Showing titles in Traditional Detectives

Murder, blackmail and drug dealing on the Tiber combine in one of Ngaio Marsh’s liveliest and most evocative novels. When their guide disappears mysteriously in the depths of a Roman basilica, the members of Mr. Sebastian Mailer’s tour group seem strangely unperturbed. But when a body is discovered in an Etruscan sarcophagus, Superintendent Alleyn, in Rome incognito on the trail of an international drug racket, is very much concerned.

DCI Robert Kett’s efforts to return to a normal life are dashed after he receives a phone call from his mother, Mary—a woman he hasn’t spoken to in almost two decades. When she invites him and the girls to visit her in the isolated village where she has been staying, Kett sees an opportunity to heal their fractured relationship. But this is no family reunion. Mary Kett needs his help. A young couple have been brutally murdered and their newborn son is missing—a note left in his crib saying that the baby will die if the police are called.

Dame Charlotte Lazerton - eminent art historian and mentor of Danish academic Torben Helle - is dead. And to make things worse, she was found partially eaten by her Irish wolfhound, Mortimer. While the police believe that she died of natural causes, Torben becomes convinced that Charlotte was murdered, although as usual no one pays any attention to him. That is, until he gains the confidence of a policeman who has watched too many Nordic Noir television shows and is ready to listen to any Scandinavian in a fetching woolly jumper.

In prison they call her the Sculptress: a grotesquely obese young woman convicted of cutting her mother and sister to pieces and rearranging their bodies on the floor like a jigsaw puzzle. She pleaded guilty to the crime, but no one has noticed that the facts don't add up until Rosalind Leigh comes to visit the prisoner, hoping to get a book deal out of her story. Rosalind doesn't expect to feel sympathy for a brutal murderess - who would? - but she finds it increasingly hard to believe Olive Martin's as evil as she's been painted.

Summoned to a historic Tudor manor, Jason and Daniel are charged with investigating the heart-wrenching murder of two small boys. To discover who would have a motive to commit such a heinous crime, they must delve into the unexpectedly complicated relationships between the manor’s inhabitants.

Rodney Williams's disappearance seems typical to Chief Inspector Wexford - a simple case of a man running off with a woman other than his wife. But when another woman reports that her husband is missing, the case turns unpleasantly complex.

Six years ago, investigator Sid Halley retired for good. He’d been harassed, beaten, shot, even lost a hand to his investigating business, and enough was enough. For the sake of his wife and new daughter he gave up that life of danger and uncertainty, and he thought nothing would ever lure him back into the game. He thought wrong. Sir Richard Stewart, chairman of the racing authority, begs Sid to investigate a series of dodgy races. Sid adamantly refuses, but the following day, Sir Richard is found dead under suspicious circumstances.

Ten years ago, DCI Oldroyd was the only person who could see the monster hiding behind Adam Blake’s charm. Oldroyd proved that Blake was a deadly serial killer, responsible for murdering many innocent people. Having vowed to take revenge on Oldroyd, on a crisp autumn morning Blake escapes from jail… Hours later, in the Yorkshire market town of Otley, a man is found strangled inside the old courthouse. Written in bold black ink across the victim’s forehead is a single chilling word: vindicta—revenge. Oldroyd’s blood runs cold when he picks up a call and hears an all-too-familiar voice.

Christmas, 1141 A.D. Abbot Radulfus returns from London, bringing with him a priest for the vacant living of Holy Cross (known as the Foregate), a man of presence, scholarship and discipline, but neither humility nor the common touch. When he is found drowned in the mill-pond, suspicion is cast in many directions, not least toward a young man who came in the priest's train, sent to work in Brother Cadfael's garden. For he has little obvious priestly calling. Indeed, he soon attracts the friendship of a girl both beautiful and formidable. To Brother Cadfael, once wordly, now dedicated, if gently cynical, is left the familiar task of sorting the complicated strands which define guilt and innocence.

