Crime Detective

Is it a gesture of goodwill or a sinister trap that lures Rupert St. Vincent and his family to a magnificent estate? How desperate is Joyce Lambert, a destitute young widow whose only recourse is to marry a man she despises? What unexpected circumstance stirs old loyalties in Theodora Darrell, an unfaithful wife about to run away with her lover?

In this collection of short stories, the answers are as unexpected as they are satisfying. The Queen of Mystery takes bizarre romantic entanglements, supernatural visitations, and classic murder to inventive new heights.

Baghdad is holding a secret superpower summit, but the word is out, and an underground organization in the Middle East is plotting to sabotage the talks. Into this explosive situation appears Victoria Jones, a young woman with a yearning for adventure who gets more than she bargains for when a wounded spy dies in her hotel room. The only man who can save the summit is dead. Can Victoria make sense of his dying words? "Lucifer...Basrah...Lefarge."

Deep in the Florida Everglades, the body of a woman is discovered in pieces, presumably ravaged by an alligator. Upon closer inspection, it’s determined no animal could make such perfectly precise cuts. Only a blade could do that. Wielded by a human. Soon, dozens of oil drums emerge amid the river of grass. Each one packed to the brim with body parts.

For a trio of colleagues, an innocent night out after class ends in a deadly torture session. They vanish without a clue - until a body turns up. With the safety of San Francisco's entire school system at stake, Lindsay has never been under more pressure. As the chief of police and the press clamor for an arrest in the "school night" case, Lindsay turns to her best friend, investigative journalist Cindy Thomas. Together, Lindsay and Cindy take a new approach to the case, and unexpected facts about the victims leave them stunned.

Gregor Jack, MP, well-liked, young, married to the fiery Elizabeth - to the outside world a very public success story. But Jack's carefully nurtured career plans take a tumble after a 'mistake' during a police raid on a notorious Edinburgh brothel. Then Elizabeth disappears, a couple of bodies float into view where they shouldn't, and a lunatic speaks from his asylum...

Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sits the corpse of Mrs.Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist is the only sign of the fatal injection that killed her. With only 24 hours available to solve the mystery, Hercule Poirot recalled a chance remark he'd overheard back in Jerusalem: "You see, don't you, that she's got to be killed?" Mrs. Boynton was, indeed, the most detestable woman he'd ever met....

Prison is a dangerous place for a former cop - as Harriet Blue is learning on a daily basis. So, following a fight for her life and a prison-wide lockdown, the last person she wants to see is Deputy Police Commissioner Joe Woods. The man who put her inside. But Woods is not there to gloat. His daughter Tonya and her two-year-old child have gone missing. He's ready to offer Harriet a deal: find his family to buy her freedom....

The first body is found forced inside a huge terracotta urn on the lawn of a country manor in a remote corner of North Norfolk. A few days later, a young woman is found, tied to a golden chair with her throat slashed. At both crime scenes, the killer leaves a bizarre calling card. The victims were part of a group of friends at university back in the day. Two of them are dead. Two are still alive—but for how much longer?

A wealthy Pasadena widow with a mean streak, a missing daughter-in-law with a past, and a gold coin worth a small fortune - the elements don't quite add up until Marlowe discovers evidence of murder, rape, blackmail, and the worst kind of human exploitation.

For all its old-fashioned charm, Forbes Abbot is far from the close-knit community that ex-Londoners Mallory and Kate Lawson expected. In this village, everyday squabbles can quickly turn to murder. As the couple begins to settle into their new life away from the big city, it isn't long until they're thrown into the horror and mayhem of a true Midsomer Murders mystery. Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby has encountered many intriguing cases in his years on the force, but soon he will discover that the incident of the ghost in the machine is the most challenging of them all.

Gabriel Kensington and his wife, Lydia, have been brutally slain in their luxurious home in New Mexico. A frantic, whispered phone call from their teenage daughter, Addis, and her best friend, Emerson, quickly alerts the authorities to the killings. But when detective Alyssa Wyatt and the squad appear at the house, the unthinkable has happened. The girls are nowhere to be found...and neither is the killer. In a race against time, it's up to Alyssa Wyatt and her partner, Cord, to find the missing girls - and discover just why the Kensingtons have been targeted.

Cheverell Manor is a lovely old house in deepest Dorset, now a private clinic belonging to the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell. When investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn arrived there one late autumn afternoon, scheduled to have a disfiguring and long-standing facial scar removed, she had every expectation of a successful operation and a pleasant week recuperating. Two days later she was dead, the victim of murder.

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.

Over the years, Ian Rankin has amassed an incredible portfolio of short stories. Published in crime magazines, composed for events, broadcast on radio, they all share the best qualities of his phenomenally popular Rebus novels. Brought together for the first time, and including brand-new material, this is the ultimate Rebus short-story collection and a must-have book for crime lovers and for Ian's millions of fans alike. No Rankin aficionado can go without it.

A knock on the door late in the evening can only mean trouble for Detective Josie Quinn, but fear chokes her at the news that one of her own team is missing. No one has seen Denton PD’s Press Liaison Amber for days and, as she follows the message scrawled on the frosted windscreen of Amber’s car to a nearby dam, Josie hears a piercing scream that tells her she’s too late. But the body they pull from the freezing water is not Amber....

Commander Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard has just published a new book of poems and has taken a brief respite from publicity on the remote Larksoken headland on the Norfolk coast. A psychotic strangler of young women is at large in Norfolk, and getting nearer to Larksoken with every killing. And when Dalgliesh discovers the murdered body of the Acting Administrative Officer on the beach, he finds himself caught up in one of the most baffling murder cases of his career.

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. He made his fifth appearance in this brilliant collection of ingenious short stories. 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.

On a winding mountain road into the town of Denton, Pennsylvania, Detective Josie Quinn finds the body of a local teenage girl, Dina Hale. The sight of plum-colored bruises gathering around the girl’s neck pierces Josie’s heart, but the discovery of a second girl’s empty purse in the dirt nearby gives her a flicker of hope that one person, at least, made a lucky escape. Dina’s parents are grief-stricken as the town rallies together in a desperate search for the second girl, who waitressed with Dina. The two best friends were on their way to a shift when they were attacked.

John Bachelor is the saddest kind of spy: not a joe in the field, not even a desk jockey, but a milkman - a part-time pension administrator whose main job is to check in on aging retired spies. Late in his career and having lost his wife, his house, and his savings after a series of unlucky choices, John's been living in a dead man's London apartment, hoping the bureaucracy isn't going to catch up with him and leave him homeless. But keeping a secret among spies is a fool's errand, and now John has made himself eminently blackmailable.

Photography student Toby Unsworth has found the location for the perfect night-time shoot. A cobbled street in the old part of Fenfleet. Later, when he looks at the images on his laptop, he thinks he sees a woman's face in the window of an old, disused building. He asks his housemate Alex to come and take a look . . . Two days later, Toby and Alex are dead. Carbon monoxide poisoning. An unfortunate accident. But Alex's mother doesn't believe it. She hires Matt and Liz to find out the truth.