Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Traditional Detectives

Detective Constable Angus MacVicar has just landed his dream job – transferred out of uniform and assigned to Oldcastle’s biggest ongoing murder investigation: Operation Telegram, hunting the “Fortnight Killer”. Every two weeks another couple is targeted. One victim is left at the scene, their corpse used as a twisted message board. The second body is never seen again. This should be the perfect chance for Angus to prove himself, but instead of working on the investigation’s front line, he’s lumbered with the forensic psychologist from hell.

Grainy CCTV footage shows a man walking into a bank and putting a gun to a cashier's head. He tells her to count to twenty-five. When he doesn’t get his money in time, she is executed. Detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case. While Harry’s girlfriend is away in Russia, an old flame gets in touch. He goes to dinner at her house and wakes up at home with no memory of the past twelve hours. The same morning the girl is found shot dead in her bed. Then Harry begins to receive threatening e-mails.

The past is coming for Chief Inspector Taleb. He may not know it but he will soon enough. And the past in Algeria is venomous, vengeful and relentless, designed to consume the unwary traveller. He will soon find himself looking down the barrel of a thirty-year-old mystery, which, if he’s not careful, will be aimed squarely at him.

On an ordinary spring day, Special Agent Faith Mitchell of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation returns home to a nightmare. Expecting to find her mother minding Faith’s new baby daughter Emma, she is horrified to discover Emma locked in the shed, her mother’s safe open, her gun missing and a trail of blood to the front door. Without waiting for back-up, Faith enters the house to a scene of carnage. It has been torn apart and a man lies dead in a pool of blood.

The mega-rich Pallander family are used to luxury – a castle in the Scottish Highlands, a villa in Tuscany, a billion-dollar fortune and an island in the Caribbean – but their perfect life is about to be shattered. Sebastian Pallander dies, leaving a pitiful amount of money to his wife and children. His family fight over the scraps as old rivalries and bitter jealousies come to the surface. And when Pallander’s son is killed in mysterious circumstances, everyone suspects foul play.

Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village in North Yorkshire, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son Nathan and ageing Labrador Dido, both at the discretion of his former partner Julia. It’s a picturesque setting, but there’s something darker lurking behind the scenes. Jackson’s current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for his suspicious wife, seems straightforward, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him into a sinister network - and back into the path of someone from his past.

An English bobbie returning from night patrol finds a corpse in evening dress locked in the stocks on the village green. He identifies the body immediately. Andrew Vereker was not a well-loved man, and narrowing down the suspects is not going to be an easy job. The Vereker family are corrupt and eccentric - and hardly cooperative. It's another case for the resourceful Superintendent Hannasyde, who sets off on the trail of a killer so cunning that even his consummate powers of detection are tested to their limits.

Despite her fascination with Jack the Ripper, Detective Constable Lacey Flint has never worked a big case or seen a dead body up close. Until now…As she leaves a south London estate one night, she is horrified to find a woman has been viciously stabbed, right next to Lacey’s car. Thrown headlong into her first murder hunt, Lacey’s quiet life changes overnight. Then Lacey receives a familiar hand-delivered letter, written in red blood, and it is clear the police have a Ripper copycat on their hands.

It's Christmas 1952. Blizzards come to Elderby, a remote village high on the North York Moors. Is the dead stranger found lodged up the chimney at Holly House a simple thief or something much more sinister? Inspector Frank Grasby finds himself heading up the investigation. But who is friend or foe? The victim of some most unfortunate misunderstandings, Grasby needs to clear his name. But as is often the way with the unlucky detective, things most certainly don't go according to plan.

The 60th birthday party of Silas Kane was marred by argument and dissension amongst his family. And then, the morning after the celebrations, Kane is found dead at the foot of a cliff. The theory that Silas accidentally lost his way in the fog is confirmed when the coroner returns a verdict of death by misadventure. But then Kane's nephew, and heir, is murdered, and threats are made on the next in line to the fortune, throwing a new and sinister light on Silas Kane's death.

It’s just before Christmas, 1953. Grasby and Juggers are investigating a puzzling murder in the remote village of Uthley’s Bay. A fisherman has been found dead on the beach, with a stocking wound tight round his throat. Hundreds of pairs of stockings, in neat cellophane bags, soon wash up on the shore. A blizzard cuts off Grasby and Juggers from help, and the local innkeeper is murdered. Any remaining Christmas cheer goes up in smoke as the villagers refuse to talk, leaving the two detectives chasing false leads in the snow.

It is no ordinary Christmas at Lexham Manor. Six holiday guests find themselves the suspects of a murder enquiry when the old Scrooge, Nathaniel Herriad, who owns the substantial estate, is found stabbed in the back. Whilst the delicate matter of inheritance could be the key to this crime, the real conundrum is how any of the suspects could have entered the locked room to commit this foul deed. For Inspector Hemingway of Scotland Yard, 'tis the season to find whodunit.

From the outside, Glenfarach looks like a quaint, sleepy village, nestled in the heart of Cairngorms National Park, but things aren't what they seem. The place is thick with security cameras, and there's a strict nine o'clock curfew, because Glenfarach is the last safe haven for people who've served their sentences but can't be safely released into the general population. For Detective Constable Edward Reekie, this was supposed to be a simple delivery job—drive his new boss up to HMP Grampian and collect Marky Bishop, take him to Glenfarach, then head back home again.

Inspector Hemingway has his work cut out for him when a seemingly civilized card game ends in a double murder. The two crimes appear identical, but were they carried out by the same hand? When Timothy Harte's young fiancé - a put-upon secretary and suspected gold digger - becomes the inspector's prime suspect, Harte is determined to prove her innocence.

It is a complete mystery why anyone would choose to murder the trusted old butler of Norton Manor. Barrister-turned-amateur-detective Frank Amberley has reason to suspect that the shooting involves the nervy young lady discovered at the scene of the crime, a snooping gentleman in the halls of Greythorne and then a second dead body.

The stabbing of irascible General Sir Arthur Billington-Smith fails to stir up grief in anyone - least of all his family, which is no wonder considering the way he had treated them all during the fateful weekend. He had disinherited his son, humiliated his wife, refused to help his financially stricken nephew and made no secret of his loathing for his son's fiancée, a cabaret dancer. Inspector Harding picks his way through a mass of familial discontent to find the culprit - and find much more besides.

In the first of the four cases in Trouble is My Business, Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is offered a job that leaves a bad taste in the mouth: smearing a girl who's 'got her hooks into a rich man's pup'. Before too long Marlowe's up to his neck in corpses and cops and he's taken pity on the girl. There's nothing like making trouble out of your business.

For decades, bestselling author J. R. Alastor, king of the murder mystery, has hidden in the shadows. His novels adorn countless bookshelves across the world, but no one knows his real name. One day, event coordinator Mila del Angél gets a message: Alastor wants her help to host a murder mystery retreat on his private island. It’s the perfect cover for Mila to finally carry out her long-held plans for revenge on one of the authors, a ghost from her past. But when a different guest turns up dead, she finds herself in a lethal game she didn’t plan for.

Detective Alex Cross is one of the first on the scene of the biggest case he’s ever been part of. The President’s son and daughter have been abducted from their school – an impossible crime, but somehow the kidnapper has done it. Alex does everything he can but is shunted to the fringes of the investigation. Someone powerful doesn’t want Cross too close.

Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: private investigator Philip Marlowe. He is willing to help a man down on his luck, but later Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe is drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many more stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?