Historical Police Fiction

Rosenmontag 1933: Gereon Rath feiert Karneval in Köln. Der Morgen danach beginnt für ihn mit einem heftigen Kater, der falschen Frau im Bett und einem Anruf aus Berlin: Der Reichstag steht in Flammen! Sofortige Urlaubssperre! Seinen neuen Fall aber erbt Gereon Rath von seinem Vorgesetzten Wilhelm Böhm, der sich unter dem Nazi-Polizeipräsidenten ins politische Abseits manövriert hat: Ein Obdachloser ist erstochen am Nollendorfplatz gefunden worden.

The Maze Genealogy Investigators are on the trail of a cold case, following another message from the medium Claire Lewis. A disturbing discovery at a ruined country house and the unearthing of family papers provide the missing clues to the fate of police detective William McRoberts who disappeared without trace in the 1870s. Maggie and Nick travel to Liverpool and North Wales to see if they can crack open the case and finally be able to tell the McRoberts family what happened to their ancestor.

December, 1939. Having solved the case of the Suffolk Vampire, Inspector Betty Church and her colleagues at Sackwater Police Station have settled back down to business. There's the elderly Mr Fern, who keeps losing his slippers, Sylvia Satin's 13th birthday party to attend and the scintillating case of the missing bookmark to solve. Though peace and quiet are all well and good, Betty soon finds herself longing for some cold-blooded murder.

When a signalman discovers a mutilated body inside a railway tunnel near Groote Park, it seems to be a straightforward case of a man struck by a passing train. But Inspector Vandam of the Middeldorp police isn’t satisfied that Albert Smith’s death was accidental, and he sets out to prove foul play in a baffling mystery which crosses continents from deepest South Africa to the wilds of northern Scotland, where an almost identical crime appears to have been perpetrated.

Spicher Air Force Base was located in a rural section of Central Germany known as the Eiffel Mountains. It was up to Sergeant Anthony Harris and the rest of the USAF Security Policemen assigned to the 44th Squadron, Delta Flight, to make sure that the world stayed free or that at least their small corner of it did.

Benito Mussolini approda a Genova per una visita ufficiale. Siamo nel maggio del 1938 e il Duce conta di fermarsi in Liguria per quattro giorni. Il commissario Boccadoro, ricevuta la soffiata da un detenuto, segue attentamente gli spostamenti di Mussolini nella città, cercando di mettere insieme i pezzi di un probabile complotto dai contorni difficilmente afferrabili. Mescolando personaggi reali alla più pura finzione letteraria, con Nero dominante d'Amaro costruisce un thriller politico dalla rigorosa ambientazione anni Trenta.

At a summons from Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy, midwife Sarah Brandt arrives at the elegant home of famed magnetic healer Edmund Blackwell to find his wife in labor - and the good doctor dead from an apparent suicide. Only Malloy sees what no one else wants to: that Blackwell was murdered in his own home. After a successful delivery, the Blackwell baby falls mysteriously ill.

It should have been an easy score - a suburban house on a quiet cul-de-sac, with the owners scheduled to be gone all night. But career burglar George Patniks has chosen the wrong time to go breaking and entering, because tonight Harvey Rozier will murder his wife. Patniks is the only witness to the brutal killing, but, of course, he can't go to the police.

Washington, D.C., 1972. Derek Strange has left the police department and set up shop as a private investigator. His former partner, Frank "Hound Dog" Vaughn, is still on the force. When a young woman comes to Strange asking for his help recovering a cheap ring she claims has sentimental value, the case leads him onto Vaughn's turf, where a local drug addict's been murdered, shot point-blank in his apartment. Soon both men are on the trail of a ruthless killer: Red Fury, so called for his looks and the car his girlfriend drives, but a name that fits his personality all too well.

Against all the visible evidence, a homicide cop embarks on a quest to prove a Hollywood goddess' innocence for the crime of killing her husband in this chilling tale set in the heart of New Orleans.

Dotato di arguzia e di un formidabile spirito di osservazione, il giovane Vitale Federici, cadetto di Montefeltri, viene chiamato a indagare su un concatenarsi di delitti all'apparenza insolvibili. L'Italia di fine Settecento, tuttavia, si rivelerà presto ai suoi occhi come un insidioso gioco di apparenze, sotto il quale si celano le macchinazioni di aristocratici, religiosi e magistrati. Le città di Roma, Urbino e Venezia diverranno per lui autentiche trappole mortali, dalle quali potrà salvarsi soltanto grazie al lume dell'intelletto e all'arte della dissimulazione.

In 1975, a People's Militia homicide investigator is on a plane for Istanbul when it is hijacked by Armenian terrorists. Before the Turkish authorities can fulfill the hijackers' demands, the plane explodes in midair. Two investigators, a secret policeman and a homicide detective, are assigned to the case.

Naples, 1931. A bitter wind stalks the city streets, and murder lies at its chilled heart. When Maestro Vezzi, one of the world's greatest tenors, is found brutally murdered in his dressing room at Naples' famous San Carlo theater, the enigmatic and aloof Commissario Ricciardi is called to investigate. Arrogant and bad-tempered, Vezzi was hated by many. But with the livelihoods of the opera at stake, who would have committed such a callous act?

Myra Thomas, accused of murdering her philandering husband, is found not guilty by a sympathetic jury. But while travelling from Adelaide to Perth on the Transcontinental Railway express, she mysteriously disappears during the overnight journey across the vast, featureless desert. Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte takes the case and sets off to search for her over the flat wasteland of the Nullabor Plain.

In 1920s Munich, the body of Anna Gross, a young society wife, has been found in the English Gardens, still clothed in finery. Soon a second body is discovered, also a woman of high society. When a third body is found, homicide detective Axel Berg realizes he's dealing with unprecedented evil. Is the murderer politically motivated? Is he a lone madman? Or worse, is the killer possessed by both political and personal demons?

I still dream, every night, of Polneath on fire. Smoke unravelling from an upper window, and the terrace bathed in a hectic orange light.... Now I see that the decision I made at Polneath was the only decision of my life. Everything marred in that one dark minute.

The activities of the infamous drug-running gang founded by Cornelius Mildew may have been hampered in The Mildew Gang, but the king of crime is still alive and well-and still threatening to take his revenge. Scotland Yard whisks the two young people responsible away from London, where they'll presumably be safe-but when they're attacked once again by Mildew's henchmen, they return to the big city to help bring about his downfall.

Gareth Cadwallader Owen is the Mamur Zapt, the Head of the Khedive's Secret Police. However, unlike his British colleagues, Owen works for the Khedive. It's not a comfortable perch, as agitation for political and social restructuring grows. Furthermore, Owen is married to a pasha's daughter, Zeinab, herself straddling a cultural divide.

Falkenberg, Sweden. The mutilated body of talented young jewellery designer, Linnea Blix, is found in a snow-swept marina. Hampstead Heath, London. The body of a young boy is discovered with similar wounds to Linnea's. Buchenwald Concentration Camp, 1944. In the midst of the hell of the Holocaust, Erich Hebner will do anything to see himself as a human again. Are the two murders the work of a serial killer, and how are they connected to shocking events at Buchenwald?

Upon reaching the tumultuous 1980s, Olen Steinhauer's literary crime series set in Eastern Europe comes full circle as one of the People's Militia's earliest cases reemerges to torment its inspectors, including militia chief Emil Brod, the original detective on the case.