Historical Police Fiction

In his forties, the Reverend Charles Howard still cut an impressive figure. A married Presbyterian minister in Toronto’s east end, Howard was popular with the congregation that elected him, especially with the ladies, and most particularly with Miss Sarah Dignam. Respected in the community, Howard, as Visitor for the House of Industry, sat in judgment on the poor, assessing their applications for the workhouse. But now Howard is dead, stabbed and brutally beaten by someone he invited into his office.

The ritual murder of a prostitute named Ada McKinley in a bedroom on decrepit Pentecost Alley would ordinarily occasion no stir in Victoria's great metropolis. But under the victim's body the police find a Hellfire Club badge inscribed with the name Finlay Fitzjames - a name that instantly draws Superintendent Thomas Pitt into the case. Finlay's father - immensely wealthy, powerful, and dangerous - refuses to consider the possibility that his son has been in Ada McKinley's bed.

When the affluent Lintons of Lenox Hill summon Sarah Brandt to examine their teenage daughter, their worst fear is confirmed: she is with child. The pregnancy is a mystery, however, as the young woman - mentally still a child herself - is never left on her own and denies that any man has ever hurt her. It's a delicate situation, one which casts suspicion on those close to the Lintons, including their beloved minister, the Reverend Oliver Upchurch.

Lawton's novel opens in 1938 with Europe on the brink of war. In London, Frederick Troy, newly promoted to the prestigious Murder Squad at Scotland Yard, is put in charge of rounding up a list of German and Italian "enemy aliens" that also includes Frederick's brother, Rod, who learns upon receiving an internment letter that despite having grown up in England he is Austrian-born. Hundreds of men are herded by train to a neglected camp on the Isle of Man. And, as the bombs start falling on London, a murdered rabbi is found, then another, and another.

Acclaimed author Anne Perry delivers another installment of the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt mystery series. Two dead bodies have been discovered, both similarly mutilated. As Inspector Thomas Pitt examines one body, he recognizes the man from a previous case. With the help of his perceptive wife Charlotte, Thomas intends to solve this gruesome crime.

Before Jack the Ripper terrorised London, Police Inspector Samuel Ravenscroft patrolled the streets of Whitechapel. Clever and hard-working, Ravenscroft nonetheless has the worst record in the force. He lets a murderer escape during a chase and is banished to the spa town of Malvern for a water treatment to cure his asthma. Ravenscroft accepts a dinner invitation from a new acquaintance, Jabez Pitzer. Before dinner, the maid finds Pitzer slumped over his desk - dead. Ravenscroft immediately recognises the signs - Pitzer has been poisoned.

In the West End, a renowned Italian escape artist dies spectacularly on stage during a performance - immolated in a gleaming copper cauldron of his wife’s design. In Cambridge, the runaway daughter of a famous don is found drowned, her long blonde hair tangled in the Jesus Lock on the River Cam. And in Baker Street, a mysterious locksmith exacts an unusual price to open a small silver box sent to Watson.

As commander of the River Police, Monk is accustomed to violent death, but the mutilated female body found on Limehouse Pier one chilly December morning moves him with horror and pity. The victim’s name is Zenia Gadney. Her waterfront neighbors can tell him little—only that the same unknown gentleman had visited her once a month for many years. She must be a prostitute, but—described as quiet and kempt—she doesn’t appear to be a fallen woman. What sinister secrets could have made poor Zenia worth killing? And why does the government keep interfering in Monk’s investigation?

On a patrol boat near Waterloo Bridge, police superintendent William Monk notices a young couple engaged in an intense discussion. Seconds later, the two plunge to their deaths in the icy waters of the Thames. Was it an accident, a suicide, or a murder? Ever the investigator, Monk learns that the woman, Mary Havilland, had planned to marry the fair-haired man who shared her fate. He also discovers that Mary's father had recently died in a supposed suicide.

