British Police

Halloween, Whitby. DCI Jim Oldroyd’s daughter Louise is in town with friends for a goth festival. But their visit to an escape room ends in bloody murder when one of the group stabs his girlfriend and flees the scene. It’s a crime with three witnesses - but Louise refuses to take what she saw at face value. Oldroyd and DS Carter are called in to solve the case, assisted from the sidelines by Louise. But the closer they investigate, the more complex the web of deceit appears. This is no straightforward crime of passion.

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 woman is abducted from a quiet suburban street and bundled into the back of a white van, the only witness to the crime is a child with a reputation for telling tall tales. The police doubt the girl’s story, except for Detective Karen Hart, who is determined to follow her instincts—perhaps because the shy little girl reminds her of the daughter she’s still grieving. When a playing card is found at the scene, Karen finds her first clue. And when a second card is found at the home of a missing woman, Tamara, Karen finds her victim.

After being abducted and assaulted, a teenage girl somehow managed to escape from her captor. She is traumatized and needs to heal, but the police need her help to catch her assailant—information she clearly knows, but is unwilling to give. Without the girl’s assistance, DI Adam Fawley’s investigation is at a dead end. When another girl vanishes under the same circumstances, he recognizes a disturbing pattern—and a link to something long buried in his past.

Detective Constable Oliver Cole has his period of annual leave interrupted when he finds out that Lancashire Police have requested that he travels to Lancashire to assist them with a difficult case. An actor had been murdered at The Midland Hotel in Morecambe in particularly mysterious circumstances having drank a glass of champagne laced with cyanide. The officer in charge, DCI Dominic Wilson, had previously received a warning that someone was about to die and that it would be the first of seven deaths, but the warning had been dismissed by him as a crank. The discovery of a second clue in...

DCI Matilda Darke has returned to work after a nine-month absence. A shadow of her former self, she is tasked with reopening a cold case: the terrifyingly brutal murders of Miranda and Stefan Harkness. The only witness was their 11-year-old son, Jonathan, who was too deeply traumatised to speak a word. Then a dead body is discovered, and the investigation leads back to Matilda's case. Suddenly the past and present converge, and it seems a killer may have come back for more....

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?

Rita is an artist, still recovering from an attack by three men. Deborah is a nurse and a killer, as much at ease ending people’s lives as prolonging them. Maybe, if they hadn’t been lovers, it wouldn’t have gone beyond talk. But they are. And it does. The police start finding bodies. And more bodies. Because, once you start killing people, it’s difficult to stop. New names get added to the list. All men, and all sexually interfered with. Why not? That’s what the three men did to Rita. Revenge is sweet. PC Jamie Pearson and Rita were teenagers together once. Jamie wants to find ...

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 ...

DCI Kett is back, heading Norfolk Constabulary’s brand-new Extreme Crime Task Force. And it’s just in time. The body of a woman bound in thorns has been discovered in Norwich’s historic Cow Tower. In her mouth is a severed finger wrapped in a scrap of red cloth, and the first few lines of a fairy tale. “Once upon a time, a young maiden waited to be saved from a hideous monster.” The finger belongs to another missing woman, and if Kett, Porter and Savage want to find her alive they must follow a chain of blood-drenched riddles, each victim leading to the next.

When East-End gangster and 'frenemy' to the Last Chance Saloon, Johnny Lucas, is accused of murdering a London gangland rival in his boxing club, he claims his brother was the killer. The only problem though is that his brother, Jackie, is actually Johnny's multiple personality. Pulled in to prove the case, DI Declan Walsh and his team soon realize that Johnny might be as innocent as he claims, as a new player is in town, claiming to be Johnny's brother Jackie in the flesh, a man who shouldn't exist yet can prove he does, is starting to carve out his own empire.

'A fantastic writer.' Donald Ray Pollock 'Nigel Bird is fast becoming one of the top writers in his genre.' Luca Veste DIRTY OLD TOWN is the debut collection from the prize-winning writer Nigel Bird. His brilliantly observed slices of life allow us to visit places we may not normally choose to enter and to walk a few miles in the shoes of others. Though his tales have darkness at their core, they are also full of a heart and spirit that one rarely finds in the world or ‘noir’ or ‘crime-writing’. There are 9 stories here: Drinking Wine (Spo-Dee-Oh-Dee); Dirty Old Town; Sea Minor; ...

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.

It was their darkest secret. Three schoolgirls made a promise - to take the horrible truth of what they did to the grave. Thirty years later, Beth and Sally have tried to put the trauma behind them. Though Carol has distanced herself from her former friends, the three are adamant that the truth must never come to light, even if the memory still haunts them. But when some shocking news threatens to unearth their dark secret, Beth enlists the help of private investigator Matthew Hill to help her and Sally reconnect with estranged Carol.

The Rise is a gleaming residential tower, newly constructed from steel and blackened glass, that stands on some of London’s most prestigious real estate. Looming imposingly over Hyde Park, only multi-millionaires need apply for one of its sumptuous apartments. But when the young night concierge is found murdered in the building’s lobby, the elite residents quickly find their gilded lifestyles under unwelcome police scrutiny.

An eye for an eye. A death for a death. Some people will do anything for revenge. And one detective will do anything to stop them. DI Fiona Williams returns from a short break to a station stretched by the antics of a gang of youths, staff absences and three murders in quick succession. With unconnected victims and widely different murder methods, the only link is they seem motiveless. Forced to work in small groups rather than as a team, frustrations and jealousies flare-up between the officers creating a minefield of tension and a headache for Fiona. As the most experienced officer, she ...

The best-kept secrets are the deadliest. When a private boarding school pupil drowns in a lake on the grounds, DI Fiona Williams is called in to investigate. Security around the school grounds is tight, making it a closed community. Fiona thinks the death was due to a secret society initiation rite that went wrong, but the school denies the societies exist, and her investigation hits a wall of silence. A second pupil dies, but the silence continues. The school is concerned with its reputation and upholding traditions, the influential parents care only about protecting their children, and ...

Only the tide can wash away their darkest secrets. DI Graham Walker is just beginning to settle into a quieter life on the picturesque Gower peninsula when a call comes in. Even to the coast, death has followed him. The remains of a woman have washed up on the golden sands of Three Cliffs Bay. Her young body is twisted, broken, and Graham soon learns that hers was not the first that the local community have seen – not by a long shot. As Graham begins to probe into the lives of those around him, it becomes clear that the people that had so warmly welcomed him are less than keen to bring an...

The enigmatic and brooding Detective Chief Police Inspector Simon Serrailler has long regarded drugs operations in Lafferton as a waste of time. The small-time dealers picked up outside the local high school can’t - or won’t - turn in any valuable names, so they are merely given a fine and the trail runs cold. But when the body of a 22-year-old drug addict is found in neighboring Starley, the case pulls Serrailler into the underbelly of an elaborate drug running operation that pushes narcotics out from the cities, into the suburbs, and right down to villages.

DI Andy Hall and his CID team based at Kendal Police Station face new challenges in the third of the Lakeland Murders series. There's been a fatal fall from Fairfield in bad weather, and while the death is initially treated as accidental Hall and DC Jane Francis soon become suspicious and launch an investigation. But as both officers become personally involved, and the outcome remains uncertain, will they live to regret that decision? And with the recession deepening Kendal CID has been selected as the home of a new Rural Organised Crimes Unit, so ex-Royal Marine Sergeant Ian Mann goes ...