Crime Suspense

When the last honest citizen of Poisonville was murdered, the Continental Op stayed on to punish the guilty--even if that meant taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain. From the author of The Maltese Falcon.

Ten years ago, six-year-old Catalina Mateo hid under the porch of her family home while a knife butchered her mother and a bullet killed her father. Now a rough-sleeping orphan, Cat arrives at the house of Detective Jonathan Stride, pleading for protection. Drenched in the icy waters of Lake Superior, she claims to have narrowly escaped a cold-blooded killer. Stride's raw instinct is to protect Cat, whose late parents' case - and his personal guilt associated with it - still sends a shiver down his spine. As a result, he takes the troubled teenager under his wing.

Unemployed at 29, Tess Monaghan is willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent—including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl "Rock" Paxton. In a city where someone is murdered almost every day, attorney Michael Abramowitz's death should be just another statistic. But the slain lawyer's notoriety—and his noontime trysts with Rock's fiancée—make the case front page news...and point to Rock as the likely murderer. But trying to prove her friend's innocence could prove costly to Tess.

A masked robber, a gunshot, an endless nightmare left in its wake. Wynter Moore was just four years old when she witnessed the murder of her mother. For 25 years, she's tried to blunt the trauma with ambition. Yet each year, she shuts down her popular Iowa restaurant to return to her small hometown of Pike, Wisconsin, to grieve. Only this time, her visit will be marked by new danger and shocking discoveries about the past - and about her mother.

Bestselling author Martin Walker pens stories filled with small-town ambience and charming characters. In The Devil’s Cave, police chief Bruno Courréges is investigating a murder as the tiny French village of St. Denis prepares for Easter. An unknown woman - dead, naked, and bearing the marks of a black magic ritual - is found in a boat floating down the River Vézère. With the townsfolk terrified, clues quickly lead Bruno to the Gouffre de Colombac - the Devil’s Cave.

Detective Nikki Galena's friend and neighbor meets a tragic end, but there's more to his death than meets the eye. And someone terrible from DS Joseph Easter's past is back.

When Chet the dog, "the most lovable narrator in all of crime fiction" (Boston Globe), and his partner, PI Bernie Little of the desert-based Little Detective Agency, arrive to a meeting with hydrologist Wendell Nero, they are in for a shocking sight - Wendell has come to a violent and mysterious end. What did the hydrologist want to see them about? Is his death a random robbery, or something more? Chet and Bernie, working for nothing more than an eight-pack of Slim Jims, are on the case.

No matter how tough the odds, Ricky, Derrick, and Jamal learned to unite and fight during their time at the Branch Avenue Boys' Youth Institute. But their adult lives have driven them apart - and set off a series of events their friendship may not survive. All Jamal's political achievements can't erase his bargain with DC's corrupt mayor. And when he finds himself the latest target on Mayor Johnson's hit list, he'll risk everything to end the mayor's deadly reign - even if it's the last move he ever makes.

DCI Whitney Walker’s in trouble. She’s threatened with demotion if she screws up another case. So, when a killer starts murdering female students, it’s a chance to redeem herself. Forensic psychologist, Dr. Georgina Cavendish, has spent her life inside the university walls, but when one of her students is murdered, she steps out from behind the text books and puts her skills to the test.

When retired homicide detective Thomas Prescott learns he’s inherited a 250-acre farm in Tarrin, Missouri (pop. 2,100), he can’t get there fast enough. As he slowly acclimates to small-town living, he hears rumblings about a horrific crime in the town’s past. Four years earlier, a recently fired employee of the local grocery store enacted his revenge, shooting and killing the owner of the store, plus four customers, then turning the gun on himself. The crime appears to have been solved, but Prescott has his doubts.

In an African convent, four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are brutally murdered, and the death of the unknown woman is covered up by the local police. A year later in Sweden, Inspector Kurt Wallander is baffled and appalled by two strange murders with an elusive connection to the fifth woman.

Forced to trade her college plans for dealing on the streets of LA, Precious Cummings has a new priority: Stay on top of the game and carry on her murdered lover’s kingpin legacy. With the empire growing under her watch, and her late father’s dry-cleaning business still booming, Precious sets her sights on owning more legit businesses. When an offer of a night club unexpectedly comes her way, Precious’s goals are set in motion overnight. Then suddenly, Miami and new territory calls....

Two years ago, Dr. Gina Brady broke Thomas Prescott’s heart, but now her panic-stricken satellite phone call starts it beating again with a fury. Thugs kidnapped the good doctor from the remote jungle village where she was working, and now the retired homicide detective’s expert skills are desperately needed to save her. Led by a colorful, but perhaps untrustworthy local guide, Prescott journeys deep into the Bolivian Amazon, plunging into a world where the only thing more dangerous than the gun-toting drug traffickers and the ruthless tribesmen, is the jungle itself.

There is not much left of the irascible Albert Evan Jasper, "dean of American forensic anthropologists," after his demise in a fiery car crash. But in accord with his wishes, his remains are installed in an Oregon museum to create a fascinating if macabre exhibit. All agree that it is a fitting end for a great forensic scientist - until what is left of him disappears in the midst of the biannual meeting of the august WAFA - the Western Association of Forensic Anthropologists - in nearby Bend, Oregon. Like his fellow attendees, Gideon Oliver - the Skeleton Detective - is baffled.

Out walking near the rain-swelled river running past her small Welsh town, she comes across the body of Amber Morgan. Fabia’s police training tells her instantly that the death is the result of foul play. But no longer in the force, all she can do is call it in. Yet she has mixed feelings when she discovers it is her former colleague, Matt Lambert, newly promoted to chief inspector, who will head the investigation into the girl’s death.

James Flynn is an expert shot, a black belt in karate, fluent in four languages, and irresistible to women. He’s also a heavily medicated patient in a Los Angeles psychiatric hospital. Flynn believes his locked ward is the HQ of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. When the hospital is acquired by a new HMO, Flynn is convinced that the Secret Service has been infiltrated by the enemy. He escapes to save the day, and in the process, Flynn kidnaps a young Hispanic orderly named Sancho. This crazy day trip turns into a very real adventure when Flynn is mistaken for an actual secret agent.

When DC crime scene analyst Dr. Ellie Carr is called to investigate the heartrending case of a missing baby, she's shocked to discover that the child's mother is her own cousin. Close during their impoverished childhoods, Ellie and Rebecca eventually drifted apart. Rebecca is now half of a Washington power couple, and she and her wealthy lobbyist husband, Hunter, have been living a charmed life in an opulent mansion—until their infant son is taken. At first antagonists, then allies, Ellie and Rachael race to find the baby alive and bring the kidnappers to justice.

After getting canned from the Seattle PD, brilliant, wisecracking Thomas Prescott follows his sister Lacy to Philadelphia, where she swims on the Drexel University team. While Thomas’s slapstick antics mask a keen analytic mind, it’s his nose for trouble that leads him again and again into dicey situations. The ex–homicide detective is not long in Philly before getting caught up in two high-powered criminal cases. Thomas stumbles into a crime scene amid the Occupy Philadelphia protests. Activist Brooke Wexley has been strangled within sight of city hall.

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.

Laurel Snow wouldn't call hunting a serial killer a vacation, but with a pile of dead bodies unearthed near her Genesis Valley, Washington, hometown, she'll take what she can get. Yet something about this case stirs her in unexpected ways. Like the startling connection she feels to Dr. Abigail Caine, a fiercely intelligent witness with a disturbing knack for making Laurel feel like she has something on her. Then there's Laurel's attraction to Huck Rivers, the fish and wildlife officer guiding her to the crime scene - and into the wilderness....