Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Private Investigators

Having lived his life suspected of being a serial killer, Carl Louis Feldman begins his journey into old age at a nursing home in Texas. Though he was never charged with any crimes, the staff aren’t sorry to see him go when his estranged daughter arrives to take her father on what could be his last road trip. When Carl protests that this is not his daughter at all, the nurses are all too ready to excuse it as a product of his steadily deteriorating mind. But were those old suspicions about him true? And if he is an honest man, who has just driven him away from safety?

Roland Ford - once a cop, then a marine, now a private investigator - is good at finding people. But when he’s asked to locate an Air Force veteran who’s escaped from a mental institution, he realizes he’s been drawn into something deep and dark. What he doesn’t know is why a shroud of secrecy hangs over the disappearance of Clay Hickman - and why he’s getting a different story from everyone involved. In a flash, what began as just a job becomes a life-or-death obsession for Ford.

Once a hospital dedicated to treating tuberculosis, The Akureyri Sanatorium now sits haunted by the ghosts of its past. But a single wing remains open and houses six employees: the caretaker, two doctors, two nurses and a young research assistant. When one of the nurses, Yrsa, is found brutally murdered, a series of terrifying events are set in motion. With only six suspects, how has the trail run dry? Two decades later, the mystery remains unsolved. That is, until young criminologist Helgi Reykdal takes on the case.

Someone is scraping the scum off the streets of Galway, and they want Jack Taylor to get involved. A drug pusher, a rapist, a loan shark: all targeted in what look like vigilante attacks. And the killer is writing to Jack, signing their name: C-33. Jack has had enough. He doesn’t need the money, and doesn’t want to get involved. But when his friend Stewart gets drawn in, it seems he isn’t been given a choice.

DCI Harry Virdee has just enough time to get his son and his mother to safety before the bomb blows. But this is merely a stunt; there is worse to come. A new and aggressive nationalist group, the Patriots, have hidden a second device under one of the city’s mosques. In exchange for the safe release of those at Friday prayers, the Patriots want custody of the leaders of radical Islamist group Almukhtareen - the chosen ones.

For The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries, writer and anthologist Michael Sims did not summon the usual suspects. He sought the unfamiliar, the unjustly forgotten, and little-known gems by writers from outside the genre. This historical tour of one of our most popular literary categories includes stories never before reprinted, features rebellious early “lady detectives," and spotlights former stars of the crime field—Austrian novelist Auguste Groner and prolific American Geraldine Bonner among them.

For millions of Londoners, the morning of 17 December is just like any other. But not for Sam Wren. An hour after leaving home, he gets onto a tube train - and never gets off again. No eyewitnesses. No trace of him on security cameras. Six months later, he's still missing. Out of options and desperate for answers, Sam's wife, Julia, hires David Raker to track him down. Raker has made a career out of finding the lost. He knows how they think. And, in missing person cases, the only certainty is that everyone has something to hide.

Colm Healy used to be one of the Met's best detectives. Until, haunted by the unsolved murders of a mother and her twin daughters, his failure to find an elusive killer left his life in ruins. Missing persons investigator David Raker is the only friend Healy has left. As they reopen the investigation together, Raker learns the hard way how this case breeds obsession - and how an unsolvable puzzle can break even the best detective. Their search takes them down a trail of darkness, unravelling a thread of tragedy, and forces them to sacrifice everything they have left.

When a small-time criminal named Harold Lee turns up in the Ashokan Reservoir - sans a heartbeat, head, or hands - the local mafia capo hires Isaiah Coleridge to look into the matter. The mob likes crime, but only the crime it controls...and as it turns out, Lee is the second independent contractor to meet a bad end on the business side of a serrated knife. One such death can be overlooked. Two makes a man wonder.

As a series of rolling blackouts plunge the city into darkness, Detective Aidan Waits sits on an abandoned hospital ward, watching a mass murderer slowly die. Transferred from his usual night shift duties and onto protective custody, he has just one job...to extract the location of Martin Wick’s final victim before the notorious mass murderer passes away. Wick has spent over a decade in prison, in near-total silence, having confessed to an unspeakable crime that shocked the nation and earned him the nickname of The Sleepwalker.

