International Detectives

Maurice Questing was left to die in a pool of boiling mud. Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn knew that any number of people could have killed him: the English exiles he'd hated, the New Zealanders he'd despised or the Maoris he'd insulted. Even the spies he'd thwarted - if he wasn't a spy himself.

Five-hundred kilometres from land in the middle of Atlantic Ocean lies Navigaceo. A tiny island that was hastily abandoned fifty years ago and has been uninhabited ever since. Until now. Tess Macfarlane is a documentary filmmaker tasked with capturing the wild beauty of Navigaceo. Accompanied by a small team of researchers, her job is to film everything she sees. But Tess sees too much: a body. It's clearly recent. It shouldn't be there. And the victim is wearing the same expedition uniform as her colleagues.

A town on the sea, Concarneau's nickname is Ville Bleue, or the Blue Town. With three harbors at its center, visitors can see enormous ships, sailors, fishermen, and the industry that goes alongside it. Because of its geographical location, Concarneau has shown it's perfectly positioned to protect its inhabitants from enemy attacks. For this reason and more, including his favorite restaurant, the Amiral, Commissaire Georges Dupin calls this town home. Most of his colleagues are on vacation for the Pentecost long weekend, but Dupin remains. His future in-laws are coming to visit.

Two deaths, the suicide of a newly laid-off worker and an unscrupulous businessman found murdered, lead Inspector Montalbano to inspect the Halcyon, a nearly abandoned mysterious ship with no passengers.

The Department of Sensitive Crimes, renowned for taking on the most obscure and irrelevant cases, led by Ulf Varg, their best detective, is always prepared to take on an investigation, no matter how complex. So when Ulf is approached by the girlfriend of Trig Oloffson, who claims her beau (the infamous bad boy of Swedish letters) is being blackmailed, Ulf is determined to help. It turns out that this wild bear of a man may be more of a teddy.

Despite their investigative prowess, Scotland Yard's Chief Inspector Michael Sinclair, Lord Acton, and rookie detective Kathleen Doyle stir more than a few feathers at CID Headquarters when their relationship comes to light. But office politics quickly become trivial when a rash of underworld murders shatters London's normally austere façade. With a growing list of successfully solved cases to her name, the ever-dauntless Doyle shakes off the gossip and sets out to investigate the escalating turf war.

When the director, Monsieur Achille Formentin, walks in one beautiful April morning, he is shocked to find the whole museum emptied of its contents - only a bench, the reception desk, and a lowly fern remain. Distressed, he calls the local police, and Aix's examining magistrate Antoine Verlaque sets out to discover the thief's identity. But it's the most baffling case Verlaque has ever encountered. Why would someone want to steal porcelain dessert plates, some old documents, and a few small paintings?

A society wedding at Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire becomes a crime scene when a man is murdered. After another body is found, the baffled local constabulary turns to Scotland Yard. Though the second crime had a witness, her description of the killer is so strange it's unbelievable. Despite his experience, Inspector Ian Rutledge has few answers of his own. The victims are so different that there is no rhyme or reason to their deaths. Nothing logically seems to connect them - except the killer. As the investigation widens, a clear suspect emerges. But for Rutledge, the facts still don't add up, leaving him to question his own judgment.

For Inspector Esa Khattak and Sergeant Rachel Getty, the Syrian refugee crisis is about to become personal. Esa's childhood friend, Nathan Clare, calls him in distress: his sister, Audrey, has vanished from a Greek island where the siblings run an NGO. Audrey had been working to fast-track refugees to Canada, but now, she is implicated in the double-murder of a French Interpol agent and a young man who had fled the devastation in Syria. Esa and Rachel arrive in Greece to a shocking scene, witnessing for themselves the massive fallout of the Syrian war in the wretched refugee camps.

A friend in his cigar club asks Antoine Verlaque to visit Rene Rouquet, a retired postal worker who has found a rolled-up canvas in his apartment. As the apartment once belonged to Paul Cezanne, Rouquet is convinced he's discovered a treasure. But when Antoine arrives at the apartment, he finds Rene dead, the canvas missing, and a mysterious art history professor standing over the body. When the painting is finally recovered, the mystery only deepens.

