English Detective Mysteries

With their engaging plots, mellow Scottish ambiance, and droll humor, the Hamish Macbeth mysteries always provide a bonnie time. Death of an Addict continues the Hamish Macbeth tradition of superb entertainment, with some fascinating twists. When a recovering addict dies while recuperating near Lochdubh, our redheaded hero suspects foul play. To complete his investigation, Constable Macbeth must leave his idyllic home and travel to Amsterdam to match wits with big-time drug dealers.

Grace Repton, a beautiful older woman, walks into the police station to tell Detective Matt Ballard she has information that could stop a murder. Her fiance, the infamous serial killer Jeremy Reader, has told her that he has a disciple who is going to kill using Reader's horrific methods. Reader murdered five women and was finally brought to justice by Detective Ballard. Reader is safely imprisoned in a high security prison, and claiming to be a reformed man who wants to help the police.

Narrated by acclaimed British actor Edward Petherbridge, The Last Moriarty is set in London, 1895. On a cold November morning, a young American actress visits 221B Baker Street, desperate for Sherlock Holmes to protect her from the threats of a mysterious, menacing man who has recently appeared in her life. Holmes agrees to help, even though he has just promised the Prime Minister to solve the murder of John D. Rockefeller's security agent before the incident can derail an upcoming British-American summit.

The services of the Eyes Peeled Detective Agency are secured by Sir Barrington Hedley-Smythe following the theft of four rare and exceptionally valuable bronze busts. Sam and the team are soon hot on the case, also happening upon a mysterious spate of missing pets in the process. Then, if their caseload wasn’t busy enough, the shocking theft of the iconic Isle of Man Senior TT Trophy is making global headlines, meaning even more potential work for our intrepid team. Overall, ideal business conditions for an expanding firm of private detectives, you’d imagine? Not so much….

It was summer in the mountains when five small children vanished from their nursery school picnic. The heat was stifling that day, the tinkle of an ice-cream van in the air.... Three-and-a-half years later, in the dead of winter, the children are returned to their families...one by one. All except for Ivy - the granddaughter of Homicide Detective Kate Wakeland. The other four children say Ivy is dead.

A mysterious stranger arrives in the small Herefordshire market town of Ledbury. He offers a solicitor, Anthony Midwinter, a generous sum to look after a package for him until spring, no questions asked. The stranger warns that it must remain sealed or else the very stability of England will come under threat. The Ledbury Lamplighters see out the year with a public ceremony extinguishing the town's lamps, a local tradition. A prominent local businessman is brutally murdered in full view of the revellers.

The story opens with the apparently accidental drowning of a sixth form student in the Norfolk countryside. As a matter of routine, or so it seems, the case passes across the desk of Detective Sergeant Smith, recently returned to work after an internal investigation into another case that has led to tensions between officers at Kings Lake police headquarters. As an ex-DCI, Smith could have retired by now, and it is clear that some of his superiors wish that he would do so.

A collapsed ceiling. A dead body. What starts as a routine 999 call takes an unexpected twist when Erika Foster arrives on the scene and discovers the body of a woman in an empty flat, with all DNA evidence scrubbed away. When forensics find cocaine residue coating every surface of the ceiling, Erika calls in the drug dogs, who lead her to a mysterious parcel locker on the outside wall of the property. Chasing down the locker’s owner leads Erika back where she never expected to be–staring into the eyes of Jerome Goodman, the drug dealer who murdered her husband, Mark, ten years ago.

Mourning the loss of his wife, Rita, former NYPD homicide detective Nico Doyle moves to her hometown of Gravigna in the winesoaked region of Chianti. Half Italian and half Irish, Nico finds himself able to get by in the region with the help of Rita’s relatives, but he still feels alone and out of place. He isn’t sure if it’s peace he’s seeking, but it isn’t what he finds. Early one morning, he hears a gunshot and a dog's cries near his cabin and walks out to discover a dead body in the woods, flashily dressed in gold tennis shoes.

