British Police Mysteries

Detective Chief Inspector John Shadow is doing his best to ignore the madness of York's annual Viking Festival when duty calls. The body of a wealthy businessman, who was playing the role of the Viking king, is found slain by his own ancient sword. The murder scene looks staged, but before Shadow can compile a list of people to question a second body is found. Shadow doesn't have to look far for suspects-the victims were by no means model citizens.

DS Kat Ballantyne is still reeling from a revelation that turned life as she knew it upside down. But when a dog walker discovers the body of a woman among the standing stones known locally as the Three Sisters, there’s no time to focus on her own troubles. Kat is drawn back to work to investigate. At first, the death appears to be an accident. But then Kat discovers an infinity symbol branded onto the dead woman’s abdomen.

Chief Inspector, Lord Ralph McGinniss and Professor Claire Lane are sent to investigate the link between the murder of a Police Constable on a lonely road, and the presence of German Zeppelin Commander Ludwig Mathieu, left behind in England after the War. Ralph McGinniss is the victim of a pickpocket on a Motorbus in central London and realises the woman responsible is connected to Jack the Top, a notorious thief and pimp. Claire Lane is convinced the two are linked. When Ralph uncovers a plot to assassinate a well-known Judge from the High Court, the duo must act to discover what is the ...

Detective Constable Oliver Cole is called in from a rare day off work to visit The Caledonian Hotel in Newcastle Upon Tyne where a body of a middle-aged man has been discovered in suspicious circumstances. An Elvis Presley impersonator has been murdered and left naked and tied to his bed with a knife protruding from his chest, and Oliver is set to embark upon his second major case with DCI Jack Collier. The case, however, is not as straightforward as it first appears as Oliver soon discovers that the dead man, David Forest, has been living in hiding for over 15 years from the Glasgow ...

Charming film writer and director Geraint Denbigh is found lifeless in the garden of his Welsh home. It looks like he fell from a window, but eagle-eyed Detective Chief Inspector Matt Lambert soon finds irregularities in the crime scene. Before long he determines it was murder. Recently retired, the victim was writing about his eventful life and many of his former colleagues and associates could have had reason to stop him before he spilled the beans on their transgressions.

A young female soldier is found on Salisbury Plain, her throat cut and a bloody knife in her dead hand. Everyone assumes that she killed herself. But something doesn’t feel right to DI Ford; the whole scene seems staged. Convinced of foul play, and despite fierce opposition from the army brass and his own superiors, Ford launches a murder investigation.

When a long-serving Master at one of England's most prestigious public schools drowns in Bassenthwaite Lake, Detective Inspector Skelgill is summoned to investigate his apparent suicide. It soon becomes clear that senior members of staff are not all that they seem. As the school closes ranks, Skelgill realizes he is pitted against a sinister power struggle for control of its highly lucrative operation.

Thomas Pitt, mainstay of Her Majesty’s Special Branch, is summoned to Connaught Square mansion, where the body of a junior diplomat lies huddled in a wheelbarrow. Nearby stands the tenant of the house, the beautiful, notorious Egyptian woman Ayesha Zakhari, who falls under the shadow of suspicion. Pitt’s orders are to protect—at all costs—the good name of the third person in the garden: senior cabinet minister Saville Ryerson. The distinguished public servant, whispered to be Ayesha’s lover, insists that she is as innocent as Pitt himself.

A routine missing person enquiry takes a grisly turn when a young couple drag a box containing human remains out of a Somerset river. The victim was a surveillance expert investigating an exaggerated injury claim—a murder with an obvious motive, until a police officer is implicated and suspended. Still brooding after his recent brush with police Professional Standards, Detective Chief Inspector Nick Dixon is on extended leave, helping his pregnant fiancée, Detective Sergeant Jane Winter, fight for her place on the major investigation team.

Harry Richards, a local solicitor, is found in his car, throat slit. DI Clare Mackay is on the case. She soon learns that Harry was not the upstanding man he seemed to be. Finding the killer should be easy. Then the wife of one of Harry's colleagues is discovered dead in her car, and Clare realises there is something more sinister at play… Can she find out who's behind the murders before they turn their attention to her?

