Showing titles in Traditional Detectives

Returning to the Broads after nearly two years at sea, John Tanner moors up next to a boat to find the body of a man whose five-year-old daughter is nowhere to be seen. As a torrent of unwanted memories begins flooding through his mind, an attractive Broads Ranger arrives at the scene with a disturbing tale; one of children being taken by a ghostly figure, standing at the helm of an old wooden boat.

When London’s finest jazz musicians, the Dizzy Heights, are booked to play the glitzy Midsummer Ball at a country house in Oxfordshire, they expect a weekend filled with flappers and toffs having a roaring good time. But the festivities at Bilverton House take a turn for the worse when the group are stranded by a summer storm. And when a member of the Bilverton family turns up dead in a locked room in an apparent suicide, Skins, Dunn and Ellie realize this is going to be a much tougher gig than they thought.

An original story from the creator and writer of the hit BBC One TV series Death in Paradise, featuring on-screen favourite detective DI Richard Poole. Supermodel Polly Carter was famed for her looks and party-girl lifestyle. Now she's dead, apparently having thrown herself from the clifftop near her home on the island of Saint-Marie. Those who knew her say Polly would never have killed herself...and when he is called in to investigate, DI Richard Poole is inclined to agree there is more to Polly's death than meets the eye.

Innocent Blood is a standalone thriller and chilling mystery from P.D. James, the best-selling author of Death Comes to Pemberley and Children of Men. Philippa Palfrey, adopted as a child, believes herself to be the motherless, illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic father. At eighteen she exercises her right to find out the truth. What she discovers will change her life forever.

This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together a selection of rare tales by masters of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a newly discovered Agatha Christie crime story that has not been seen since 1922. At a time when crime and thriller writing has once again overtaken the sales of general and literary fiction, Bodies from the Library unearths lost stories from the Golden Age, that period between the World Wars when detective fiction captured the public’s imagination.

When a sniper kills four people on Boston Common, Boston homicide detective Mike Houston and his partner Anne Bouchard are sent to investigate the case. Amidst the blood and terror, Houston discovers similarities, likenesses the killer’s positioning, his choice of victims, and his code of ethics between the crime scene and his own training as a US Marine scout and sniper. And with the staging of the scene set for prime shock value, Houston has to wonder what it is this murderer intends to accomplish.

'And in Edinburgh of all places. I mean, you never think of that sort of thing happening in Edinburgh, do you...?' 'That sort of thing' is the brutal abduction and murder of two young girls. And now a third is missing, presumably gone to the same sad end. Detective Sergeant John Rebus, smoking and drinking too much, his own young daughter spirited away south by his disenchanted wife, is one of many policemen hunting the killer.

There's Rosemary, that's for remembrance. Published in 1945, "Sparkling Cyanide" is all about remembrance. It begins with six characters recalling the horrific death of Rosemary Barton, a beautiful but shallow young heiress poisoned by a cyanide-spiked glass of champagne whilst celebrating her birthday at a smart London restaurant.

A student has gone missing in Edinburgh - completely out of character. She's not just any student, though, but the daughter of extremely well-to-do and influential bankers. There's almost nothing to go on until Detective Inspector John Rebus gets an unmistakable gut feeling that there's more to this than just another runaway spaced out on unaccustomed freedom or worse.

England, 1930. An antiques dealer is found robbed and murdered in a third class train compartment on a remote Suffolk branch line. The police believe they know who the killer is, and an arrest is soon made. A passenger on the same train, the Reverend Lucian Shaw, country parson and former army chaplain, is concerned that the police have the wrong man and begins an investigation of his own. Before long, Shaw is drawn into a web of intrigue, deceit, and murder which lurks beneath the surface of a seemingly peaceful country parish.

The Railway Detective faces his most dangerous adversary yet. It is 1852, and Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant Sergeant Victor Leeming are faced with their most complex and difficult case to date. As a train speeds over the Sankey Viaduct, a man is hurled from a carriage and plummets into the canal below. It later transpires that he has been stabbed to death. With no papers by which to identify the man, the detectives' investigation is hampered from the start. Suspecting that the victim may have come from continental Europe, Colbeck and Leeming take the case to France where a new railway is being built by a British contractor.

Hettie Bagshot has bitten off more than any cat could chew. As soon as she launches her No. 2 Feline Detective Agency, she's bucketed into a case: Furcross, a home for slightly older cats, has a nasty spate of bodysnatching, and three of the residents have been stolen from their graves. Hettie and her sidekick, Tilly, set out to reveal the terrible truth. In a haze of catnip and pastry, Hettie steers the Furcross Case to its conclusion, but will she get there before the body count rises - and the pies sell out?

It is a complete mystery why anyone would choose to murder the trusted old butler of Norton Manor. Barrister-turned-amateur-detective Frank Amberley has reason to suspect that the shooting involves the nervy young lady discovered at the scene of the crime, a snooping gentleman in the halls of Greythorne and then a second dead body.

London in the 1960s: gang wars, corrupt police, vice and pornography. Ex-boxer Charles Holborne has plenty of opportunities to build his reputation with the criminal classes as a barrister who delivers. But Charles, an East End boy made good, is not all he seems, and his past is snapping at his heels. When his philandering wife has her throat slashed, Holborne finds himself on the wrong side of the law and on the run. Can he discover the truth of the brutal slaying and escape the hangman's noose?

In 1890, the first Japanese diplomatic delegation arrives in London to open an embassy. Cyrus Barker, private enquiry agent and occasional agent for the Foreign Service Office, is enlisted to display his personal Japanese garden to the visiting dignitaries. Later that night, Ambassador Toda is shot and killed in his office and Cyrus Barker is discovered across the street, watching the very same office, in possession of a revolver with one spent cartridge.

It is 1933, and Europe is a place of increasing fear and violence. Young British photographer Elena Standish is on assignment in Amalfi when she meets Ian Newton, a charming Englishman with whom she falls in love. But what does she really know about him? Accompanying him on a train across Italy to Paris, she finds him critically stabbed and dying. He tells her he is a member of Britain's Secret Service, on his way to Berlin to warn MI6 so that they can foil a plot to assassinate one of Hitler's vilest henchmen and blame Britain for it, thus causing a devastating diplomatic crisis.

A collection of the comic master's early stories of perpetually in-the-soup Bertie Wooster and his unflappable valet Jeeves, including their debut in "Extricating Young Gussie" and all 28 stories from "The Inimitable Jeeves" and "Carry On, Jeeves".

When the luxurious Blue Train arrives at Nice, a guard attempts to wake serene Ruth Kettering from her slumbers. But she will never wake again, for a heavy blow has killed her, disfiguring her features almost beyond recognition. What is more, her precious rubies are missing.

Seeing a dog next to a homeless man inspires lawyer Andy Carpenter to give the pair some money to help. Soon after Andy’s encounter with them, man and dog are attacked in the middle of the night on the street. The dog defends its new owner, and the erstwhile attacker is bitten but escapes. But the dog is quarantined, and the man, Don Carrigan, is heartbroken. Andy’s wife, Laurie, can’t resist helping the duo. In a matter of days, Don and his dog, Zoey, are living above Andy’s garage and become two new additions to the family. But things soon go awry....

Inspired by the real-life memoirs of Edinburgh's first detective, James McLevy, here are more fantastic fictional adventures featuring the tenacious Victorian crime-solver. Once again, McLevy and his faithful sidekick Constable Mulholland patrol the dark wynds and back alleys of 1840s Leith tracking down evildoers—aided by a surprising ally: the beautiful and resourceful brothel-keeper Jean Brash.