International Detectives

This is the second novella detailing the continuing adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the world's first consulting detective, and his friend and colleague, Dr. John Watson. In The Sign of Four, Holmes and Watson are hired by Mary Morstan to investigate the mysterious circumstances of her father's death, which will set them on the trail of a lost Indian treasure and in pursuit of two of the strangest criminals in the Holmes canon.

When a violent storm blasts England’s south coast, it’s up to retired Italian detective Giuseppe Bianchi to sift through the devastation and piece together the tragic events left behind in the storm’s wake.

Thomas Howard of Missouri came out of nowhere, one foggy night, to rescue Countess Elaina Montague from rape and robbery. He was in England, he said, to find his brother, who had disappeared. To repay him, the beautiful countess offered to enlist her friend, Sherlock Holmes, to help in the search. Despite investigating a rash of audacious jewel thefts, and already spending altogether too much time at the music hall, the great detective felt there was more to the mysterious Mr. Howard, and accepted the case.

Lucy Durmast waits patiently in front of the judge at her own murder trial, refusing to utter a single word. Kenneth Carline, an employee of her father's, was found poisoned to death after eating a meal that Lucy herself had prepared. Kenneth was set to marry another, and Lucy, it seems, was jealous. But what should have been an open-and-shut case of envy-driven murder becomes complicated when primary detective Trevor Porritt suffers permanent brain damage. C. D. Sloan inherits the file - and immediately begins poking holes in what looked like an airtight case.

When local fisherman Horace Boller decided to row his boat out on the tidal backwash of the river one morning, he couldn't have meant to land a catch like this. What he ended up with was a body floating on the river's surface. And judging by the state of the corpse, the death was not a recent one. The strange thing is, the coroner report indicates that drowning was not the cause of death. It's up to the intrepid C. D. Sloan - and his markedly less intrepid assistant, Constable Crosby - to investigate.

The day gets off to a bad start for Montalbano: while trying to break up a fight on Marinella beach, he hits the wrong man and is stopped by the Carabinieri. When he finally gets to the office, the inspector learns about a strange abduction: a woman was abducted, drugged, and then released unharmed a few hours later. A few days later, the same thing happens again, but this time the woman abducted is the niece of Enzo, the owner of Montalbano's favorite trattoria. The only link between the two events is that both women are 30 years old and work in a bank.

Westminster, 2013. Wole Robert is black. A Brit. His marriage is on a razor edge. He had always want to be a tattooist but his overbearing mother didn't let his passion see the light of day. He turned out a detective. Meanwhile, a clever monster glides undetected through London, leaving behind a gruesome trail of carnage but with few clues - tattoos on the victims. But this monster takes it one day at a time - strikes every Wednesday.

"The Castle Orphans": "How often does he visit you?" added Watson, producing his pipe from his pocket. He searched the same pocket for a match then lit the device. "He visits every week and every few nights. He likes to sneak in the window and take things back to his castle!" The small girl played with the little tiger upon her knee.

A professional pickpocket and accomplished thief ignores his wife's warnings and embarks on an adventure that will change his life - perhaps for the better. A technological marvel of a sports car kills a pedestrian, but no one was at the wheel. A local lunatic admits to murder, but is he crazy - or crazy smart? The life of a researcher with ties to a British spy agency is thrown into chaos when his research goes missing. Injury Time delivers captivating tales of intrigue wrapped in Catherine Aird's tightly woven logic, sealed with the bow of enigma.

On the hottest day in living memory, Richard Mallory Tindall, the owner of a patent firm, does not return home to Cleete village. When a man is found crushed to death, Tindall's case goes from missing person to homicide. In the course of solving murder cases, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan has seen all manner of ugly death. But there's something particularly gruesome about this one, the body crushed beneath the marble and iron of an old Saxon church tower. With rubble blocking off access to the crime scene, no one can get close enough to inspect the body.

