British Detective Fiction

SPIDER MOUTHDI FRED FAIRSERVICE has just returned from holiday when he’s confronted with several mysterious deaths; the mutilated dead body of a junkie, the apparent suicide of a housewife, and the murder of a cannibal, kicks off the strangest investigation of his dark and brutal career. But the strangest element of the case is the connection to the deaths of several old men and women who are found with spiders placed in their mouths.

When the body of a young woman is found in an old 'dead house' - the annexe where the dead were stored before burial in medieval times - of a tiny Welsh church, it seems that past and present have come together in a bizarre and horrifying way. For DC Fiona Griffiths, the girl - a murder victim...

Fresh from their last case at Twilight Lodge, Martin and Albie reward themselves with a relaxing trip to the sun-soaked island of Menorca. But when they head down to breakfast one morning, they happen upon a panicked husband reporting his wife, bestselling author Karen Squires, missing. Soon afterwards they’re shocked to discover Karen’s body on the beach. Local police call it a tragic accident: one look at the broken safety fence on the cliffs above suggests Karen fell. But the victim’s perfectly-manicured nails tells Martin that this was no accident. She was pushed.

When a film shoot on Wharfedale’s vintage railway turns into a grisly crime scene, DCI Oldroyd’s idyllic visit to the countryside with his partner Deborah is well and truly stopped in its tracks. One of the film’s stars has been shot dead in a train carriage while the cameras rolled outside. But nobody else went in—or came out. Has the killer really pulled off the perfect, impossible crime?

London, 1812. At a fashionable address in leafy Mayfair, a far cry from Detective Stephen Lavender’s usual haunts, a man is found dead in his room. He has been brutally stabbed, but the door is locked from the inside, and the weapon is missing. The deceased is David MacAdam, an Essex businessman with expensive tastes. As Lavender and Constable Ned Woods travel between London and Chelmsford seeking to understand MacAdam’s final hours and unearth the grisly truth, they uncover a tangled web of deceit behind his stylish facade.

As winter closes its grip on snow-bound London, a cleaner determines to solve the case that her detective father never could. A Kindle number one bestseller. It was the murder that shocked the nation. Kate Rokesmith, a young mother, walked to the banks of the Thames with her three-year-old son...

The Luke Sackville Crime Thriller series continues… Where secrets are worth more than lives Ex-DCI Luke Sackville is asked by a friend to locate a missing woman. It appears to be a routine case, but as he digs deeper he discovers that all is not as it seems. Meanwhile, his Ethics Team face a variety of cases ranging from harassment to online bullying to physical intimidation. As these seemingly unconnected investigations progress, a prestigious private school is revealed as a common thread.

Brought to you by Penguin. *As seen on The One Show* *A Times and Sunday Times Crime Book of the Year* A BRUTAL KILLING UNCOVERS A COLD CASE. HAS SOMEONE GOT AWAY WITH MURDER? On the verge of a four-billion-dollar deal, a tech entrepreneur is found dead on a construction site, which leads to the...

An upcoming book from the Knopf Doubleday Publishing...

When latter-day lothario and expert kayaker Roger Alcock disappears on the night of the "Great Cockermouth Flood", his attractive wife Maeve takes 24 hours longer than might reasonably be expected to notify the authorities. When Roger’s corpse washes up on the Solway coast, a postmortem suggests his death could legitimately be classified as misadventure. Maverick British DI Skelgill, detects a sinister undercurrent that pervades the tightly knit community in which Roger Alcock moved. As the floodwater recedes, reasons surface why Roger’s erstwhile associates might celebrate his demise.

Ever wondered what goes on inside the head of a stone-cold killer? This dark and disturbingly twisted trilogy will thrust you deep into the minds of some of the most evil criminal psychopaths you would never wish to encounter. Includes Remorseless, Mutilated, Gaslighting.

DCI Suzanna McLeod is a fighting fit and highly intelligent detective with brilliant analytical talents, who’s been favourably compared to Sherlock Holmes. Her Edinburgh-based team is legendary for being the UK’s best, so she has a reputation to live up to and a team to lead. Suzanna’s under pressure to catch the armed robbers before their success tempts them to more ambitious and dangerous missions. But she has to juggle two investigations when her magnifying glass is stolen. The Glass is a cherished heirloom entrusted to her care by her late great-great-uncle.

The new installment in the “relentlessly engrossing series” (The Wall Street Journal) finds Karen Pirie and her team investigating the murder of a journalist paved under a motorway—but was it his work or his private life that put him there? Scotland, 2025. When torrential winter rain...

Ward and Nowak are assigned to investigate a death outside Keighley and when the pathology report arrives, more than a few eyebrows are raised. As more victims drop, Ward realises he’s onto a serial killer with a list to hit. Only this one is so insidious, their tracks are nigh impossible to trace. Ward has to find the culprit. As if that’s not enough, a breakthrough on the Varga caseload delivers a target of such high value Ward will do anything to set this one in his crosshairs. The only trouble is Ward’s not done with Varga yet...and Varga’s not done with Ward.

'A superior historical thriller, which is both a murder mystery and espionage novel...for fans of Alan Furst and Philip Kerr.' - Thomas Waugh Manchester, 1919. To Detective Chief Inspector Frank Tinsley, it initially appears to be a straightforward crime. A drunkard has been stabbed to death and...

From hunting pickpockets in London omnibuses and ghosts in Hesse Square, Sergeant Watters and Detective Silver are led into the notorious Wild Geese public house, and a tangled mystery that involves the murder of a guardsman and the vivacious wife of an Austrian diplomat. With the help of the Irish woman Rowena, Watters trawls through the back streets of London, encounters female prize-fighters and suave cracksmen, and finds himself in the savage world of espionage. But can he unravel the mysterious words: "There is a storm from the east and the west"?

The Swinging Christies, a new HarperCollins book, full description to follow when available...

Thomas Watson left London two years ago and crossed the Atlantic to become a newspaper reporter in Philadelphia, 1920s Philadelphia, a city that rivals Al Capone's Chicago for its crime and corruption. Why would he go so far from family and friends? Admittedly, he was trying to get away - away from the shadow of his famous father, Dr. John Watson, and his father's even more famous friend, Sherlock Holmes.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Named a Most Anticipated Book of Fall by The New York Times, LitHub, BookBub, Goodreads, and many more! Janice Hallett, “the new queen of crime” (Electric Literature), returns with a fresh, edge-of-your-seat mystery that takes place at a pub’s weekly trivia night...