International Police Procedurals

Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Québec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning.

For Waldemar Leverkuhn, a retiree living with his wife in a small unit in an unassuming block of apartments, the day couldn't begin more auspiciously. He, along with three friends, have won the lottery. It's a modest but healthy sum of money and the old men toast to their good luck with a celebratory dinner. The day ends, however, with Leverkuhn drunk, belligerent, and eventually dead in his bed, stabbed 28 times in the chest. After a cursory investigation, Leverkuhn's quiet, weary wife incredibly confesses to murder.

It's been several years since Detective Jimmy Perez left Shetland. He has settled into his new home in Orkney, the group of islands, off the northern coast of Scotland, with his partner Willow Reeve and their growing family. One stormy winter night, his oldest and closest friend, Archie Stout, goes missing. Ever the detective, Perez catches a boat to the island of Westray, where Archie worked as a farmer and lived with his wife and children. But when he arrives he finds a shocking scene.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch a tiger by its toe. It's seared into Atlee Pine's memory: the kidnapper's chilling rhyme as he chose between six-year-old Atlee and her twin sister, Mercy. Mercy was taken. Atlee was spared. She never saw Mercy again. Three decades after that terrifying night, Atlee Pine works for the FBI. She's the lone agent assigned to the Shattered Rock, Arizona resident agency, which is responsible for protecting the Grand Canyon. So when one of the Grand Canyon's mules is found stabbed to death at the bottom of the canyon - and its rider missing - Pine is called in to investigate.

A year ago a boy was found murdered at a girlsʼ boarding school, and the case was never solved. Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to join Dublin’s Murder Squad when 16-year-old Holly Mackey arrives in his office with a photo of the boy with the caption: “I know who killed him". Stephen joins with Detective Antoinette Conway to reopen the case - beneath the watchful eye of Holly’s father, fellow detective Frank Mackey. The private underworld of teenage girls turns out to be more mysterious and more dangerous than the detectives imagined.

It’s spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge. But something has. As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators’ lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they’ve arrived in the village of Three Pines. But to what end?

Yasuko Hanaoka is a divorced, single mother who thought she had finally escaped her abusive ex-husband Togashi. When he shows up one day to extort money from her, threatening both her and her teenaged daughter Misato, the situation quickly escalates into violence and Togashi ends up dead on her apartment floor.

This is DC Smith's third investigation with the Diver and Diver Associates agency. They have been asked by a member of Norfolk's aristocracy to look into the tragic death of her younger brother, Freddie, the late Lord Thorpe of the title. The inquest verdict was of misadventure, but it isn't long before Smith begins to suspect there has been a serious miscarriage of justice.

Kieran Elliott’s life changed forever on a single day when a reckless mistake led to devastating consequences. The guilt that still haunts him resurfaces during a visit with his young family to the small coastal town he once called home. Twelve years earlier the storm of the century claimed the lives of Kieran’s brother and his friend. There was also a third casualty that day. A teenage girl, last spotted on the sand as the weather rolled in, then never seen again. Kieran has barely arrived back in town after a long absence when a body is washed up on the nearby beach.

In a hushed Vatican reading room, the scene was shocking: a crazed professor shot dead after brandishing evidence of a grisly crime. Moments later, two bodies are found in a nearby church, each with a gruesome calling card from the killer.

Bern, Switzerland—known for its narrow cobblestone streets, decorative fountains, and striking towers. Yet dark currents run through this charming medieval city and beyond, to the idyllic farmlands that surround it. When a rave on a hot summer night erupts into violent riots, a young man is found the next morning bludgeoned to death with a policeman's club. Seasoned detective Giuliana Linder is assigned to the case. That same day, an elderly organic farmer turns up dead and drenched with pesticide.

An ex-con is brutally murdered with an ax in Kaalbringen. Then the body of a wealthy real estate mogul is found, also the victim of a violent attack. There appears to be a serial killer on the loose, and Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is called in to help the local police. As details surrounding the grisly murders are collected, Van Veeteren finds little to go on. But then there's another murder, and shortly thereafter one of Van Veeteren's colleagues, a promising female detective, goes missing.

Welcome to winter in Three Pines, a picturesque village in Quebec, where the villagers are preparing for a traditional country Christmas, and someone is preparing for murder. No one liked CC de Poitiers. Not her quiet husband, not her spineless lover, not her pathetic daughter - and certainly none of the residents of Three Pines. CC de Poitiers managed to alienate everyone, right up until the moment of her death. When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, of the Sûreté du Quebec, is called to investigate, he quickly realizes he's dealing with someone quite extraordinary.

DI Zoe Finch has a lot on her plate. New job, new team, new county. And on day one, she’s plunged straight into a murder investigation. Zoe has to hit the ground running. She needs to manage a new team with its fair share of challenges, get to grips with a new boss who might not be all she seems, and worry about her reputation following her north to Cumbria. Can she settle in quickly enough to solve the murder and quell local tensions, as well as coping with an unfamiliar environment?

When an intricate old map is found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, it at first seems no more than a curiosity. But the closer the villagers look, the stranger it becomes. Given to Armand Gamache as a gift the first day of his new job, the map eventually leads him to shattering secrets. To an old friend and older adversary. It leads the former Chief of Homicide for the Sûreté du Québec to places even he is afraid to go. But must. And there he finds four young cadets in the Sûreté academy, and a dead professor. And, with the body, a copy of the old, odd map.

In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his estranged father’s funeral takes place. On the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family, too. Now, as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death. The case calls Matthew back to the people and places of his past, as deadly secrets hidden at their hearts are revealed.

The hunter has become the hunted. Ten years ago, DCI Jack Logan caught the twisted child killer known as Mister Whisper. Two days ago, Mister Whisper escaped. Now, Jack must track down the most ruthless enemy he has ever faced before he can strike again. But after 10 years behind bars, it isn't just murder that Mister Whisper has in mind. It's revenge. A Whisper of Sorrows is the sixth book in the DCI Jack Logan crime thriller series, all based in the Highlands of Scotland, and it's perfect for fans of Tartan Noir crime fiction.

Chaos is coming, old son. With those words the peace of Three Pines is shattered. Everybody goes to Olivier's Bistro - including a stranger whose murdered body is found on the floor. When Chief Inspector Gamache is called to investigate, he is dismayed to discover that Olivier's story is full of holes. Why are his fingerprints all over the cabin that's uncovered deep in the wilderness, with priceless antiques and the dead man's blood?

It’s Gamache’s first day back as head of the homicide department, a job he temporarily shares with his previous second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Flood waters are rising across the province. In the middle of the turmoil a father approaches Gamache, pleading for help in finding his daughter. As crisis piles upon crisis, Gamache tries to hold off the encroaching chaos, and realizes the search for Vivienne Godin should be abandoned. But with a daughter of his own, he finds himself developing a profound, and perhaps unwise, empathy for her distraught father.

Sergeant David Wolf has put his Special Forces days long behind him, settling down as a cop in the small ski resort town of Rocky Points, Colorado. He's a good cop who's seen bad days before, but none quite like this. As if narrowly escaping an attempt on his life, his addict ex-wife being back in the picture, and complications to his all-but-certain appointment to sheriff weren't enough, he's just received word that his brother has committed suicide in the Alps of Italy.