Not when missing sheep need locating, stray dogs need homing, and thieves need identifying! As Britain’s most popular copper continues his work around the village, he has to cope with an array of eccentric characters: a postman who can’t read, a helpful lady who steals from the elderly people in her care, and a delightful small-time villain called Tin Lid Talbot. Winning an aged tin of sardines in a local raffle and upsetting the villagers by getting first prize at the local whist drive, PC Nick Rhea must contend with the variety and humorous exploits of a Yorkshire village.

Lucy Jarrett is terrified. Someone is watching her every move, following her home from work and making threatening phone calls. But her husband doesn't believe her and no one else is listening. Lucy's married life is proving anything but blissful. Her musician husband is perpetually away on tour and doesn't want to start a family. Lucy finally calls on Detective Tom Mariner for help, and he takes her fears seriously because of the recent murder of another young woman by her ex-partner.

Ellery had a simple case. A few days of discreet snooping, some choice advice, and the inimitable sleuth would blithely restore domestic harmony to the millionaire couple Dirk and Martha Lawrence. Then came the scarlet letters. And finally the cryptic clue, scrawled in a murdered man’s blood. A simple case? Unless Ellery did some super-fast sleuthing, he’d have nothing to show but a very scarlet face. The case will drag him all over New York as he hunts for the truth.

When the body of a teenage girl is found in a London hotel, DI Patrick Lennon is mystified. Nobody saw her or her killer enter the hotel, and there is no apparent motive - until a second teenager is found and Lennon realises somebody is targeting fans of the world's biggest boy band.

Detective Kjeld Nygaard wants nothing more than to forget his family and Varsund, the small mining town he once called home, even exist. But while on suspension after his last case went disastrously wrong, his estranged father, Stenar, leaves a message on Kjeld’s phone claiming he’s seen a murder. But with no evidence and Stenar suffering from Alzheimer’s, the local police think he must have imagined it.

Being able to unravel and analyze the findings of others was a rare attribute of University Professor Craig Kennedy. He coupled this with use of various gadgets and devices that were commonplace in the early twentieth century. They seem primitive by much of today’s standard equipment but were actual forerunners to what are matter-of-fact equipment, enhanced and extended in the present day. His ability to analyze his findings resulted in the well-earned recognition of “The Scientific Detective.” He was always accompanied by young newspaper reporter Walter Jameson, who kept tabs on plot details.

It is the winter of 1946, and after years of war, ex-Special Operations executive agent Duncan Forrester is back at his Oxford college as a junior ancient history fellow. But his peace is shattered when a much-disliked Fellow is found dead in the quad, stabbed and pushed from an upper window. A don is suspected and arrested for the murder, but Forrester is not convinced of his friend's guilt.

Ten months ago, Samantha Hunt set off for work…and was never seen again. Despite the statistics of cold cases, Dylan Scott wants to believe the young woman's alive - and not just because her father, his client, is desperate to find his missing daughter before he dies of cancer. By all accounts Sam was a lovely girl, devoted to her younger stepsisters, well-liked at her work, in love with her boyfriend. But as usual not everything is as it seems in sleepy Dawson's Clough. Sam's boyfriend has a violent past.

Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, takes a city break in Vienna, where his favorite film, The Third Man, was set, but everything goes wrong, and his companion, Paloma, calls a halt to their relationship. Meanwhile, strange things are happening to jobbing musician Mel Farran, who finds himself scouted by methods closer to the spy world than the concert platform. The chance of joining a once-famous string quartet in a residency at Bath Spa University is too tempting for Mel to refuse. Then a body is found in the city canal, and the only clue to the dead woman’s identity is the tattoo of a music note on one of her teeth.

It was a script that could only have come from Hollywood: the wedding of two superstars after a scandal-filled courtship... a wild trip by private plane to a hideaway... a deadly double overdose of drugs... These corpses weren't play-acting. Once again, Ellery was cast in the role of master detective, as he found nothing was quite what it seemed in the never-never land of moviedom - except sudden, violent death...