Showing results for "Historical literatures" in Crime Fiction

Eric Ward thinks there is something odd about Arthur Egan’s life and death. But Ward is a former police inspector and trained to be suspicious. Egan left a large sum. But Ward makes no progress tracing the dead man’s offspring. A photograph of an unknown tombstone is his only clue. He discovers Egan served a term for manslaughter and that the evidence against him may have been planted. Why had he accepted his fate so meekly?

In the wake of the Dreyfus affair, the murder of two Jews in Lorraine reveals the darker side of human natureIn the wake of the Vernet murders in Aix-en-Provence, magistrate Bernard Martin moves to Lorraine, France, along with his pregnant wife, Claire, who is as fervent about Republican ideals as her husband. They are not there long when an infant boy is found dead, his tiny body mutilated. The wet nurse and mother say that this was a case of “ritual sacrifice” by a “wandering tinker,” or Jew.

Dermot McEvoy sweeps his listeners into the midst of one of the most heated political races in New York City history, where an unlikely player decides to make her presence known. First it hits the papers that the Virgin Mary has appeared to Jackie Swift, an affable G.O.P. congressman with a couple of nasty habits. She then appears in a dream to Wolfe Tone O'Rourke, a liberal political consultant who is still haunted by the ghost of Bobby Kennedy, whose death he feels responsible for.

On Christmas Eve, 1943, the newly formed but undermanned Homicide division of the Melbourne police force is called to investigate the vicious double murder of a father and son. When Military Intelligence becomes involved, Homicide's Inspector Titus Lambert must unravel the personal from the political. If only the killings had stopped at two. The police are desperate to come to grips with an extraordinary and disquieting upsurge of violence.

Many others in the village have said that they would like to see the colonel dead, but a number of people have a more specific interest in his death: the colonel’s young wife, Anne; her lover, the artist Lawrence Redding; Archer, a local man given a harsh sentence by the colonel for poaching. Even the colonel’s daughter, Lettice, desperate for money, says, “If only father would be decent and die, I’d be all right.” These complexities lead to any number of dead ends for investigators. The only one able to see through the blinds and obscurities is Miss Marple, an elderly but sharp-eyed spinster.

Stefan Lindman, a young police officer recently diagnosed with mouth cancer, decides to investigate the murder of his former colleague, but is soon enmeshed in a mystifying case with no witnesses and no apparent motives. Terrified of the disease that could take his life, Lindman becomes more and more reckless as he unearths the chilling links between Molin's death and an underground neo-Nazi network that runs further and deeper than he could ever have imagined.

REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK A gripping novel about two trailblazing women on opposite sides of the law—a prosecutor and a madam—who team up to bring down notorious Mob boss Lucky Luciano in 1930s New York, from the New York Times bestselling authors of the million-copy bestseller The...

Six short stories from the Queen of Crime, featuring our favourite young detectives, Tommy and Tuppence. Tommy and Tuppence Beresford were restless for adventure, so when they were asked to take over Blunt’s International Detective Agency, they leapt at the chance. After their triumphant...

25 years ago, two-year-old Evie Albert disappeared without a trace from the Brittany seaside town of Morranez. So, when a stranger called Nicole Stevenson walks into the offices of Touissants Detective Agency declaring herself the missing girl, Mila Shepherd and her colleague Carter Jackson are suspicious. They are inclined to agree with Nicole’s sisters Imogen and Charlotte, that for whatever reason, Nicole is a fantasist looking for attention. But as Mila and Carter reopen the case of the missing toddler, a twisting tale of misdirection, a secret society and a forgotten mother slowly unfolds

The year is 1703, and Matthew Corbett, professional "problem solver", is missing. Last seen by his friends in New York before he departed on a lucrative, seemingly straightforward mission for the Herrald Agency in Charles Town, he's been too long absent. His comrade-in-arms Hudson Greathouse has an increasing sense the young friend he thinks of as a son must have met with some unexpected peril.

A CD edition of this popular Christie mystery. Read by Hugh Fraser, Captain Hastings in the popular TV series. The house guests at Styles seemed perfectly pleasant to Captain Hastings; there was his own daughter Judith, an inoffensive ornithologist called Norton, dashing Mr Allerton, brittle...

A classic Poirot mystery read by Hugh Fraser. An outbreak of kleptomania at a student hostel was not normally the sort of crime that aroused Hercule Poirot’s interest. But when he saw the list of stolen and vandalized items – including a stethoscope, some old flannel trousers, a box of...

Framed in the doorway of Poirot’s bedroom stood an uninvited guest, coated from head to foot in dust. The man’s gaunt face stared for a moment, then he swayed and fell. Who was he? Was he suffering from shock or just exhaustion? Above all, what was the significance of the figure 4, scribbled...

The Argyle family is far from pleased to discover one of its number has been post-humously pardoned for murder – if Jacko Argyle didn’t kill his mother, who did? The front door of the family home was locked… According to the courts, Jacko Argyle bludgeoned his mother to death with a poker...

Part of a new look for Hercule Poirot for the 21st Century. Read by Hugh Fraser, who plays Captain Hastings in the popular TV series. Mr Shaitana was famous as a flamboyant party host. Nevertheless, he was a man of whom everybody was a little afraid. So, when he boasted to Poirot that he...

The final Tommy & Tuppence novel. Tommy and Tuppence Beresford have just become the proud owners of an old house in an English village. Along with the property, they have inherited some worthless bric-a-brac, including a collection of antique books. While rustling through a copy of The Black...

Robert McCammon brings the hero of his previous novel, Matthew Corbett, to 18th-century New York, where a killer wields a bloody and terrifying power over a bustling city carving out its identity - and over Matthew's own uncertain destiny.

The unsolved murder of a respected doctor has sent ripples of fear throughout a city teeming with life and noise and commerce. Who snuffed out the good man's life with the slash of a blade on a midnight street? The local printmaster has labeled the fiend "the Masker," adding fuel to a volatile mystery...

Cal may only be twelve years old, but his father has threatened to throw him onto the streets if he doesn’t start earning his keep. Keen to prove himself, he unearths an opportunity through stealthy eavesdropping. Two gentlemen need help transporting an unnamed cargo across the Firth of Forth, no questions asked. Cal is happy to secure the job, but soon discovers that holding up his end will entangle him in a ruthless underworld of thievery, smuggling and body snatchers.

When Cora is savagely murdered with a hatchet, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother Richard’s funeral suddenly takes on a chilling significance. At the reading of Richard’s will, Cora was clearly heard to say: ‘It’s been hushed up very nicely, hasn’t...

A neo-noir crime novel from the legendary crime novelist James Ellroy. Los Angeles, 15th January 1947: a beautiful young woman walked into the night and met her horrific destiny. Five days later, her tortured body was found drained of blood and cut in half. The newspapers called her 'The Black Dahlia'. Two cops are caught up in the investigation and embark on a hellish journey that takes them to the core of the dead girl's twisted life....