Police Fiction

Hamish Macbeth, constable in the small Scottish Highland town of Lochdubh, is feeling down after losing both his promotion and his girlfriend, the town beauty, Priscilla Halbourton-Smythe. A trip to a charming seaside inn with his dog Towser's meant to raise his sagging spirits. Instead, he arrives at “Friendly House” to find the ambiance chilling, the food inedible, and his fellow guests less than neighborly. There’s an amorous spinster, two flirty girls, a retired military man, a secretive London family, and Bob Harris, who so nags his wife that everyone wants to kill him.

The small, friendly town of Gladstone, Tennessee seems the ideal place to raise a family - until two teenagers are found tortured to death. Sheriff Miranda Knight will do anything to make her small town safe again, even if it means calling in Noah Bishop, the FBI’s psychic profiler. The last time she and Noah combined their psychic powers, she was almost destroyed. Now she must learn to trust him again, or she will most certainly die at the hands of the monster who’s stalking her town.

The Fens are burning, and Detective Nikki Galena faces a cat-and-mouse battle with a killer arsonist. Someone is lighting fires. First they target homes and businesses, but then a body is found at one of the crime scenes. More fires are lit. And at each one a single person dies. But the victims have led spotless lives, and apparently there's no connection between them. Meanwhile, the town is facing a very peculiar threat from a group of sinister Satanists led by a charismatic businessman. Who is burning with anger, and can Nikki stop them before anyone else dies?

After a fatal poisoning in Essence, the Michelin-Starred restaurant of celebrity TV chef Leroy Daniels, DI Declan Walsh and the team of the Temple Inn 'Last Chance Saloon' Command Unit find themselves in the middle of a multi-sensory gastro war, following an investigation that takes them deep into the dark kitchens of London, and a group of friends-turned-enemies all vying to become the next breakout venue—no matter what it costs to get there.

On Lansdown Hill, near Bath, England, a battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers that took place over 350 years ago is annually reenacted. Two of the reenactors discover a skeleton that is female, headless, and only about twenty years old. One of them, a professor who played a Cavalier, is later found murdered. In the course of his investigation, Peter Diamond butts heads with the group of vigilantes who call themselves the Lansdown Society, discovering in the process that his boss Georgina is a member.

Struggling with his new role as a detective chief inspector, John Tanner is warned of a convicted psychopath’s early release. When a couple is found later that day; the man stabbed to death, the woman with her throat cut, he's forced to assume the convict is responsible. But when the male victim turns out to be heir to a global pharmaceutical company, and his twelve-year-old son is nowhere to be found, he has to start looking closer at the victim’s family, and their sprawling stately ancestral home.

Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is quietly recovering from injuries sustained on his latest case when a rich doctor's baby is kidnapped and his peace is shattered. As suspicion builds that the doctor may have staged the baby’s disappearance, the relationship between the doctor and his wife and neighbors begins to disintegrate.

BESTSELLER IN KINDLE STORE for Murder & Psychological Thriller! Deep in the backwoods dark secrets lie hidden. When a decomposing body is found in the woods, it’s identified as an elderly woman who was buried in the cemetery weeks earlier. Who stole her body? Why? What is buried in her coffin? The discovery inside the coffin leads Police Chief Becker to interview an array of suspects, including a clown, a mortician, and a male stripper. Five orphan boys who live in a church have information about the dead woman, but they’re too scared to talk. Complicating her investigation, a young ...

Widowed van driver Bob Naylor is prodded into joining the Chichester Writers' Circle by his teenage daughter. Bob writes limericks and jingles, and fears he will be out of his class amongst the literati. But the members of the circle come from all walks of life and practice many forms of writing, from fantasy to household hints. There seems to be nothing about any of them to incite a serial killer. However, there is an arsonist in their midst, burning his victims to death, and Bob becomes a suspect.

When the body of a young woman is discovered in the cowshed of Cricket Farm, the tranquility of the British countryside is shattered. Inspector Jess Campbell is on the case, but with few leads, a grumbling partner, and the new superintendent Ian Carter piling on the pressure, she's beginning to wonder why she chose to be a detective in the first place.

