A body in the river is all in a day's work for Detective Inspector Peter Johns and his sergeant, Paul Godwin. But things start to become more personal when Paul recognizes their key witness as a close childhood friend and Peter's son is detained for suspected child abduction. Peter and Paul discover they have more in common than they realized, and it becomes difficult to keep work and family life separated.

The New York Times best-selling author of Magpie Murders and Moriarty brilliantly reinvents the classic crime novel once again with this clever and inventive mystery starring a fictional version of the author himself as the Watson to a modern-day Holmes, investigating a case involving buried secrets, murder, and a trail of bloody clues.

The story opens with the apparently accidental drowning of a sixth form student in the Norfolk countryside. As a matter of routine, or so it seems, the case passes across the desk of Detective Sergeant Smith, recently returned to work after an internal investigation into another case that has led to tensions between officers at Kings Lake police headquarters. As an ex-DCI, Smith could have retired by now, and it is clear that some of his superiors wish that he would do so.

Eighteen years ago Simone Porter's six-month-old daughter, Helena, was abducted. Simone and husband Matt have slowly rebuilt their shattered lives, but the pain at losing their child has never left them. Then a young woman, Grace, appears out of the blue and tells Simone she has information about her stolen baby. But just who is Grace - and can Simone trust her? When Grace herself disappears, Simone becomes embroiled in a desperate search for her baby and the woman who has vital clues about her whereabouts.

My husband was not a monster. No matter what they say.... The day my husband, Michael, stepped in front of a lorry after being questioned by the police, my world fell apart. He was devoted to me and our six-year-old daughter. But they’d connected him to the disappearance of a young mother from our tiny village.

Criminologist Martin Knight lives a gilded life and is a thorn in the side of the police. But then his wife, Liz, goes missing. There is no good explanation and no sign of Martin.... To make things worse, Liz is the ex-girlfriend of DCI Craig Gillard who is drawn into the investigation. Is it just a missing person or something worse? And what relevance do the events around the shocking Girl F case, so taken up by Knight, have to do with the present? The truth is darker than you could ever have imagined.

A body is discovered with her throat cut and her daughter believed missing. DCI Foster quickly sees parallels with the disappearance of a teenager three years earlier. With hopes fading, he calls on genealogist Nigel Barnes to piece together the links between the families of the two girls. The trail leads back to 1890, and a young couple fleeing a terrible crime in their past....

As the sun rises, a wealthy young woman, Samantha Seabrook, is found drowned in the ornamental fountain of a deserted Cambridge courtyard, the only clue: an antique silver chain wound tightly around her throat. It’s Tara Thorpe’s job to discover what happened to Miss Seabrook. But the case becomes personal when she learns that Samantha had been receiving death threats, rather like the one that landed on Tara’s doorstep the night the woman died. Together with Detective Inspector Garstin Blake, Tara tracks the killer to the dank and dangerous fens on the outskirts of the city.

Understandably, Lord Burford had some misgivings about hosting another house party at Alderley, his beautiful country mansion. After all, the previous two could at best be described as disastrous, since a couple of their guests were bumped off during their stay on each occasion. But with family members travelling down for the funeral of an elderly relative, the Earl really had no choice but to offer them accommodation.

Each of the Maguire brothers has his own driving, single-minded obsession. For Jonathan it is his magnificent, talented, and desirable wife, Harriet. For Roger it is the elaborate universe he has constructed in a shed in their parents' garden, populated by millions of tiny insects. While Jonathan's pursuit of Harriet leads him to feelings of jealousy and anguish, Roger's immersion in the world he has created reveals a capability and talent that are absent from his everyday life.

When his longtime nemesis, the amphetamine-juiced killer known as "Upper" North, is spotted in England, Detective Chief Inspector Brock is on the trail. His manhunt centers on Silvermeadow, a huge and glittery new shopping mall on the outskirts of London, where North was seen. Lying in wait, he and Kathy Kolla take on a seemingly unrelated case as camouflage, that of a missing girl who had worked in the mall. But what to make of the rumor of other girls gone missing?

Five walkers set out to climb Ben Lomond on a fine October day. Within hours the weather has taken a turn for the worst. The group find themselves lost on the mountain. Two of the climbers manage to make it back down and call for help. The following day a body is found. One of the female climbers has been strangled, and another man is missing without a trace. DCI Dani Bevan is called to the Loch Lomond town of Ardyle to lead the case.

A 90-year-old man is found dead in his bed, smothered with his own pillow. On his desk, the police find newspaper cuttings about a murder case dating from the Second World War, when a young woman was found strangled behind Reykjavik's National Theatre. Konrad, a former detective, is bored with retirement and remembers the crime. He grew up in "the shadow district", a rough neighborhood bordered by the National Theatre. Why would someone be interested in that crime now?

The hunt for a serial killer unearths an unsolved cold case from over 60 years ago. Young girls are being abducted and murdered in the Northeast. Out of favour detective constable Ian Bradshaw struggles to find any leads - and fears that the only thing this investigation will unravel is himself. Journalist Tom Carney is suspended by his London tabloid and returns to his home village in County Durham. Helen Norton is the reporter who replaced Tom on the local newspaper. Together they are drawn into a case that will change their lives forever.