It's mid-September, a heatwave has descended on the parched hills of LA, and Private Detective Philip Marlowe is called to the Montgomery estate, an almost mythic place sitting high on top of Beverly Hills. Wealthy twenty-two-year-old Chrissie Montgomery, set to inherit an enormous fortune, is missing. She's a walking target, ripe for someone to get their claws into. Her dying father, along with his sultry bottle blonde girlfriend, wants her found before that happens. They've hired Anna Riorden, Marlowe's nemesis, too. The search takes them to the roughest neighbourhoods of LA.

As usual, 17-year-old Alice Teale walked out of school at the end of a bright spring day. She's not been seen since. Alice was popular and well-liked, and her boyfriend, friends and family are desperate to find her. But when the police start asking questions, it becomes clear that almost everyone has something to hide. Torn between a host of suspects, Detectives Beth Winter and Lucas Black don't know which way to turn. But then they receive a disturbing package: pages from Alice's precious diary. Who could have sent them? And have they done with Alice?

One winter evening bestselling crime author, Elín S. Jónsdóttir goes missing. There are no clues to her disappearance and it is up to young detective, Helgi, to crack the case before it's leaked to the press. As he interviews the people closest to her – a publisher, an accountant, a retired judge – he realises that Elín’s life wasn’t what it seemed. In fact, her past is even stranger than her stories. As the case of the missing crime writer becomes more mysterious by the hour, Helgi must uncover the secrets of a very unexpected life . . .

Returning hero and private investigator Roland Ford is on the trail of a mysterious killer who is beheading CIA drone operators and leaving puzzling clues at each crime scene. His troubled friend Lindsay Rakes is afraid for her own life and the life of her son after a fellow flight crew member is killed in brutal fashion. Even more terrifying is the odd note the killer left behind: "Welcome to Caliphornia. This is not the last."

Three-year-old Hanna wakes up to find she has been abandoned. Her family is gone. The house is locked. She is trapped. Meanwhile, a teenage girl has been found murdered aboard the Cinderella, a cruise ship which sails between Sweden and Finland. Detective Chief Inspector Conny Sjoberg visits the girl's home to deliver the tragic news. But as he investigates, it becomes chillingly clear that the girl's younger sister will meet a similar fate - unless the police can crack the case and trap this elusive and vicious killer.

A hit-and-run on a woodland road near Amsterdam involving an Afghan boy is connected to a powerful international crime syndicate. Journalist Farah Hafez, together with her colleague Paul Chapelle, gets caught up in an investigation that takes them all the way to Moscow and has greater political and personal ramifications than they bargained for. After this perilous journey, their lives will never be the same again.

Serendipity Dahlquist is a headstrong roller-blading teenager living in LA who has lost her dog. She asks private investigator Leo Bloodworth to help her find the missing pet. In what proves to have been a moment of madness, Bloodworth agrees to take on the case, unleashing an appalling--but also extremely entertaining--series of extremely homicidal events.

Quiet, gentle, young Faustina Crayle is dismissed from her teaching position at Brereton School for Girls after just a few weeks. She is given no explanation, but it’s clear certain staff and pupils fear her. Her friend and fellow teacher Gisela contacts psychologist and sleuth Dr Basil Willing who offers to investigate these outlandish claims. But this only confirms two damning facts – first, that this happened at a previous school and, second, people believe there are two sides to enigmatic Faustina.

It's the Second World War, and Sexton Blake is matching minds with the very best...and the very worst. When an innocent woman is condemned as a spy and her fiancé arrested while trying to escape to France, Sexton and Tinker have to travel into enemy territory in their hunt for the mastermind....and on the home front, a man is found murdered - but the suspect doesn't know if he did it! Who else to find the truth but Sexton Blake?

Ex-police officer and former PI Molly Madison is starting over. After the death of her husband, she and her golden retriever, Harlow, move cross-country to California. But as charming and peaceful as the beachside town seems, she soon learns its tranquil tides hold dark secrets. On her first day in the new house, a large, slobbering Saint Berdoodle wanders in. Molly winds up taking on the responsibility of training Noodle since his owner is too busy to do the job. On one of their daily beachside walks, Noodle digs up a severed hand.