Showing titles in Traditional Detectives

The Murder at the Vicarage introduces Miss Jane Marple, Agatha Christie’s quietly formidable observer of human nature. When Colonel Protheroe is found dead in the vicarage, the village of St Mary Mead becomes a web of suspicion, secrets, and motive. Through careful observation and a deep understanding of character, Miss Marple uncovers the truth where others see only confusion.

The new Hercule Poirot novel – another brilliant murder mystery that can only be solved by the eponymous Belgian detective and his ‘little grey cells’. Since the publication of her first book in 1920, Agatha Christie wrote 33 novels, two plays and more than 50 short stories featuring...

At Firenze, the reclusive artist Adrian Delafield's Florentine enclave in St John's Wood, the whispers of an impending tragedy are growing louder. The tension between the fanatical zealot of a housekeeper Miss Trimming and Delafield's sister Virgilia is just shy of fever pitch, when a cold morning at the house finds Trimming and Adrian sprawled at either end of the staircase – upstairs, an injury; downstairs, death.

A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. In this festive short story featuring Francis Durbridge’s favourite debonair amateur detective, Paul Temple journeys to Switzerland to identify an elusive criminal.

It begins with a phone call. Gordon Reeve's brother has been found dead in his car in San Diego. The car was locked from the inside, a gun was in his hand. In the US to identify the body Gordon realises that his brother has been murdered. What's more, it's soon obvious that his own life is in...

Everyone's watching. Someone's killing. A reality TV show. A two million pound prize. A contestant who'll kill to win. Ex-DCI Luke Sackville thought he'd seen it all-until he's called to investigate 'Shadow Chasers', a ratings juggernaut where contestants chase historical mysteries for the ultimate reward. Luke sends two of the Ethics Team undercover as contestants. While they struggle with cryptic clues, dramatic eliminations and the horrors of communal living, whispers of cheating escalate to murder and Luke realizes someone isn't playing by the rules.

Newly promoted DCI Nick Dixon is stuck behind a desk when the peace of the Somerset countryside is shattered by a spate of sheep killings. Dixon recognises a sinister pattern: the animals have all been slaughtered with a crossbow, the power increasing with each kill. It seems whoever is responsible is practising, but for what?

As Jane Marple sat basking in the Caribbean sunshine she felt mildly discontented with life. True, the warmth eased her rheumatism, but here in paradise nothing ever happened. Eventually, her interest was aroused by an old soldier's yarn about a strange coincidence. Infuriatingly, just as he was about to show her an astonishing photograph, the Major's attention wandered. He never did finish the story.

The Remorseful Day is the thirteenth and last novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series. 'Where does this all leave us, sir?' 'Things are moving fast.' 'We're getting near the end, you mean?' 'We were always near the end.' The murder of Yvonne Harrison had left Thames Valley CID...

The world’s most beloved detective, Hercule Poirot – the legendary star of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express and currently The Haunting in Venice – returns in a stylish, diabolically clever mystery set in 1930’s London. ‘Murder! Me? How dare you!’ Hercule Poirot’s...

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time... When a woman's body is found in the sea at Blakeney Point with a single blow to the head, DI Tom Janssen and his team must work out who wanted her dead and why. What would drive someone to murder an elderly woman in such a...

In a poisonous cloud of spray, the curtain falls on a drama queen. Little did beloved British actress Mary Bellamy know that she would be done in at her own birthday party - choked by toxic mist from the bottle of Slaypest, a deadly insecticide. Basking in the glow of her most adoring fans - who all happened to be her most duplicitous enemies - Mary would make her final performance.

Just after midnight, a snowdrift stopped the Orient Express in its tracks. The luxurious train was surprisingly full for the time of the year. But by the morning there was one passenger fewer. An American lay dead in his compartment, stabbed a dozen times, his door locked from the inside.

When Albert Campion is called in by the fiancee of an old college friend to investigate the disappearance of her uncle, he little expects the mysterious spate of death and dangers that follows among the bizarre inhabitants of Socrates Close, Cambridge. He and Stanislaus Oates must tread carefully, and battle some complex family dynamics, to solve the case.

Sherlock Holmes stories are transportive things. They move listeners through the cloistered sitting room at 221-B Baker Street in late 19th Century Victorian London amid the cluttered sideboard, the inviting armchairs, the comforting hearth, the sprawling divan, the formidable bookshelves — all the beloved trappings in the room of the world's greatest detective and his faithful associate. The stories unfold and the listeners can almost sense the physical presence of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, characters whose vitality has defied the diminishments of time.

An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery. Set in the medical world of hospitals and nursing schools in London, the fourth Adam Dalgliesh Mystery is a thrilling work of detective fiction from the bestselling author of Death Comes to Pemberley and The Children of Men. The young women of Nightingale House are there to learn to nurse and comfort the suffering. But when one of the students plays patient in a demonstration of nursing skills, she is horribly, brutally killed.

When the body of a theology student is found on a desolate stretch of coast in East Anglia, his wealthy father demands that Scotland Yard should re-examine the verdict of accidental death. Commander Adam Dalgliesh agrees to pay a visit to the young man's theological college, St Anselm's, a place he knew as a boy, expecting no more than a nostalgic return to old haunts and a straightforward examination of the evidence. Instead he finds himself embroiled in intrigue, secrets and mystery as the college is torn apart by a sacrilegious and horrifying murder . . .

From seat No.9, Hercule Poirot was ideally placed to observe his fellow air passengers. Over to his right sat a pretty young woman, ahead, across the gangway in seat No.8, a detective writer was being troubled by an aggressive wasp. What Poirot did not yet realize was that behind him, in seat No.2, sat the slumped, lifeless body of a woman.

First there was the mystery of the film star and the diamond… then came the ‘suicide’ that was murder… the mystery of the absurdly cheap flat… a suspicious death in a locked gun-room… a million dollar bond robbery… the curse of a pharoah’s tomb… a jewel robbery by the sea…...

A body in the back of a taxi begins an elegantly constructed mystery, perhaps the finest of Marsh’s 1930s novels. The season had begun. Débutantes and chaperones were planning their luncheons, teas, dinners, balls. And the blackmailer was planning his strategies, stalking his next victim. But Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn knew that something was up. He had already planted his friend, Lord Robert Gospell, at the scene. But someone else got there first....