling realization that could shed light on the case that has been lingering in the back of her mind since the beginning of her career.

A reckoning with the persistence of evil in post-Civil War Atlanta. After leaving Atlanta in disgrace three years before, detective Thomas Canby is called back to the city on the eve of Atlanta's 1881 International Cotton Exposition to partner with Atlanta's first African American police officer, Cyrus Underwood. The case they're assigned is chilling: a serial murderer who seems to be violently targeting Atlanta's wealthiest black entrepreneurs. The killer's method is both strange and unusually gruesome.

Lyndon B. Johnson is president, Beatlemania is in overdrive, and gasoline costs 30 cents a gallon when Ned Parker retires as constable in Center Springs, Texas. But his plan to live a quiet life as a cotton farmer is torpedoed. A phone call leads Ned to a body in the Red River and into the urgent investigation headed by his nephew, the newly elected constable Cody Parker. Together they work to head off a multistate killing spree that sets northeast Texas on fire.

Max Maguire, a twenty-nine-year-old female detective with the New York Police Department, flies to France to attend the wedding of her friend, Chloé Marceau, at a grand estate east of Paris in the Champagne region. There Max meets an older man, the urbane Olivier Chaumont, and experiences a fairy-tale evening. But when Chloé’s widowed aunt, the beautiful and successful Léa de Saint-Pern, is found murdered, Max and Olivier are snapped back into their professional roles.

On a bleak Christmas morning, Sewa Tribal Police Officer Heather English patrols a desolate canyon on the Arizona reservation. Back in Kansas, her father, the sheriff of Benteen County, is lonely enough with no family around to go in to work at his office. On the way, Sheriff English calms a wild incident in a church parking lot. Then he hears of a death threat. The crèche, at the center of the town’s largest holiday yard display, has been desecrated, and its owner plans to kill the neighbors he suspects are responsible.

Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands is caught off guard one night in 1933 by a phone call from a distressed boy named Jackie Drummond, who just might be the illegitimate son Joe never knew he had....

Retired Chicago homicide detective Jack Starkey is living what he calls every cop's retirement dream by owning a successful bar, the Drunken Parrot, and residing on a houseboat in Fort Myers Beach on Florida's Southwest Gulf Coast. Mostly, it's been working out just fine. He's dating the lovely Marisa Fernandez, who owns a real estate agency and supplements his usual diet of Pop-Tarts and diner food with gourmet Cuban cooking. But long-term serenity has never been Jack Starkey's destiny.

Gin Sullivan is back in her small hometown of Trumbull, Pennsylvania, on an extended leave from her job at the Chicago medical examiner's office and rekindling an old flame with her high school sweetheart, Jake. Gin is readjusting to life at home when Jake receives harrowing news early one morning: the new housing development his construction firm is building has caught fire, and underneath one of the burnt homes is a dead body.

On a clear, moonlit night in December, police detective Jimmy Vega races to the scene of a reported home invasion in an upscale New York community. As Vega arrives, he spots a Hispanic man who fits the description of the armed intruder running from the victim's estate. Vega chases him into the woods. When the suspect refuses to surrender - and reaches into his pocket - Vega has only seconds to make a life-or-death decision.

Cops in Oakland seldom meet people whose lives are going well. That's certainly the case when homicide sergeant Matt Sinclair recognizes the dead woman hanging from a tree as a teenage runaway named Dawn he arrested 10 years before. And as Sinclair and his partner, Cathy Braddock, soon learn, many of Dawn's clients, not to mention the local and federal officials who protect them, will go to any length to keep the police from digging too deep into her past.

In Botswana, people of the north live in harmony with the wildlife, yet predators and poachers roam freely. The lions may be kings, but hyenas will steal their prey. A Chobe Game Park pack led by the alpha female is especially fearless. The locals call her Kotsi Mosadi, Setswana for Danger Woman.

Former police chief Katherine Sullivan has been called brilliant, brave, compassionate, and quirky, but after decades of crime fighting, this resilient grandmother with an artist's soul is discovering that retirement can be just as deadly as being on the job. When Katherine returned to her hometown, her only thought was to comfort her recently divorced daughter. That was before a young woman was found murdered on the estate of the town's richest family.

As Naples prepares for its holiday celebrations, behind the facade of order and happiness imposed by the fascist regime lurks terrible poverty and blinding desperation. In a luxurious apartment on the Mergellina beach, the bodies of a fascist militia officer and his wife have been found. The woman's throat has been cut while the man has been stabbed over 60 times. Seemingly, the hands of two separate killers have been at work.

Commissario Ricciardi is the undisputed wizard of Neapolitan crime scenes. He solves every crime with an uncanny swiftness that leaves his colleagues dumbfounded. Indeed, there are those who think his abilities are the work of the devil, an unnatural and ungodly gift to be exorcised. And maybe they're right. Ricciardi sees the dead; he sees and hears the final moments in the lives of those who have suffered violent deaths. It may be a talent, or it may be a curse, but it is nonetheless a kind of black magic.

Marry new technology to old-fashioned policing, and you've got something special. The car is found just outside Picketsville, Virginia, a smoking ruin of twisted metal and shattered glass. It takes only a glance to confirm that this is Ike Schwartz's car. Ever since he left the CIA, the incorruptible Picketsville sheriff has made enemies at home and abroad. Now one has caught up with him, with a bomb powerful enough to turn quiet Main Street into a smoking crater. Is this a cop killing - or domestic terrorism?

Award-winning author Suzanne Chazin returns with a stirring novel of deadly misdeeds and heartbreaking choices in a seasoned homicide cop's hometown. A split-second decision thrusts Detective Jimmy Vega into the epicenter of a disturbing case when a body is found near a gathering place for immigrants in upscale Lake Holly, New York. The cold-bloodedness of the crime and the innocence of the victim torment Vega. But so does the feeling that he's to blame.

Together with his indefatigable partner, Brigadier Maione, Commissario Ricciardi, a man driven into solitude by his paranormal "gift" of seeing the final seconds in the lives of victims of violent deaths - a talent that also makes him a highly effective investigator - is conducting an investigation into the death of the beautiful and mysterious duchess of Camparino. The duchess' connections to Neapolitan privileged social circles and the local Fascist elite make the case a powder keg waiting to blow.

Ricciardi has visions. He sees and hears the final seconds in the lives of victims of violent deaths. It is both a gift and a curse. It has helped him become one of the most acute and successful homicide detectives in the Naples police force. But all that horror and suffering has hollowed him out emotionally: He drinks and doesn't sleep. Other than his loyal partner, Brigadier Maione, he has no friends.

A cache of diamonds is stolen in Phoenix. The prime suspect is former Maricopa County sheriff Mike Peralta, now a private investigator. Disappearing into Arizona's mountainous high country, Peralta leaves his business partner and longtime friend, David Mapstone, with a stark choice: He can cooperate with the FBI or strike out on his own to find Peralta and what really happened.

When the dead body of a Latino woman is found in a reservoir about 50 miles north of Manhattan, with a photo of a baby in her purse nearby, the police try to determine who the child is and if it is still alive. Along with the photo, they also find a disturbing note in the purse: "Go back to your country. You don't belong here."