Detective Genre

Business is slow at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, so slow in fact that for the first time in her estimable career Precious Ramotswe has reluctantly agreed to take a holiday. The promise of a week of uninterrupted peace is short-lived, however, when she meets a young boy named Samuel, a troublemaker who is himself in some trouble. Once she learns more about Samuel's sad story, Mma Ramotswe feels compelled to step in and help him find his way out of a bad situation.

Lori Shepherd travels to New Zealand in Aunt Dimity's fifteenth charming adventure. Mystery readers everywhere continue to be won over by Nancy Atherton's popular cozy series. In the latest installment, Lori Shepherd is bereft when she learns that her beloved neighbors, Ruth and Louise Pym, may be dying. Summoning her to their sickroom, the elderly sisters have a favor to ask: Will Lori find their long-lost brother, Aubrey, before death claims them? Despite her misgivings, Lori sets out for distant New Zealand-where Aubrey fled after being cast out of the family in disgrace. With the help of a charming kiwi bird and her otherworldly friend, Aunt Dimity, Lori tries to heal a family broken by deceit.

DCI Matilda Darke has returned to work after a nine-month absence. A shadow of her former self, she is tasked with reopening a cold case: the terrifyingly brutal murders of Miranda and Stefan Harkness. The only witness was their 11-year-old son, Jonathan, who was too deeply traumatised to speak a word. Then a dead body is discovered, and the investigation leads back to Matilda's case. Suddenly the past and present converge, and it seems a killer may have come back for more....

Archie Goodwin has his hands full when three baffling murders make him the recipient of a poisonous lunch, the fall guy for a beautiful woman, and the target of the U.S. Federal Government.

The year is 1895. London is scared. A killer haunts the city's streets. The poor are hungry. Crime bosses are taking control. The police force is stretched to the breaking point. The rich turn to Sherlock Holmes, but the celebrated private detective rarely visits the densely populated streets of South London, where the crimes are sleazier and the people are poorer. In the dark corner of Southwark, victims turn to a man who despises Holmes, his wealthy clientele, and his showy forensic approach to crime: Arrowood.

Nancy Atherton's growing number of fans will certainly be delighted by Aunt Dimity's latest appearance in the honey-colored English cottage she bequeathed to her "niece", Lori Shepherd. Thanks to Aunt Dimity, Lori's life has taken on fairy-tale proportions: She's financially set for life and happily married...or so she thinks. When Lori's plans for a second honeymoon to England with her workaholic husband fall through, she begrudgingly takes along her father-in-law who promptly disappears, leaving behind a mysterious note.

Three years ago, 15-year-old Ellen Vicksburg went missing in the quiet town of River Remez, New Mexico. Ellen was kind, studious, and universally liked. Her younger brother, Ben, could imagine nothing worse than never knowing what happened to her - until, on the first anniversary of her death, he found her body in a shallow grave by the river's edge. Ben, now 17, is relentlessly driven to find answers to Ellen's homicide. Police believe she was the victim of a psychopath known as the Demon.

When British lieutenant Charles Acland returns home from Iraq, his serious head injuries are the outward manifestation of a profound inner change. He may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or it may be, as his psychiatrist suggests, "the prolonged destruction of a personality".

Date with Poison is the brilliant fourth novel in Julia Chapman's Dales Detective Agency series and is perfect of fans of M C Beaton's Agatha Raisin series and Gervase Phinn. A young teenager has gone missing. Can Samson O'Brien and Delilah Metcalfe find him? Spring is in the air in Bruncliffe. But not everyone is filled with the joys of the season. Implicated in the murder of a man in Leeds, the Dales Detective Agency’s Samson O’Brien is facing tough questions from the police....

December 2019. 34-year-old Leona Walsh is reported missing, igniting headlines around the country. Did she run away? Is she alive or dead? The police suspect foul play, but there is no proof. Despite an extensive search of the woodland on the edge of Exmoor where she was last seen, no trace of Leona was found and her disappearance is shrouded in mystery. Leona’s two daughters are living under the same roof as the main suspect – Matthew Walsh, their father. What must it be like for the girls growing up not knowing if their father killed their mother?

While Ben and Ro found happiness as a couple in part 1, Ben's obsession with his sister's murderer continues to consume him. Now, on Christmas day, he will make his way to Berkeley, hoping to find answers before the killer strikes again. Will Ben and Ro find the missing pieces before it's too late?

A country house murder, artistic insight and the postwar reunion of Alleyn and Troy combine in Ngaio Marsh’s wittiest and most readable novel. Agatha Troy, world-famous portrait painter, is inveigled into accepting a commission to paint the 70-year-old Sir Henry Ancred, Bart., the Grand Old Man of the stage. But just as she has completed her portrait, the old actor dies.

Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer’s dream has come true: The Sherlock Holmes-worshiping cowboy brothers are finally in business as professional detectives. But their fledgling A.A. Western Detective Agency faces a few challenges. Their partner, Col. Crowe, is almost as cantankerous and secretive as Old Red himself. The colonel’s daughter, Diana, insists on tagging along for the Amlingmeyers’ first assignment, which lands them smack dab in the middle of a range war - with Big Red and Old Red expected to shoot it out with rustlers rather than rustle up clues and solve a mystery.

A tipsy young woman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inky black night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broad daylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in a small-town beauty parlor. The ultimate whodunits, these crimes demand the attention of LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his collaborator on the crime beat, psychologist Alex Delaware.

Hours after throwing a third birthday party for their twins Kathy and Kelly in their Connecticut home, Margaret and Steve Frawley return home from a dinner in New York to discover the police in the house, their daughters missing, and an eight million dollar ransom note. The Frawleys meet the kidnapper's demands, but the abandoned car they're led to contains only Kelly, the body of the driver, and a suicide note, saying he had inadvertently killed Kathy and dumped her body in the ocean.

A fatal accident at Bruncliffe’s livestock auction mart leads to a call for detectives Samson O’Brien and Delilah Metcalfe. What starts as a simple health-and-safety investigation soon takes a sinister turn when they discover evidence that suggests murder. Clive Knowles approaches them for help – his sheep are being threatened by the gang of rustlers that is plaguing the Dales. Meanwhile, poacher Pete Ferris has also decided to play his hand, setting in motion a blackmail plot which will ensure Samson is pulled back into trouble with his nemesis Rick Procter.

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects more than 50 of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories - many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant.

Hank Fallon knows what it's like to rot behind bars. To wallow in the filth of a rat-infested cell. To smell the pent-up rage of cutthroat killers and thieves. Fallon earned his freedom the hard way. He saved the lives of four guards, got released early, and became a detective. Then he went undercover, infiltrated a prison gang plotting to bust out - and barely made it out alive. Now they're sending him back. Behind the iron. Straight to hell...

Rickie Alleyn, son of the famed detective Roderick Alleyn, had taken to the peaceful Channel Island village of Deep Cove to write his book. However, soon enough the tedium of provincial life threatens to send him packing - until, that is, he finds a dead stablehand, and the sleepy community's world is upturned. His father is called to take proceedings into hand, but as a darker side to island life emerges, one of illegal drugs and smuggling, Rickie goes missing.

Captain Ann Campbell is a West Point graduate, the daughter of legendary General "Fighting Joe" Campbell. She is the pride of Fort Hadley until, one morning, her body is found, naked and bound, on the firing range. Paul Brenner is a member of the Army's elite undercover investigative unit and the man in charge of this politically explosive case. Teamed with rape specialist Cynthia Sunhill, with whom he once had a tempestuous, doomed affair, Brenner is about to learn just how many people were sexually, emotionally, and dangerously involved with the Army's "golden girl."