Traditional Police

When 18-year-old Chloe Emery returns to her West London home she finds her mother missing, the house covered in blood. Everything points to murder, except for one thing: there’s no sign of the body. London detective Maeve Kerrigan and the homicide team turn their attention to the neighbours. The ultra-religious Norrises are acting suspiciously; their teenage daughter and Chloe Emery definitely have something to hide. Then there’s William Turner, once accused of stabbing a schoolmate and the neighborhood’s favorite criminal. Is he merely a scapegoat?

Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is alarmed to receive a report from a woman in the small village of Cronish in the Scottish Highlands. She has been brutally attacked and the criminal is on the loose. But upon further investigation, Hamish discovers that she was lying about the crime. So when the same woman calls him back about an intruder, he simply marvels at her compulsion to lie. This time, though, she is telling the truth. Her body is found in her home and Hamish must sort through all of her lies to solve the crime.

Set in the wilds of Maine, this is an explosive tale of an estranged son thrust into the hunt for a murderous fugitive - his own father. Game warden Mike Bowditch returns home one evening to find an alarming voice from the past on his answering machine: his father, Jack, a hard-drinking womanizer who makes his living poaching illegal game. An even more frightening call comes the next morning from the police: They are searching for the man who killed a beloved local cop the night before - and his father is their prime suspect.

When Sergeant Hamish Macbeth is sent to investigate reports that the wealthy new laird of the remote Naglar House has disappeared, northwest Scotland is hit by the worst storm in living memory. The road is washed away, phone lines are down, mobile reception is dead, and his police radio is out of order. He is trapped with the laird's high-class house guests. Then he discovers the laird's body.

The 60th birthday party of Silas Kane was marred by argument and dissension amongst his family. And then, the morning after the celebrations, Kane is found dead at the foot of a cliff. The theory that Silas accidentally lost his way in the fog is confirmed when the coroner returns a verdict of death by misadventure. But then Kane's nephew, and heir, is murdered, and threats are made on the next in line to the fortune, throwing a new and sinister light on Silas Kane's death.

Hamish's new constable, Dorothy McIver, may be the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Completely bewitched by her sparkling blue eyes, Hamish spends the summer traveling with her up and down Sutherland until finally, he can take it no longer. He gets down on one knee beside the Land Rover and begs her to marry him — and to his amazement and delight, she says yes.

Lord Comstock is a barbarous newspaper tycoon with enemies in high places. His murder in the study of his country house poses a dilemma for the Home Secretary. In the hours before his death, Lord Comstock’s visitors included the government Chief Whip, an Archbishop, and the Assistant Commissioner for Scotland Yard. Suspicion falls upon them all and threatens the impartiality of any police investigation. Abandoning protocol, the Home Secretary invites four famous detectives to solve the case: Mrs Adela Bradley, Sir John Saumarez, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Mr Roger Sheringham.

Gregor Jack, MP, well-liked, young, married to the fiery Elizabeth - to the outside world a very public success story. But Jack's carefully nurtured career plans take a tumble after a 'mistake' during a police raid on a notorious Edinburgh brothel. Then Elizabeth disappears, a couple of bodies float into view where they shouldn't, and a lunatic speaks from his asylum...

While on patrol one foggy March evening, Bowditch receives a call for help. A woman has reportedly struck a deer on a lonely coast road. When the game warden arrives on the scene, he finds blood in the road—but both the driver and the deer have vanished. And the state trooper assigned to the accident appears strangely unconcerned. The details of the disappearance seem eerily familiar. Seven years earlier, a jury convicted lobsterman Erland Jefferts of the rape and murder of a wealthy college student and sentenced him to life in prison.

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.

A stunningly beautiful young woman is found strangled in London's Mudchute Park, her clothing carefully arranged to preserve her modesty. With that unusual detail in mind, Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his partner Sergeant Gemma James suspect the crime was more than a simple assault gone awry. As they collect the strange facts surrounding her death, they discover the victim's life was a mystery even to those who knew her best.

As Police Superintendent Thomas Pitt investigates the leak in the Colonial Office, he quietly looks into the tragic death of his childhood mentor, Sir Arthur Desmond. Pitt believes he was murdered and that the crime is connected with the treachery in the government. He makes little progress...until a second murder reverberates through London.

Deputy Mattie Cobb is in a dark place and has withdrawn from Cole Walker and his family to work on issues from her past. When she and her K-9 partner, Robo, get called to track a missing junior high student, they find the girl dead on Smoker's Hill behind the high school, and Mattie must head to the Walker home to break the bad news. But that's only the start of trouble in Timber Creek because soon another girl goes missing - and this time it's one of Cole's daughters.

Admittedly, there's a touch of black humor in the case. Rich, old practical joker Andrew Trent summons his kin to the remote Arrat House in the dead of winter for a deathbed farewell. They arrive to find him in perfect health and eager to torment them with a new bag of unfunny jokes.

A shooting incident at a private school just north of Edinburgh. Two 17-year olds killed by an ex-Army loner who has gone off the rails. As Detective Inspector John Rebus puts it, 'there's no mystery'... exceptthe why. This question takes Rebus into the heart of a shattered community. Ex-Army himself, Rebus becomes fascinated by the killer, andfinds he is not alone. Army investigators are on the scene, and won't be shaken off. The killer had friends and enemies to spare - ranging from civic leaders to the local Goths - leaving behind a legacy of secrets and lies.

Rebus is off the case - literally. A few days into the murder inquiry of an Edinburgh art dealer, Rebus blows up at a colleague. He is sent to the Scottish Police College for 'retraining' - in other words, he's in the Last Chance Saloon. Rebus is assigned to an old, unsolved case, but there are those in his team who have their own secrets - and they'll stop at nothing to protect them. Rebus is also asked to act as a go-between for gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty.

Nobody likes The Complaints - they're the cops who investigate other cops. Complaints and Conduct Department, to give them their full title, but known colloquially as 'the Dark Side', or simply 'The Complaints'. Malcolm Fox works for The Complaints. He's just had a result, and should be feeling good about himself. But he's middle-aged, sour and unwell.

This set includes the first two books in the Hamish Macbeth cozy mystery series set in the Scottish Highlands. Death of a Gossip: When society widow and gossip columnist Lady Jane Winters joined the fishing class, she wasted no time in ruffling the feathers—or was it the fins?—of those around her. Death of a Cad: When Priscilla Halburton-Smythe brings her London playwright fiancé home to Lochdubh, everybody in town is delighted…except for love-smitten Constable Hamish Macbeth. Yet his affairs of the heart will have to wait.

Maine game warden Mike Bowditch has been sent into exile, transferred by his superiors to a remote outpost on the Canadian border. When a blizzard descends on the coast, Bowditch is called to the rustic cabin of a terrified couple. A raving and halffrozen man has appeared at their door, claiming his friend is lost in the storm. But what starts as a rescue mission in the wilderness soon becomes a baffling murder investigation. The dead man is a notorious drug dealer, and state police detectives suspect it was his own friend who killed him.

A woman has been shot to death by a deer hunter on an island off the coast of Maine. To newly promoted Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch, the case seems open and shut. But as soon as he arrives on remote Maquoit Island he discovers mysteries piling up one on top of the other. The hunter now claims he didn’t fire the fatal shot and the ballistic evidence proves he’s telling the truth. Bowditch begins to suspect the secretive community might be covering up the identity of whoever killed Ariel Evans.