Rachel Goldman writes mysteries in which Duffy Madison, consultant to the county prosecutor's office, helps find missing persons. Rachel is busy working on her next book when a man calls out of the blue asking for help in a missing person case. The caller's name? Duffy Madison. Is this real, or has she lost her mind? She doesn't have much time to find out, because a serial killer is on the loose, kidnapping and murdering mystery authors. And Rachel may just be the next target.

The Department of Sensitive Crimes takes on three extremely strange cases. First, the detectives investigate how and why a local business owner was stabbed...in the back of the knee. Next, a young woman's imaginary boyfriend goes missing. And, in the final investigation, Varg must determine whether nocturnal visitations at a local spa have a supernatural element.

No one would ever accuse famous opera star Dame Serena Levante of lacking a flare for the dramatic. Unfortunately, it's curtains down on the dysfunctional diva when she's found dead at the bottom of a staircase in her elegant home. Solving an opera singer's murder may not be the typical hairdresser's aria of expertise. But Dame Serena was the mother of Daisy's best friend Floria, so Daisy must do-or-dye her best to get to the roots of the case.

When wealthy and popular crusader and reformer Lester Pierce is gunned down in front of his Park Avenue residence, the public outcry forces the NYPD to restructure its homicide department. As the deceased was highly critical of Inspector Lionel Cramer, the longtime head of homicide is temporarily relieved of his badge. But it seems Cramer was not just a scapegoat. He was seen dining in Little Italy with mob kingpin Ralph Mars. If Cramer's provisional replacement, Captain George Rowcliff, becomes permanent, PI Nero Wolfe's future dealings with the force will be much compromised.

When Detective Morgan Brookes is urgently called to her Aunt Ettie’s cottage, hidden in Covel Woods, she rushes to the scene. Panicked Ettie is shaken having discovered the chilling remains of a woman in the river, one skeletal hand reaching out from the deep water. The unknown woman was dressed to walk the rugged trails of the Lake District, so Morgan’s team assume she fell in the water and was taken by the current. But thin diagonal bruises on her neck suggest something far more sinister.

In the isolated villages in the north of Scotland, the villagers rely on the services of the chimney sweep, Pete Ray, and his old-fashioned brushes. Pete is always able to find work in the Scottish highlands, until the day that Police Constable Hamish Macbeth notices blood dripping onto the floor of a villager's fireplace, and a dead body stuffed inside the chimney. The entire town of Lochdubh is certain Pete is the culprit, but Hamish doesn't believe that the affable chimney sweep is capable of committing murder.

Inspector William Monk is ordered to investigate in a manner that will give the least possible pain to the influential family. But Monk, brilliant and ambitious, is handicapped by lingering traces of amnesia and by the craven ineptitude of his supervisor, who would like nothing better than to see Monk fail.

In Scotland, where thrift and a "nice set of dentures" are generally admired, dental surgeon Dr. Frederick Gilchrist’s cheap rates and penchant for pulling teeth have gained him a clientele. However, wiser Highlanders (like Hamish Macbeth) opt to steer clear of this reputed womanizer’s all-too-busy hands. A blinding toothache sends Hamish Macbeth 120 miles out of Lochdubh to the infamous dentist’s door. Unfortunately for Hamish and Gilchrist, someone has canceled all the doctor’s appointments - permanently.

A noted criminal defense attorney, Robert Rotenberg, delivers a courtroom drama that successfully evokes the multicultural city of Toronto even as it keeps readers on the edges of their seats. In the tale, the "Voice of Canada", a radio host, confesses to murder - but the case is far from closed.

June 1920. In a house with a red door lies the body of a woman who has been bludgeoned to death. Rumor has it that two years earlier, she'd painted that door to welcome her husband back from the Front - only he never came home. Meanwhile, in London, a man suffering from a mysterious illness first goes missing and then just as suddenly reappears. He is unable to explain his recovery. Inspector Ian Rutledge must solve the cases.

Get three absolutely gripping crime thrillers set on the UK's atmospheric north Norfolk coast from number one best-selling British author J M Dalgliesh in this great value collection.