When Detective Mike West is called to investigate a murder in a Dublin graveyard, suspicion immediately falls on a local woman, Edel Johnson, whose husband disappeared some months before. But then she disappears. Evidence leads West to a small village in Cornwall, but when he arrives, he finds Edel has got there before him. Her explanation seems to make sense, but as West begins to think his suspicions of her are unfounded, she disappears again. Is she guilty? West, fighting an unsuitable attraction, doesn't want to believe it.

Inspector Hilary Casgrain and the other Elk Ridge PD officers are scrambling. Four victims in one day is a bleak and frightening record. The disaster starts with a horrific death at the hot springs and doesn’t end until the discovery of the other bodies. Elk Ridge is a popular tourist spot. The picturesque mountain setting, late winter weather, and student spring break mean the community is bustling with visitors. One sunny afternoon, a tour bus delivers the members of a photography club to town. Not all will be returning home. Meanwhile, the first victim is identified as Elwood Church, a...

The Fitzjohn Mystery Series THE CELTIC DAGGER University professor Alex Wearing is found murdered in his study by the Post Graduate Co-coordinator, Vera Trenbath, a nosey interfering busybody. Assigned to the case is Detective Chief Inspector Alistair Fitzjohn. Fitzjohn is a detective from the old guard, whose methodical, painstaking methods are viewed by some as archaic. His relentless pursuit for the killer zeros in on Alex’s brother, James, as a key suspect in his investigation. Compelled to clear himself of suspicion, James starts his own investigation and finds himself immersed in a ...

DCI Kenny Murrain sees, hears and feels things that others do not. It’s a gift but also a curse. When he wakes to the phantom sound of screaming, he knows a murder has been committed, but not where or why. Then a woman’s body is found in a Stockport hotel room. It’s a murder that seems both frenzied and carefully planned, the scene expertly cleansed of any evidence.

In the small Adirondack town of Millers Kill, an old lumberman sits in the dark with his gun across his knees. Not far away, an unemployed logger sleeps off his bender from the night before. The owner of the town's last paper mill tosses in his bed. And a young woman, one of three heirs to the 250,000-acre Great Camp, wakes alone in darkness, bound and gagged.

Year 2142: Earth is 30 years past a near-collision with the asteroid Sessho-seki. Akira Kimura, the scientist responsible for eliminating the threat, has reached heights of celebrity approaching deification. But now, Akira feels her safety is under threat, so after years without contact, she reaches out to her former head of security, who has since become a police detective.

Standing in the old farmhouse, Special Agent Nikki Hunt holds her breath as the smell of bleach overwhelms her. She can’t take her eyes off the blue baby toys scattered around the floor as her team examine the remains. A housekeeper and her three children disappeared from the property ten years ago. Do the bones belong to two of them? Did the other two survive? But before Nikki has a chance to investigate further, she receives a panicked call from the local sheriff begging for her help.

At an auction house in Bath, England, a large slab of carved stone is up for sale. At the height of what turns into very competitive bidding, there is a holdup attempt by three masked raiders who are trying to steal the stone. They shoot and kill the highest bidder, a professor who has recognized the female figure carved in the stone as the Wife of Bath from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The masked would-be thieves flee, leaving the stone behind.

Hamish Macbeth ambles over to the nearby backwater of Drim, ostensibly to check out a posh English chap who is causing a most unusual problem. Single, wealthy, and terribly attractive, newcomer Peter Hynd has thrown the middle-aged matrons of Drim into a flutter and put their men, dour Highlanders whose feelings run deep, on a slow burn. Hamish’s instincts tell him this seemingly charming young man likes to stir up trouble, and it’s not long before the seething emotions transform the sleepy village into a hotbed of threats, domestic rows, and violent murder.

Thomas Perry's Edgar Award-winning debut novel follows a professional hitman on the run from both the mafia and the government.