When Sam Spade gets drawn into the Maltese Falcon case, we know what to expect: straight talk, hard questions, no favors, and no way for anyone to get underneath the protective shell he wears like a second skin. We know that his late partner, Miles Archer, was a son of a bitch; that Spade is sleeping with Archer's wife, Iva; that his tomboyish secretary, Effie Perine, is the only innocent in his life. What we don't know is how Spade became who he is. Spade & Archer completes the picture.

Sarah Brandt is surprised when the son of her superstitious next-door neighbor asks for her professional advice. She is even more surprised to learn that mild-mannered Nelson Ellsworth has a mistress and has gotten her with child. When the young woman later turns up dead under the infamous hanging tree in Washington Square, Nelson is the prime suspect. Sarah knows that he must be innocent, and she enlists the help of detective Frank Malloy to help her find the real killer.

On January 15, 1947, the tortured body of a beautiful young woman was found in a vacant lot in Hollywood. Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, a young Hollywood hopeful, had been brutally murdered. Her murder sparked one of the greatest manhunts in California history.

1929 Las Vegas, New Mexico. When a man is murdered at the Castaneda Hotel, Josie MacFarland is given an impossible role: the first Harvey House Detective. Armed with only her determination, Josie faces a dismissive sheriff, the cold shoulder of old friends, and the hardships of the Great Depression. She can either return home in disgrace—or fight to prove she belongs in a world determined to shut her out. For readers of Jacqueline Winspear, Rhys Bowen, and Sulari Gentill.

1940. It's been a month since rector's daughter Billie Harkness left her rural village to make a fresh start in the northern city of Hull. Now she has a new home and an exciting new job as one of only two female police constables in the whole city. But Hull still feels like a foreign country, and some people are less than impressed by the idea of a woman doing a "man's job". But determined to do her bit for the war effort, Billie throws herself into her work. The chance to prove her worth comes during a search for a missing air raid shelter inspector, when Billie makes a shocking discovery.

When the body of a boy is found in the filthy sewers of Bluegate Fields, Inspector Pitt is called to investigate. The boy was clearly upper class, so what was he doing in one of London's most dangerous slums? The boy's parents refuse to answer police queries. What are these proper, prosperous people hiding? With the help of his wife and helpmate, Charlotte, Inspector Pitt intends to find out.

The weathered remains of Eleanor Gray are found on a Scottish mountainside, and her mother, the domineering Lady Maude Gray, requires delicate treatment. This is a case that will lead Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard to Scotland, where his harrowing journey to find the truth will drag him back through the fires of his past into secrets that still have the power to kill.

Women rich and poor come to her, desperate and in dire need of help – and discretion. Dolly Merishaw is a midwife and an abortionist in Victorian Toronto, but although she keeps quiet about her clients’ condition, her contempt for them and her greed leaves every one of them resentful and angry. So it comes as no surprise to Detective William Murdoch when this malicious woman is murdered. What is a shock, though, is that a week later a young boy is found dead in Dolly’s squalid kitchen.

Helena Lanark is an elderly woman, living in a luxurious care home. The heiress of an immense family fortune, she keeps the secret to the horror which once occurred within the Lanark family house. Jane Tennison is leading a murder investigation into the recent brutal death of a young girl, her decomposed starved body discovered in an old air raid shelter in the garden of the Lanark's now derelict house. Initially the focus is on identifying the victim, until another body is found, hidden in the walls of the shelter.

Charles Todd brings his classic mystery series to a new level of intensity and intrigue. The year is 1919, and Ian Rutledge is a fragile yet courageous former soldier searching for his place in a post-war world. Now a Scotland Yard detective, Rutledge is called upon to probe a murder in the small Norfolk town of Osterley - but he soon discovers that the crime may be connected to one of the greatest disasters of all time…

Berlin, 1931. A power struggle is taking place in Berlin’s underworld. The American gangster Abraham Goldstein is in residence at the Hotel Excelsior. As a favour to the FBI, the police put him under surveillance, with Detective Gereon Rath on the job. As Rath grows bored and takes on a private case for his seedy pal Johann Marlow, he soon finds himself in the middle of a Berlin street war. Meanwhile Rath’s on-off girlfriend, Charly, lets a young woman she is interrogating escape, and soon her investigations cross Rath’s from the other side.