With this novel of mounting tension among apparently normal people, Ngaio Marsh achieved a triumph on a level with her most famous detective novels Surfeit of Lampreys, Scales of Justice and Off With His Head.
On a cold February night the police find the third corpse on the...Read more
In T.L. Beddoes' play Death's Jest-Book, the dead won't lie still in the grave and the living often wish they could. And Reginald Hill's novel is much the same -- except perhaps for a few more jests.
The dead-pan joker, Franny Roote, is working on his dead friend's unfinished...Read more
Australia's master of crime is back with a new Scobie Malone mystery set in the world of shady financial deals and desperate dreams. Once again Scobie Malone and Ron Clements delve into the dark side of Sydney and bring us a story as fresh as this morning's headlines.
From...Read more
A popular young girl disappears without a trace, her skeletal remains discovered three years later in the ashes of a burned-out house. There’s a suspect and compelling circumstantial evidence of his guilt, but no concrete proof. When he isn’t indicted, he returns to mock the girl’s family....Read more
987: Nete Hermansen, a young woman brutally assaulted in her youth, sterilised without her consent by a fanatical surgeon, and banished to Sprogo, the island for outcast women is planning her escape and her vengeance. And soon people begin to go missing and no one - certainly not the police...Read more
It's a special occasion Down Under -- the notoriously frugal Inspector Malone is taking his family to dinner at one of Sydney's finest Chinese restaurants. But their gala turns grisly when a masked assassin enters and guns down three men at a nearby table.Read more
A ravaged wood, a man in uniform long dead - this is not a World War One battlefield, but Wanwood House, a pharmaceutical research centre. Peter Pascoe attends his grandmother's funeral, and scattering her ashes leads him too into wartorn woods in search of his great-grandfather who fought...Read more
Is Carol playing into a killer's plan?
A series of random deaths suddenly fall into a pattern when reclusive, eccentric billionaire Thurmond Rule dies, leaving an immense estate, but no valid will. With no close relatives -- Rule's son and only heir vanished mysteriously years...Read more
1998. Varg Veum sits by the hospital bedside of his long-term girlfriend Karin, whose life-threatening injuries provide a deeply painful reminder of the mistakes he's made. Investigating the seemingly innocent disappearance of a wind-farm inspector, Varg Veum is thrust into one of the most...Read more
Three wives murdered.
Three husbands disappeared.
No apparent connection between the couples all of whom were supposedly happily married.
No apparent motive.
So why had the killer targeted them?
You'd better ask yourself because ..... IT...Read more
An illegal immigrant is found murdered in an Edinburgh housing scheme. Rebus is drawn into the case, but has other problems: his old police station has closed for business, and his masters would rather he retire than stick around. But as Rebus investigates, he must deal with the sleazy...Read more
A young Don Juan is found murdered in front of his apartment building early one morning, and an elderly couple is reported missing after an excursion to the ancient site of Tindari – two seemingly unrelated cases for Inspector Montalbano to solve amid the daily complications of life at...Read more
When the wife of a prominent QC is found dead at the bottom of a well, Inspector Thanet discounts accidental death. Virginia Mintar was no angel, her outrageous flirting knew no bounds and made her many enemies. On the night of her death she was surrounded by a group of people, many of whom...Read more
When Lord Pasern Bagott takes up with the hot music of Breezy Bellair and his Boys, his disapproving wife Cecile has more than usual to be unhappy about. The band's devastatingly handsome but roguish accordionist, Carlos Rivera, has taken a rather intense and mutual interest in her precious...Read more
Ex-Flying Squad cop Jake Moore runs a game fishing business, but when Mombasa detective Daniel Jouma asks for his help in solving a baffling murder case, he cannot help but become involved. The mangled body of a street criminal has been washed up on the beach and a fishing boat skipper and...Read more
Montalbano opened the door to step out. But Gallo held him back, putting one hand on his arm. ‘What’s in there, Chief?’ ‘If it’s what I think, it’s something so horrific that it’ll haunt your dreams for the rest of your life . . .’ When a crazed elderly man and his sister begin firing...Read more
If you haven't yet had the pleasure, you're in for a revelation! Here in four stories we track their partnership from curtain-up to last act; from the mean streets of Mid-Yorkshire to the mountains of the moon. The Last National Service Man reveals the truth, hitherto buried in police files...Read more
With all evidence in the killing of Norma Glaze pointing to her vanished husband, Scobie Malone's latest case appears to be a cinch, but all is not as it seems when a friend of Scobie's is implicated in the murder.Read more
To know Milton Royce is to loathe him. Now in his mid-forties, the practical joker enjoys embarrassing others, and he delights in coming up with elaborate schemes for setting up his "friends" as fall guys. When he plunges to his death while sky diving, no one seems particularly surprised to...Read more
September 1977. Mette Misvær, a three-year-old girl disappears without trace from the sandpit outside her home. Her tiny, close middle-class community in the tranquil suburb of Nordas is devastated, but their enquiries and the police produce nothing. Curtains twitch,...Read more
A distraught woman arrives at the Eastvale police station desperate to speak to Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. But since Banks is away on holiday, his partner, Annie Cabbot, steps in. The woman tells Annie that she's found a loaded gun hidden in the bedroom of her daughter, Erin—a...Read more
One dark January night a car drives at high speed towards PI Varg Veum, and comes very close to killing him. Veum is certain this is no accident, following so soon after the deaths of two jailed men who were convicted for their participation in a case of child pornography and sexual assault...Read more
When a gentleman arrives at Montalbano's police station to report an armed robbery on his wife that ended with a kiss, the inspector's suspicions are aroused.
As he delves deeper into the case, Montalbano finds that none of the witnesses' stories are adding up, and he can't help...Read more
In the Beginning was the Word!
A man drowns. Another dies in a motorbike crash.
Two accidents! yet in a pair of so-called Dialogues sent to the Mid-Yorkshire Gazette as entries in a short story competition, someone seems to be claiming responsibility for the...Read more
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In A Question of Belief, Brunetti must contend with ingenious corruption, bureaucratic intransigence, and the stifling heat of a Venetian summer. With his hometown beset by hordes of tourists and baking under a glaring sun, Brunetti's greatest wish is to go to the mountains with...Read more
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...Read more
At the doors of a charming country church, an unspeakable act destroys a wedding party. A huge manhunt ensues. The culprit is captured. The story is over.
Except it isn't. For Alan Banks, still struggling with a tragic loss of his own, there's something wrong about this case —...Read more
In Inspector Montalbano’s coastal town of Vigàta, a surge of migrants have been coming in by boat, and all the town’s hands are on deck to help the arrivals. At the heart of the scene are the police – on the lookout for the people smugglers responsible – and long night-shifts are rendering...Read more
A young nurse’s body is found at Clovelly Beach in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Apart from a puncture wound in her neck, she is in perfect condition. But she’s also clutching a rose in her hands – and there’s an empty packet of prescription drugs in her pocket.
Investigating the...Read more
When Inspector Bonaparte is called to the drought-stricken outback sheep station he finds that two men have been savagely beaten to death. Clues are scarce in this sun-baked, sand-blown country, but Bony's understanding of the bush and the people who live there - both black and white -...Read more