Showing results by publisher "riverrun" in Police Procedurals

Ile de Groix , France. This tiny isle off the coast of Brittany is the scene of a murder left shrouded in mystery and grief. Adam Killian's study has been left intact since his death - the perfect state for Enzo Macleod's forensic investigation. Killian's daughter-in-law is still hoping, the first suspect is still hiding and the treacherous island itself still has a revelation for Enzo.

At three o'clock in the morning, Emergency receives a call. 'This is Zara Fanshawe. Always lost and never found.' An hour later, the wayward celebrity's Rolls Royce Phantom is found abandoned in dingy Becket Street. The paparazzi go wild. For some reason, news of Zara's disappearance prompts homeless woman Lena Wójcik to search the camps, nervously, for the bad-tempered vagrant known as 'Waitrose', a familiar sight in Oxford pushing his trolley of possessions. But he's nowhere to be found either.

Ryan Wilkins grew up on a trailer park, a member of what many people would call the criminal classes. As a young Detective Inspector, he's lost none of his disgust with privileged elites - or his objectionable manners. But he notices things; they stick to his eyes. His professional partner, DI Ray Wilkins, of affluent Nigerian London heritage, is an impeccably groomed, smooth-talking graduate of Balliol College, Oxford. You wouldn't think they would get on. They don't. But when a young woman is found strangled at Barnabas Hall, they're forced to.

The two boys never fitted in. Seventeen, the worst age, nothing to do but smoke weed; at least they have each other. The day they speed off on a moped with a stolen mobile, they're ready to celebrate their luck at last. Until their victim comes looking for what's his - and ready to kill for it. On the other side of Kent's wealth divide, DS Alexandra Cupidi faces the strangest murder investigation of her career. A severed limb, hidden inside a modern sculpture in Margate's Turner Contemporary. No one takes it seriously - not even the artwork's owners.

Gaillac, southwest France. Gil Petty, America's most celebrated wine critic, is found strung up in a vineyard, dressed in the ceremonial robes of the Order of the Divine Bottle and pickled in wine. For forensic expert Enzo Macleod, the key to this unsolved murder lies in decoding Petty's mysterious reviews - which could make or break a vineyard's reputation.

Convinced the report of a body on the beach is a false alarm, D S Cupidi darts to Folkstone with her daughter Zoe in toe to scan the area. But this time her instincts are off and it is Zoe who discovers Mimi Greene's body on the shoreline. A regular wild swimmer with her friends, it is perplexing that she would have been out swimming alone, especially in bad weather. Putting aside her daughter's traumatised state, D S Cupidi must find the truth behind Mimi's death.

She always went too far. DS Alexandra Cupidi has done it again. She should have learnt to keep her big mouth shut after the scandal that sent her packing - resentful teenager in tow - from the London Met to the lonely Kent coastline. Murder is different here, among the fens and stark beaches. She was the one who found the killers. The man drowned in the slurry pit had been herded there like an animal. He was North African, like many of the fruit pickers that work the fields. The more Cupidi discovers, the more she wants to ask - but these people are suspicious of questions. 

A four-year-old girl goes missing in plain sight outside her nursery in Oxford, a middle-class, affluent area, her mother only a stones-throw away. Ryan Wilkins, one of the youngest ever detective inspectors in the Thames Valley force, dishonourably discharged three months ago, watches his former partner DI Ray Wilkins deliver a press conference, confirming a lead. Ray begins to delve deeper, unearthing an underground network of dark forces in the local area. But will he be able to get closer to the truth of the disappearance? And will Ryan be able to stay away?

Essex, February, 1991. The weather is biting cold. Everyone would rather be somewhere warmer, which is why it's a big surprise when a wanted drug smuggler, Bruce Hopkins, risks a return to his old haunts in Colchester after a decade long exile on the Costa del Sol. Lured back by a letter from the wife Hopkins left behind, no one is more surprised than him when he finds himself abducted and stripped bare only to be sent to a watery grave in the boot of a stolen Ford Sierra. The police wonder if it could be retaliation from a Spanish gang, sending a warning to their English counterparts?

The naked corpses of Aylmer and Mary Younis are discovered in their home. The only clues are a note written in blood and an eerie report of two spectral figures departing the crime scene. Officer Jill Ferriter is charged with investigating the murders while her colleague, Alex Cupidi, is on leave, recovering from post-traumatic stress.

It has been a whirlwind few years for Li Yan and Margaret Campbell. Nowadays, both are busy juggling their huge professional workloads - Li as the newly promoted chief of Beijing's serious crime squad and Campbell as lecturer at the University of Public Security - with the day-to-day raising of their young son, Li Jon. When a desperate mother appeals to Campbell's own maternal instincts, Li agrees to look into the disappearance of a 17-year-old Beijing girl, Jiang Meilin.

Three tells the stories of three women: Orna, a divorced single mother looking for a new relationship, Emilia, a Latvian immigrant on a spiritual search and Ella, married and mother of three, returning to university to write her thesis. All of them will meet the same man. His name is Gil. He won't tell them the whole truth about himself - but they don't tell him everything, either. Tense, twisted and surprising, Three is a daring new form of psychological thriller.

Detective Chief Superintendent Frankie Sheehan does not wish to linger on the grisly scene before her eyes. Two mutilated corpses. In a church. In Clontarf. Her profiling background screams one fact: this is just the beginning of a sickening message. Meanwhile, a 17-year-old case is playing out on a TV documentary, the convicted professing his innocence and historical police errors being exposed daily in the media. Frankie's superior, commissioner Donna Hegarty, makes no bones about who she expects to clean things up - both in terms of past mishandlings and the present murders.

Polished. Professional. Perfect. Dead. Respected scientist Dr Eleanor Costello is found hanged in her immaculate home: the scene the very picture of a suicide. DCS Frankie Sheehan is handed the case, and almost immediately spots foul play. Sheehan, a trained profiler, is seeking a murderer with a talent for death. As Frankie strives to paint a picture of the killer and their victim, she starts to sense they are part of a larger, darker canvas, on which the lines between the two blur.

January 1983, Colchester CID. A new year brings new resolutions for Detective Inspector Nicholas Lowry. With one eye on his approaching 40th birthday, he has given up his two greatest vices: smoking and the police boxing team. As a result the largest remaining threat to his health is now his junior colleague's reckless driving.

The dynamic duo of Simon Mason's acclaimed Ryan Wilkins Mysteries return in an explosive Oxford-set mystery.

July 1983, Essex. A boy playing hide-and-seek sees a fox tugging at something up on a railway embankment. He approaches it cautiously. Seconds later, a blast is heard, and rooks ascend from the poplars surrounding the farmhouse at which the boy is spending his summer holiday with cousins. DI Nick Lowry is called upon to investigate two deaths at Fox Farm, the home of eminent historian Christopher Cliff. The body in the farmhouse kitchen is Cliff himself, having seemingly taking his own life with an antique shotgun. The fox-disturbed body on the property boundary is as yet unidentified.

Sandbeach, South Wales. Two women have come forward to make historical sexual allegations against a pillar of the local community, Matthew Cooper. And child-safeguarding protocol demands that Social Services remove the accused from his home and his family while a formal assessment is carried out. The Cooper case lands on the desk of inexperienced Social Worker Kit Goddard. Although intrepid and intuitive, she is ill-prepared for such a high-profile case.