Showing results for "Smart" in Mystery

Withering and waspish, Ursula Smart (not her real name) gate-crashes her mother's book club at an isolated country house for a long weekend retreat. Much to Mother's chagrin. Joining them are Mother's best friend, Mirabelle, Aunts Charlotte and Less, and Bridget with her dog, Mr. Bojangles. It doesn't matter that they've read Gone Girl three times this year already, this retreat is their chance to escape bustling suburbia. But someone has other ideas. A body is found in the grounds.

Ursula Smart, along with her dysfunctional family, heads to Scotland for a gentle weekend of foraging and camping in the Outer Hebrides. Their boat capsizes. Washed up on an uninhabited island, the Smart women face starvation, freezing conditions, and - worse - no Wi-Fi. A fun break swiftly turns into a desperate battle for survival. Someone begins killing them off one by one.

When a blood-stained effigy of body parts is found in a central London park, D.I. Daniel Graves must set about trying to discover what it could mean and find the person responsible. Symbols at the crime scene suggest the occult. Who would leave a murder victim in such a way, and why? As Graves and partner D.I. Charlie Palmer begin to investigate the ritual and the act of human sacrifice, they enlist the help of Charlotte Gooding, a talented professor specializing in the subject. They hope to narrow down a motive—could the killer believe in the supernatural? Witchcraft, even?

D.I. Graves is back on the case to face his toughest challenge yet: a case with no motive and no suspect, nothing at all that could explain why someone would kill innocent people and then take parts from the bodies. Then the next victims are discovered: another pair of bodies, new body parts taken, and again in their own home. Someone is breaking into houses across the city at night, leaving horror in their wake. It seems to Graves that this could be two serial killers, working together. But how are they choosing their victims? Is any house in London a target? Is anyone safe?

Crime, thriller, and noir fans will delight in this fourth volume of The Greatest Mysteries of All Time, an exciting series featuring short fiction by legendary writers, past and present. From Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, and Georges Simenon to Lawrence Block and Sara Paretsky, this unique collection—compiled and edited by multi-award-winning mystery connoisseur Otto Penzler—is a captivating mixture of mystery and suspense.