Crime Fiction Police Procedural Suspense

Early one morning, Silvio Lupanello, a big shot in the village of Vigata, is found dead in his car with his pants around his knees. The car happens to be parked in a rough part of town frequented by prostitutes and drug dealers, and as the news of his death spreads, the rumors begin. Enter Inspector Salvo Montalbano, Vigata's most respected detective, who has his doubts about the way Silvio died.

At first, they struggle to escape. Then a torrent of blows rains down upon their bodies until their eyes cloud over in final agony. The killer shows no remorse - just a twisted need to witness each victim's last terrified moments. Public defender Rachel Wainwright is struggling to reopen a decades-old case, convinced that the wrong man is in prison. Homicide detective Deke Morgan doesn't want to agree. But if Rachel's hunch is correct, whoever fatally bludgeoned young, beautiful Annie Dawson 30 years ago could be the source of a new string of brutal slayings.

After a routine delivery, midwife Sarah Brandt visits her patient in a rooming house and finds that another boarder, a young girl, has been killed. At the request of sergeant Frank Malloy, she searches the girl's room and discovers that the victim is from one of the most prominent families in New York - and the sister of an old friend. The powerful family, fearful of scandal, refuses to permit an investigation. But with Malloy's help, Sarah begins a dangerous quest to bring the killer to justice before death claims another victim.

In Eyes of Prey, Bekker, an insane pathologist who experiments with his patients’ pain thresholds, is finally brought down by an unrelenting Lucas Davenport, who brutally maims the doctor’s beautiful face but leaves him alive. “You should have killed me,” were Bekker’s parting and prophetic words.

In this sequel to Eyes of Prey, Bekker endures the indignities and horrors of imprisonment, taking comfort in the fact that it is only a matter of time before he will make Lucas Davenport pay.

In Shadow Prey, the crackling sequel to Rules of Prey, Twin Cities sleuth Lucas Davenport teams up with NYPD Lieutenant Lily Rothenberg to track down an elusive killer known only as Shadow Love. Among the victims are a Minneapolis slumlord, a judge from Oklahoma City, and a Manhattan politician. The murder weapon is a Native American ceremonial knife.

Belfast, 1980, is the apocalypse. Bombings, riots, army on the streets, low flying helicopters, and ever-present rain. The grinding Northern Irish civil war between Protestants and Catholics has been going for a decade now. Hated by both sides are the police. Sean Duffy Year 1 takes us into that world. Newly promoted Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy is given his first command at Carrickfergus CID.

Three bodies, three different towns. Each victim was a sorority girl - pretty, privileged, and brutally murdered. There are no fingerprints, no clues. He is scrupulously careful, craving those exquisite seconds when the light fades from his victim's eyes. But the rush never lasts, and the killing won't stop - not until one special woman has been made to suffer....

Kelly Roth, FBI profiler, returns home to Syracuse to stop a sadistic serial killer. Three murders in three separate jurisdictions in central New York State have the same pattern: women killed by fatal headshots from a hunting rifle. Kelly Roth is sent from Virginia to help the local police. Each victim was found murdered in a remote area or in a quiet park. The media call him “The Park Killer.” But Kelly doesn’t think the killer lurks in the bushes. She thinks he hunts his victims somewhere else.

Newly minted homicide detective Nell Buchanan returns to her home town, annoyed at being assigned a decades-old murder — a 'file and forget'. But this is no ordinary cold case, as the discovery of more bodies triggers a chain of escalating events in the present day. As Nell starts to join the pieces together, she begins to question how well she truly knows those closest to her. Could her own family be implicated in the crimes? The nearer Nell comes to uncovering the secrets of the past, the more dangerous the present becomes for her, as she battles shadowy assailants and sinister forces.

Just graduated from the police academy, Linda Wallander returns to Skane to join the police force, and she already shows all the hallmarks of her father - the maverick approach, the flaring temper. Before she even starts work she becomes embroiled in the case of her childhood friend, Anna, who has inexplicably disappeared.

Phoenix detective Veranda Cruz is dead set on taking down the Villalobos crime family, but the ruthlessness of her quarry demands a ruthless edge of her own. Targeted by an increasingly unstable foe, Veranda must protect her family and navigate adversaries within the force while she sets a trap for Bartolo. As the action heats up, Veranda and her new Homicide team - along with an arson investigator who kindles a flame of his own - are all drawn into a deadly gambit.

To most people, respected clergymen like Mark Cantrell are pillars of the community, and completely beyond reproach. But their killer knows better. They are sinners of the worst kind, and they must burn on earth before they burn in hell....

Every ten years, for the past 30 years, a dozen clergymen are killed, brutally murdered in twisted scenes emulating the deaths of Jesus and his disciples. Now, "The Martyr Maker" has set his mark on New York City. 30 years. 36 priests butchered. His bloodiest masterpiece is yet to come.

New York Times best-selling author James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux novels began with this first hard-hitting entry in the series. In The Neon Rain, Detective Robicheaux fishes a prostitute's corpse from a New Orleans bayou and finds that no one, not even the law, cares about a dead hooker.

Seduction. Mind control. Murder. These are the weapons that have made Brenda Nevins one of the most wanted - and feared - criminals in the world. Now the notorious serial killer has escaped from prison and is plotting her revenge. Using innocent young women as bait, she will lure her unsuspecting victims into her trap. This time, sheriff's detective Kendall Stark and forensic pathologist Birdy Waterman won't be able to stop her. The killing will be filmed. The feed will be live. And the blood will be streaming....

When a lobster fisherman on an early morning run pulls in his traps, he finds something he wasn't expecting to catch - a body. When police discover the dead man was the brother of a senior Scottish government official who vanished without a trace, Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie takes over the investigation. At the same time, a woman in the wealthy enclave of Perth is clearing out her sister's home after a fatal road accident and finds a mysterious camper van in the garage containing a skeletonized body. But who is it?

A skeletal body is unearthed in a wooded area of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. DI James Bliss, together with DC Penny Chandler, investigates the case and discovers that the young female victim had been relocated from her original burial site. A witness is convinced that a young female was struck by a vehicle back in the summer of 1990 and that police attended the scene. However, no record exists of either the accident or the reported victim. As the case develops, two retired police officers are murdered.

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.

In the summer after his junior year of high school, Jonathan Stride fell in love with Cindy Starr, the girl who would become his wife. But that same summer, Cindy's sister, Laura, was brutally murdered. The police suspected a vagrant of committing the crime, but Stride and Cindy were both convinced that the killer was someone close to Laura. Thirty years later, Laura's best friend, Tish Verdure, returns to Duluth to write a book about Laura's death.

When lawyer Jenny Cooper is appointed Severn Vale District Coroner, she's hoping for a quiet life and space to recover from a traumatic divorce, but the office she inherits from the recently deceased Harry Marshall contains neglected files hiding dark secrets and a trail of buried evidence. Could the tragic death in custody of a young boy be linked to the apparent suicide of a teenage prostitute and the fate of Marshall himself?