The newspaper reported the case with relish. Jane (Jinx) Kingsley, fashion photographer and heiress, tried to kill herself after being unceremoniously jilted by her fiance, Leo Wallader. Leo has disappeared - together with Jinx's best friend Meg Harris. But when she wakes from her coma, Jinx can remember nothing about her alleged suicide attempt. Nevertheless, Jinx is convinced that she would never try to kill herself over Leo. Surely it was she who wanted to break the engagement.

A man falls to his death in Western Scotland. From a distance another man watches. He approaches the body, tucks a book into the dead man's pocket, and leaves. When the Scottish police show visiting detective chief inspector Domenic Jejeune the book, he recognises it as a call for help. Back in Saltmarsh the brutal murder of a researcher has everyone looking at the man's controversial studies as a motive.

If there’s one thing detective Bath Peter Diamond has no patience for, it’s a dumb git trying to get involved in one of his investigations - for example, a Philip Marlowe-wannabe private investigator like the self-styled Johnny Getz. But fate has saddled Diamond with this trial. A Bath antiques dealer, “Seppy” Hubbard, has disappeared without a trace, and his daughter has hired Getz to find him. When a body is discovered in Seppy’s locked-up store, the missing persons case becomes a murder investigation, and now Diamond has to collaborate with the insufferable private eye.

Investigator Arkady Renko, the pariah of the Moscow prosecutor's office, has been assigned the thankless job of investigating a new phenomenon: late-night subway riders report seeing the ghost of Joseph Stalin on the platform of the Chistye Prudy Metro station. The illusion seems part political hocus-pocus and also part wishful thinking, for among many Russians, Stalin is again popular; the bloody dictator can boast a two-to-one approval rating.

In the small mining town of Malmberget, north of the Arctic Circle, residents and their houses are being relocated. As the mine that built the town slowly swallows it street by street, building by building, the memories of the community have collapsed into the huge pit they call “the hole.” Only a few stubborn souls cling to their homes, refusing to leave. When two workers making their final preparations hear a sound coming from a basement, they break a cellar window and find a terrified man curled up in a corner.

The phone rings. One of Brendan Healy's oldest and best friends is dead. Healy must return home to Hawthorne to find out why. Meanwhile, Agent Jennifer Aiken is investigating the same dark conspiracy involving politicians, prostitution, and black markets. The trail will put both her and Brendan's lives in mortal danger, as well as introducing Healy to the fascinating young woman Sloane Dewan, who may hold the key to it all.

London, 1879. Crowds have gathered at Islington's chilly Agricultural Hall to place their bets on who will become the next world champion in a six-day, 500-mile speed-walking race, the wobble. When one of the highly favored contenders dies under suspicious circumstances, Sergeant Cribb also has a race on his hands - to pursue a ruthless murderer.

One year after moving to his late wife’s Tuscan hometown of Gravigna, Nico Doyle has fully settled into life there, seeing friends in the course of daily errands and helping to serve and test recipes at his in-laws’ restaurant. But the town is shaken by the arrival of wine critic Michele Mantelli in his flashy Jaguar. Mantelli holds his influential culinary magazine and blog over Gravigna’s vintners and restaurateurs. Mantelli’s lavish, larger-than-life, and often vindictive personality has made him many enemies, and when he is poisoned, Maresciallo Perillo needs help....

Christmas in Birmingham means the Frankfurt Christmas Market. Loved and hated by brummies in equal measure, it certainly makes life interesting for West Midlands Police. But when the body of a homeless man is found behind a market stall early one Sunday morning, it looks like Christmas might be cancelled for DI Zoe Finch and her team. And when they discover that the victim has a history that makes his death politically sensitive, things get even more complicated.

A super-criminal - as deadly as she is beautiful - wagers all in an epic battle with a master detective, Akechi Kogoro. No trick is too elaborate, no disguise too fantastic as the two perfectly matched antagonists take turns to outwit each other.