After rising to prominence for his role investigating the case of Jack the Ripper, former Detective Inspector Daniel Wilson is now retired. Known for his intelligence, investigative skills, and most of all his discretion, he's often consulted when a case must be solved quickly and quietly. So when a body is found in the Egyptian collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Wilson is called in.

In 1921, the bloodied bodies of Colonel Fletcher, his wife and two staff are found in a manor house in Surrey. The police have put the murders down to a violent robbery, but Detective Inspector Madden from Scotland Yard has his own suspicions. In the meantime the killer is plotting his second strike.

Into Keldale's pastoral web of old houses and older secrets comes Scotland Yard Inspector Thomas Lynley, the eighth earl of Asherton. Along with the redoubtable Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lynley has been sent to solve a savage murder that has stunned the peaceful countryside. For fat, unlovely Roberta Teys has been found in her best dress, an ax in her lap, seated in the old stone barn beside her father's headless corpse. Her first and last words were "I did it. And I'm not sorry".

St Benjamin's Medical School is the greatest of its kind, any death occurring within its walls would have created ripples within the academic world, but the death of Nikki Exner is far from being ordinary. Raped, and then grotesquely executed, her theatrical murder horrifies everyone. John Eisenmenger, a former forensic pathologist, finds himself dragged unwillingly into the case. Teaming up with solicitor Helena Flemming, Eisenmenger sets out to discover what really did happen to Nikki Exner.

At a university in Reykjavík, the body of a young German student is discovered, his eyes cut out and strange symbols carved into his chest. Police waste no time in making an arrest, but the victim's family isn't convinced that the right man is in custody. They ask Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, an attorney and single mother of two, to investigate. It isn't long before Thóra and her associate, Matthew Reich, uncover the deceased student's obsession with Iceland's grisly history of torture, execution, and witch hunts.

Gold Dagger Award winner Arnaldur Indridason’s novels featuring Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson became international sensations on their way to selling millions of copies worldwide. The debut of morose detective Sveinsson finds the inspector and his team delving into the murder of a retiree with horrifying secrets.

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.

The hunt for a serial killer unearths an unsolved cold case from over 60 years ago. Young girls are being abducted and murdered in the Northeast. Out of favour detective constable Ian Bradshaw struggles to find any leads - and fears that the only thing this investigation will unravel is himself. Journalist Tom Carney is suspended by his London tabloid and returns to his home village in County Durham. Helen Norton is the reporter who replaced Tom on the local newspaper. Together they are drawn into a case that will change their lives forever.

Iris Grey rents a quaint cottage in a picture-perfect Hampshire village, looking to escape from her crumbling marriage. She is drawn to the neighboring Wetherby family and is commissioned to paint a portrait of Dominic Wetherby, a celebrated crime writer. At the Wetherby's Christmas Eve party, the mulled wine is in full flow - but so are tensions and rivalries among the guests. On Christmas Day, the youngest member of the Wetherby family, Lorcan, finds a body in the water. A tragic accident? Or a deadly crime?

The sisters at a lonely Cornish convent share a chilling secret they cannot confess...Sister Sophia is dead. Another disappears. And a mysterious last letter from a dying nun is sent to the prioress. Sister Joan has faced her own demons. Now she is sent to the convent to investigate, as well as teach the local children. There are whispers of virgin sacrifice and suicide, and the mother prioress certainly wears pink nail varnish. And who is the young man hiding in the bracken?

DS George Cross can be rude, difficult and awkward with people. But his unfailing logic and dogged pursuit of the truth means his conviction rate is the best on the force. So when his police colleagues dismiss the death of a man as a squabble among Bristol's homeless community, Detective Sergeant George Cross is not convinced.

Emily Klein doesn’t know she has killed her husband until the day of his funeral. At first, signs point to a tragic accident. Yet, as Emily pieces together the events before his death - events which led to her own memory loss - she begins to suspect that her husband’s death may have been the result of more than a terrible twist of fate.... But the accident is only the beginning. Because while Emily’s physical scars will heal, the trauma of the accident has awakened old ghosts. She hears strange sounds, catches things that can’t possibly be there in the corner of her eye.

Evan Evans is a young police constable who has traded in the violence of city life for idyllic Llanfair, a Welsh village tucked far away from trouble. Nestled among the Snowdonia mountain range, Llanfair looks to Constable Evans like a town forgotten by time, but he quickly learns that even the bucolic countryside has its share of eccentric - and deadly - characters.

An unbearably tense novel of revenge, murder, bereavement and the destructive force of passion. The single-mother families of the isolated community under the shadow of the Pyderhorn, Bergen's greatest mountain, are being terrorised by a teenage gang. But teenage violence is nothing compared to what awaits detective Varg Veum when he gets to know the blue-eyed Wenche Andersen.

A body is discovered with her throat cut and her daughter believed missing. DCI Foster quickly sees parallels with the disappearance of a teenager three years earlier. With hopes fading, he calls on genealogist Nigel Barnes to piece together the links between the families of the two girls. The trail leads back to 1890, and a young couple fleeing a terrible crime in their past....

Monty Collins is a sharp-tongued public defender who just wants to represent an upstanding character for a change. A priest with something to hide isn't quite what he had hoped for, but when the literate, arrogant, and tight-lipped Father Brennan Burke is implicated in the strange murder of a young woman, Monty doesn't just take the case - the case takes him. When Burke won't come clean, Monty is forced to play private detective, traveling into his client's past. Things look good for the case until another body is found....