April 1933. Eddie Pettit is a gentle soul with a near-magical gift for working with horses. When he is killed in a violent accident, there is skepticism about the cause of death. Who would want to kill Eddie, and why? Maisie Dobbs is determined to offer her help. As she uncovers lies and manipulation on a national scale, Maisie must decide whether to risk it all to see justice done.

When Rusty Mason, scion of one of Nantucket's oldest and wealthiest families, is found dead in a flooded cranberry bog one foggy fall night, 32-year-old detective Meredith Folger is faced with her first murder case. Merry is the daughter of the local police chief and granddaughter of his predecessor; her father is a strict boss and Merry feels pressure to go the extra mile to prove her promotion to detective isn't just nepotism. But the Mason murder is a demanding first test.

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. The 11th book featuring Lord Peter, set in a country church, is often named as the best detective story ever written. When his sexton finds a corpse in the wrong grave, the rector of Fenchurch St Paul asks Lord Peter Wimsey to find out who the dead man was and how he came to be there.

Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories is a brilliant collection of short stories, personally chosen by Andrea Camilleri, following Inspector Montalbano from his very first case in Vigàta, in which he stumbles upon a young girl lurking outside a courthouse with a pistol in her handbag. When she is taken in for questioning and won't utter a single word, Montalbano must find another way to learn whom she is trying to kill and why.

It's just days before the Cherringham Regatta - an annual event that draws luxury yachts from across the country, as well as the local boat crowd, all looking to party on the river. But it's no party when boats are vandalized, and a wealthy executive turns up missing, with his blood on the deck. As the Regatta date looms, Jack and Sarah discover that what's happening on the water looks less like vandalism and more like murder.

When Chief Detective Inspector Colin Thane and Detective Inspector Phil Moss are dispatched to the remote Sanctuary Isle, they find themselves unraveling the mysterious death of the island’s bird warden, Captain Lewis Tinemann. Set against the wild, windswept backdrop of Scotland’s Firth of Lorne, the detectives navigate a maze of clues and deceit, encountering a cast of intriguing characters including ornithologists, local fishermen, and a secretive shark hunter.

World famous concert pianist Felix Lansman has a collection of postcards sent to him anonymously. He is sure they are from the love of his life, Jamie McLeash. But Jamie disappeared six years ago - the night Felix’s father was murdered. Police failed to make any arrests and the case was closed. Was Jamie a suspect and if so, why is he sending the postcards? Felix wants Ian to find out.

Edgar Award winner Otto Penzler returns with a new anthology of exhilarating mysteries, assembling Victorian society's lords and ladies and most miserable miscreants. Behind the velvet curtains of horse-drawn carriages and amid the soft glow of the gaslights are the detectives and bobbies sniffing out the safecrackers and petty purloiners who plague everything from the soot-covered side streets of London to the opulent manors of the countryside. Brush off your dinner jackets and straighten out your ball gowns for these exciting, glitzy mysteries.

The Continental Detective Agency's Operative is sent on a case to Personville. The locals call their town "Poisonville," and the Op would soon find out why as the bodies start piling up. Dirty cops, gang wars, floozies, bootleggers, and hit men are all in Dashiell Hammett's first full-length novel featuring the Continental Op, the original hard-boiled private detective.

London, 1945. The capital is shrouded in the darkness of the blackout, and mystery abounds in the parks after dusk. During a stroll through Regent's Park, Bruce Mallaig witnesses two men acting suspiciously around a footbridge. In a matter of moments, one of them has been murdered; Mallaig's view of the assailant but a brief glimpse of a ghastly face in the glow of a struck match. The murderer's noiseless approach and escape seems to defy all logic, and even the victim's identity is quickly thrown into uncertainty.

In the early days of 1924, Mary Russell and her husband, the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, are given an urgent task by his brother, Mycroft: find a British spy gone missing along India's northwest frontier, where men are dying and trouble is brewing. The spy's name? It is one Holmes knows from his sojourn in India long ago, and one Russell knows from a book. It is Kimball O'Hara, known to the world by the name Rudyard Kipling called him - Kim....