When the body of a man killed by a point blank shot to the head is found in Crooked Man Woods, it appears to be a suicide. But when Inspector Jess Campbell and Superintendent Ian Carter begin to investigate, it soon becomes clear that not all is as it seems. The victim, Carl Finch, had been causing quite a stir in the small-town community. With rising debts and complicated relationships, the suspects are beginning to mount up.

Melissa Craig is struggling with her new novel, so when the invitation arrives to visit a nearby country house for some writing time, she decides a bit of peace and quiet is just what she needs. The house is everything she could have hoped for, even if the staff do seem rather unsettled. She has barely unpacked when the owner of the house persuades Melissa to investigate some threatening notes he has received. But before she can do any digging, he is found murdered in his own orchard.

Someone is killing the women folk of Oakwell, and the body count is growing. The moorland that surrounds the town has begun to relinquish some of its morbid past. Inspector Abaline has been drafted onto the case, to breathe new life into the faltering investigation. Can he unlock the secret of the Devil's Tourniquet before deaths shadow casts its cloak once more over the already terrified residents of Oakwell? Excitement, suspense and mystery. If Hard-Boiled, Traditional British Detective Crime Thrillers, with a light sprinkling of the Occult and Supernatural are your vice. Then welcome to ...

If Alison Girling, former principal of England's Holm Coultram College, died in an avalanche in Austria, why has her skeleton been unearthed on campus? While no love is lost between conservative detective Andrew Dalziel and the entirety of Liberal Arts, his attention to the grim discovery must be paid. But when he and Peter Pascoe scour the ivory tower for answers, they discover that the shady faculty and creepy student body have more to bury than just one corpse. Try two-and counting.

You are Dead is the 11th thrilling crime novel in Peter James' Roy Grace series, narrated by Daniel Weyman. They were marked for death. The last words Jamie Ball hears from his fiancée, Logan Somerville, are in a terrified mobile phone call. She has just driven into the underground car park beneath the block of flats where they live in Brighton. Then she screams and the phone goes dead.

Detective Constable Oliver Cole has returned home after helping Lancashire Police solve a series of murders in Morecambe to find that his reputation as a puzzle solver is growing. Under pressure from Superintendent Fox, Oliver agrees to stage a week-long puzzle solving course for final year Hendon College graduates, showing them how he looks at the types of clues he’s had to deal with and setting some puzzle solving problems for the class. But minutes before the first session is held, the body of a young woman is fished out of the River Tyne. Torn between the responsibility of running the...

The body of a disgraced college lecturer is found on an abandoned railway line. In the four years since his dismissal for sexual misconduct, he’d been living like a hermit. So where did he get the 5,000 pounds found in his pocket? Leading the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks begins to suspect that the victim's past may be connected to his death. Forty years ago the dead man attended a university that was a hotbed of militant protest and divisive, bitter politics. And as the seasoned detective well knows, some grudges are never forgotten - or forgiven.

When two teenage gangs are arrested after clashing violently in one of Venice’s campi, the son of a local hero is implicated. But when Commissario Guido Brunetti is asked by a wealthy foreigner to vet this man, Monforte, for a job, he discovers that Monforte might not be such a hero after all. This seeming contradiction, and a brutal attack on one of Brunetti’s colleagues by a possible gang member, concentrate Brunetti’s attentions. Soon, he discovers the sordid hypocrisy surrounding Monforte’s past, culminating in a fiery meeting of two gangs and a final opportunity for redemption.

Be careful how you behave in public. You never know who is watching. DI Fiona Williams returns from a romantic week away with Stefan to walk into the most harrowing crime scene of her career. A gunman walked into a house of students and shot five of them but left one girl unharmed.With no other leads, Fiona focuses on the traumatised survivor. If she is an innocent witness, then why was she spared? Her cold indifference to the fate of her housemates could be a defence mechanism. Or could she be responsible? There was friction in the house and a motive, but the forensic evidence is ...

Mary Connon froze out her husband, Sam, long ago. She likes the attention of other men—like the fellow members of Sam's rugby club. Naturally, when she's found dead in her sitting room with a hole in her head, Sam is a suspect. If only he hadn't suffered a dizzying scrum injury that's left everything a blur. He isn't sure that he didn't kill her. But Det. Inspector Andrew Dalziel and his partner, Peter Pascoe, are looking outside the unhappy home. Because it seems everyone within spitting distance of the suburban femme fatale wanted Mary dead.