Showing results for "Pete" in Traditional Detectives

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A woman is found bludgeoned to death in a swimming pool. A pensioner who disappeared many moons ago turns up out of the blue. A cockeyed boxer has more success outside the ring than in it. What connects these events may be the clue DI Charlie West is looking for to solve the latest murder on her patch. But just when West has a likely suspect in custody, Munro returns to the scene - his enforced repose having done little to dent his appetite for the finer and richer things in life - with an oblique angle on the case.

Detective Inspector Munro is a burly Scottish policeman who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Detective Sergeant West is an intelligent young woman, new to the force, with a lot to prove. When a missing person case lands on their desks, Munro is skeptical there is much to it. But their investigation soon comes to some strange findings, and before long a body is found. With a serial killer on their hands, they must act fast to trace a woman placed at the scene of the crime. Yet discovering her true identity, let alone finding her, proves difficult. And as the plot thickens they realise the crime is far graver than either of them could have imagined.

When a body is found in a remote Scottish glen, DI Munro comes out of retirement to investigate. The police chief wants everything wrapped up before the upcoming regatta, but the locals are remarkably unforthcoming with helpful information. Sassy and quick, London detective sergeant Charlotte West is roped in by DI Munro to help solve what is now a murder case. It is good police work that will unravel the truth behind the crime, but not without ruffling a few feathers first. Will the killer escape the sharp-witted detectives’ grasp?

A serial killer is framing innocent people. When a young woman is found murdered in her flat, CCTV identifies a suspect. But when he is brought in for questioning, his willingness to cooperate with Munro and West raises doubts about his guilt. When another body turns up, he falls under suspicion once more. But with him off the radar, they must follow a new line of investigation....

A businessman disappears, last seen by old friends. DI Munro must cut through a densely woven web of deceit to find out who killed him and why. Two families have been friends for years, but resentment simmers under the surface. Despite those who are protecting their own interests, the culprit is found - leading to a wider investigation that takes them to Oslo, deep into the past of a troubled Polish man....

Rancour is the eighth Scottish murder mystery to feature Detectives James Munro and Charlie West. The conditions were terrible for a hike up Goat Fell, so why did a group of schoolgirls attempt it? One of the girls presses on when the others turn back; inappropriately dressed and unprepared, she meets her death. After mountain rescue retrieves the body, various questions start to be raised. Inconsistencies in her companions’ accounts of events are exposed, and it turns out the victim may have been drugged.

Left to her own devices, Detective Sergeant Charlie West struggles with the responsibility of a full-blown murder investigation when a man is pushed off a cliff. Not ready to have her apron strings severed so soon, West finds Munro who reluctantly agrees to shed light on the Ayrshire detectives' most challenging case yet. Once the police have discovered the identity of the dead man, and established his demise was the result of foul play, the race is on to hunt down the murderer.

Having been the victim of a hit-and-run accident, and despite being black and blue, DI Munro wastes no time in trying to find out the identity of the perpetrator. In the meantime, a junior detective receives a call from a concerned member of the public, worried that a recently deceased friend’s will had been unlawfully changed. What connects these two events will be crucial to the detective’s investigation. But when prime witnesses turn up dead, they’ll discover they have a more serious case on their hands.

When a sheep farmer boards a stricken fishing vessel stranded on the shore, he is in for the shock of his life. Within lies the body of a man who is inside out. The police find a filleting knife in the hold, covered in the victim’s blood. DI Charlie West arrives on the scene and given the obvious disembowelment immediately determines that a murder has taken place.

DI Charlie West is investigating a series of robberies when three fingers are found in a refuse site. The investigation leads the team to a local restaurant, the university campus and the municipal dump. But when a man walks into a jeweller’s shop and calmly bashes in the head of the owner, they have a murder case on their hands. Despite the discovery of a man in some discomfort due to missing the fingers on his hand, the investigation draws blanks.

Down-on-his-luck businessman Tam McDonnell thinks he may have rescued his ailing pub when a local man comes good on his promise to fill the venue with punters in exchange for a percentage of the takings. That's until he discovers a newly hired barmaid dead in the toilets. DI Charlie West's team struggle to find a motive. Clearly murdered, if the corkscrew in her neck is anything to go by, the victim was loved by all who knew her and apparently led a squeaky-clean life—cleaner than the toilet, at any rate.

It is a serendipitous encounter for the hapless DI Greg Byrne when retired sleuth James Munro stumbles upon his crime scene. And perhaps also for Munro himself, who, his protégé Charlie West having firmly snapped his apron strings, needs other lambs to wean. The day is far less auspicious for the victim in the affair, the unfortunate property developer Rebecca Barlow, who has been trussed up like a scarecrow in her yard. Though occurring off DI West’s Ayrshire patch, the investigation will soon intertwine with one of her own.

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture.

Allan Pinkerton, a Scotsman by birth and a barrel maker by trade, settled in Chicago in its infancy and founded the Pinkertons, the world's first detective agency. Though events associated with the agency after his death have tarnished the name, Pinkerton himself was one of the original human rights advocates. He was a dear friend to John Brown, an advisor to Abraham Lincoln, and 80 years ahead of his time in hiring female detectives.