English Police Mysteries

DC Scott Cullen of Lothian and Borders CID has only been in the job three months. Young, eager to please and desperate to do good. So a missing persons should be an easy case to solve. Right? Fresh from a messy divorce, Caroline Adamson’s future is finally looking up. Her son seems happy and she’s dating again. Trouble is, Cullen can’t find Caroline or the man she met on Schoolbook, the latest social network taking Edinburgh by storm.

When the beautiful Kit goes to meet an anonymous stranger - who's been sending her roses - the man drops dead at her feet before she even could even get his name. Game on. Andy Broussard soon learns that the man carried a lethal pathogen similar to the deadly Ebola virus. Soon, another body turns up with the same bug. Panic is imminent as the threat of pandemic is more real than ever before.

Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be the prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? And Charlie's death was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women. Now Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant join forces with the groom to track down a killer....

The fourth book in this twisty, fast-paced mystery series, The Horror at Murden Cove locks you on a storm-battered island with a killer whose motive is so deranged, you'll have to listen to this audiobook twice to believe it.

When Gail Zigman, town selectwoman and Joe Gunther's companion of many years, is raped, Gunther finds himself caught between the media, local politicians, and a network of well-meaning victims' rights advocates as he tries to put his own feelings aside and follow a trail of evidence. Every lead points to a single obvious suspect, but is the evidence too perfect?

A deputy sheriff was shot to death during a routine traffic stop on a dark country road. From what can been seen on the cruiser's video recorder of the killers, it is believed that they were a couple of Boston-based drug runners who had been on their way from Canada down to Boston. That's what brings Joe Gunther and his team to the investigation - an attempt to shut down the major drug running operation.

Clare Fergusson, St. Alban's new priest, fits like a square peg in the conservative Episcopal parish at Miller's Kill, New York. She is not just a "lady"; she's a tough ex-Army chopper pilot, and nobody's fool. Then a newborn infant left at the church door brings her together with the town's police chief, Russ Van Alstyne, who's also ex-Army and a cynical good shepherd for the stray sheep of his hometown.

Don Donaldson brings us to the famous French Quarter with our favorite dynamic detective duo in this gripping thriller. New Orleans's chief medical examiner, Andy Broussard, and his assistant, criminal psychologist Kit Franklyn, set off to investigate a series of violent serial murders. Examinations of the victims have led them to discover that each one's throat was ripped out with two tools: a garden fork and something unrecognizable.

Misery Bay is a picturesque fishing village on the Eastern shore of Nova Scotia, a seemingly idyllic location. But the islands and hidden coves hide something more sinister. Illegal immigrants and drugs are being smuggled in for the escort services in Halifax. Special Constable Garrett Barkhouse has spent 20 years fighting these twin scourges, but now he's burned out and planning to retire. However, his boss, Deputy Commissioner Alton Tuttle, has other plans.

Det. Inspector Kate Carter and her team are assigned to investigate the murder of man found inside the wreckage of a car. A vintage vinyl record from 1964, found next to the body, soon turns out to be an important clue as a second body is discovered. And meanwhile, Det. Inspector Kate, shrewd and smart, and a happy-go-lucky mum to three children, has something very dark to contend with her in her personal life.

Belfast, 1980, is the apocalypse. Bombings, riots, army on the streets, low flying helicopters, and ever-present rain. The grinding Northern Irish civil war between Protestants and Catholics has been going for a decade now. Hated by both sides are the police. Sean Duffy Year 1 takes us into that world. Newly promoted Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy is given his first command at Carrickfergus CID.

Over the years investigator Joe Gunther has battled drug pushers and corporate swindlers, grappled with environmental conspirators, and foiled gangs and home invaders. But while usually successful, Gunther hasn't always come out on top. Thirty years earlier, store owner Klaus Oberfeldt was robbed and beaten senseless. Gunther, distracted by his wife's losing struggle with cancer in the same hospital where Klaus was slipping from life, did something that would plague him for the rest of his career: He let the case go cold, burying it in the past along with his private sorrows.

From Michael Peterson of TV’s Bones comes another twisted murder mystery that takes place in the small town of Jakob’s Point, where there are more members from the Witness Protection Program than anywhere else in America. When the Federal Marshal, the only person who knows the true identities of the residents of the town, turns up dead, and his records are destroyed, FBI Special Agent Alice Wheaton gets swept up in the investigation. In Jakob’s Point, where everyone is a witness, and everyone is a suspect, Alice must use her secret weapon – forensic listening – to find the killer.

In 1979, a florist's lifeless body surfaced in the serene waters of Dyes Inlet, an enchanting estuary connected to the vast Puget Sound. Although the murder was never solved, a sinister heart carved into the victim's back made the case unforgettable. Forty-four years later, history repeats itself as not one, but two more victims are discovered within 48 hours, each bearing the exact same chilling carving in their flesh. The county's darkest mystery is about to be ripped wide open.

Nestled in the heart of the Adirondacks, Miller's Kill, New York is about as safe as it gets. That's why Episcopal minister Clare Fergusson is shocked when the July Fourth weekend brings a rash of vicious assaults to the scenic town. Even Clare's good friend, police chief Russ Van Alstyne, is shaken by the brutality of the crimes - especially when it appears that the victims were chosen because they are gay.

When a reclusive market gardener's death proves to stem from a 20-year-old bullet wound, Lieutenant Joe Gunther is presented with a very cold homicide to solve. But who was the victim exactly? A deeply private man eking out an ascetic existence from a hardscrabble mountain field, Abraham Fuller was virtually unknown to his neighbors, in the manner of someone pursuing more than mere solitude. The discovery of a bag full of unmarked bills and a body buried in the garden patch suggests that Fuller had motives beyond misanthropy.

A legend among Vermont cops, Joe Gunther has solved more local whodunits than a whole squad of detectives. But his latest case takes him and his team off their Brattleboro home turf, 42 miles west, to chip-on-its-shoulder, blue-collar Bennington. On the edge of town, Gunther encounters the lifeless body of Michelle Fisher. Her corpse, pale and seemingly at peace, offers him no clues about who she was or how she died. There are no signs of violence, no disorder. Snapshots and postcards show a woman who laughed hard and lived harder.

When a local quarry yields a garroted body with bad dental work and toes tattooed in Cyrillic, Joe Gunther figures it's a Russian Mafia killing, rare as that might be in Vermont. But it's so very...tidy. So very...professional. Then the CIA calls, inviting Gunther down to Washington for some friendly "assistance" with his case. Suddenly he's caught up in a shadowy game of cross and double-cross.

News travels fast in the small state of Vermont. In this tight-knit society, police officers and investigators proudly maintain a kinship that transcends the boundaries of their jurisdictions. When an unidentified body is found in the peaceful town of Brattleboro, local police and the Vermont Bureau of Investigation both appear at the scene. But before investigator Joe Gunther can begin to gather evidence of murder, a family emergency sends him to his hometown, where the lives of his mother and brother have suddenly been threatened.

Strange lesions found in the brain of a dead man have forensic pathologist Broussard stumped. Even more baffling are the corpse’s fingerprints. They belong to Ronald Cicero, a lifer at Angola State Prison - an inmate the warden insists is still there. Broussard sends psychologist Kit Franklyn to find out who is locked up in Cicero's cell. But an astonishing discovery at the jail and an attempt on her life almost has Kit sleeping with the crawfish in a bayou swamp.