Showing titles in Traditional Detectives

Iceland 1940. Britain invades Iceland. Lieutenant Tom Marks is a British officer tasked with defending Whale Fjord. He meets Kristín, a young widow from a nearby farm, who has a small son. Tom is smitten. Iceland 2023. Inspector Magnus Ragnarsson is called to the shores of Whale Fjord where the skeletons of a man and a woman have been discovered, both shot with British wartime bullets. Magnus uncovers a web of anger and revenge that stretches back 80 years and forward to a shocking murder in Reykjavík.

When the engines finally met, there was a deafening clash and the Brighton Express twisted and buckled, tipping its carriages on to the other line. It was a scene of utter devastation. October 1854. As crowds of passengers rush to make the departure of the London to Brighton Express, a man watches from the shadows nearby, grimly satisfied as the train pulls out of the station. Chaos, fatalities and unbelievable destruction are the scene soon after when the train derails on the last leg of its journey.

After a teenage boy is found dead on a Lenchester train, Detective Chief Inspector Whitney Walker believes they’re being targeted by the notorious Carriage Killer, who chooses a local rail network, commits four murders, and moves on. Against her wishes, Walker’s boss brings in officers from another force to help the investigation and prevent more deaths, but she’s forced to defend her team against this outside interference.

Althea Graham's hypochondriac mother seldom visits the gazebo - yet she is found dead in it one morning. The Graham estate had once enjoyed a rural view, but now the grounds are part of suburban London and the gazebo is an anachronistic summerhouse. Scotland Yard becomes suspicious of Althea and her fiancé, the dashing foreign correspondent Nicholas Carey, because the death of her mother frees them to be married at last.

James Bennett, nephew of Sir Henry Merrivale (the cantankerous yet genius sleuth), has been invited to stay at White Priory for Christmas, among the retinue of the glamorous Hollywood actress Marcia Tait. Her producer, her lover, her playwright and her agent are all here along with the haughty master of the estate, Canifes and his daughter. So many suspects they become when Marcia Tait is found dead on Christmas morning in the lakeside pavilion, having been left there alone the night before and with a distinct lack of footprints in the snow to reveal any possible killer.

Death is Now My Neighbour is the twelfth novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series. As he drove his chief down to Kidlington, Lewis returned the conversation to where it had begun. 'You haven't told me what you think about this fellow Owens – the dead woman's next-door neighbour.'...

A dark, smog-filled London doesn’t seem very Christmassy, or exciting, but then Posie Parker, London’s premier female Private Detective, receives an urgent call from one of her oldest friends; Rufus, Earl of Cardigeon. Summoned to ‘The Mermaid’, a reputedly haunted hotel in Rye, on the Sussex Coast, in the heart of smuggling country, Posie, together with her husband, Richard, finds her old friend in a real state.

Suffolk, England, 1936. The Reverend Alwyn Jones has made several enemies since becoming Rector of Addenham Magna. But nobody expected he would be so unpopular as to be bludgeoned to death in his own vestry during a church fete. And nobody noticed the disappearance of an old painting from the church on the same day as the murder.

Tommy and Evelyn Christie are looking forward to a quiet Christmas holiday at the home of Hugh Norton-Cavendish, the 9th Earl of Clifford, who recently married Tommy's cousin, Elise. However, the suspicious death of Albert Lewis, a businessman hoping to buy land from Hugh, means the Christmas festivities are quickly over. Tommy is distracted by his sister's new relationship with a man he distrusts. Evelyn is busy with her pack of dogs, brought for the traditional Boxing Day shoot.

Benedict Cumberbatch reads five stories featuring the famous vegetarian railway detective, Thorpe Hazell, as heard on BBC Radio 4. In The Affair of the German Dispatch-Box, Hazell hatches a daring plan to retrieve a highly sensitive government document before it reaches the German Ambassador. In...

The impressively versatile Joanne Harris in her psychological thriller mode, at her darkest and most unsettling. Perfect for fans of Ann Cleeves, Susan Hill, Nicci French and Val McDermid. 'A magnificently plotted and twisty journey to the heart of a 24-year-old crime...darkly humorous...

In England in the late 1920s, the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, on a convalescent trip to the countryside, goes to visit three old school friends in the area. Daisy and her husband Alec - Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard - go for a Sunday lunch with Daisy’s friends, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, which remains curiously locked, no key to be found. Alec offers to pick the lock, but when he opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine but the stench of a long-dead body.

Due to financial hardships at Tawcester Towers, the Dowager Duchess has decreed that the only way the family fortunes can be restored is to marry Blotto off...to an American! Reluctantly, Blotto, together with Twinks and his trusty chauffeur Corky Froggett set sail.

A killer stalks the streets of London, murdering the richest people in the capital. Is this the work of a serial killer, or just someone angry with the super rich? Or is there another reason why billionaires are being killed every three days? Detective Inspector Simon Wise, reeling from the death of his partner and harbouring more than a few secrets of his own, is assigned to the case. But the killer leaves no clues as to their identity, only bodies in their wake, and each new death sends Wise's team in startling new directions.

The close-knit community of a Yorkshire village is rocked when local secrets are revealed in Date with Mystery, the third cosy crime novel in Julia Chapman's Dales Detective series. Perfect for fans of Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club and M.C. Beaton. The Dales Detective Agency’s...

The elegant, intelligent amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey is one of detective literature’s most popular creations. Ian Carmichael is the personification of Dorothy L. Sayers’ charming investigator in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation. When Sandy Campbell's body is found at the foot...

A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge kills the wrong person. The young woman in the car behind is spared. But only for a while... A few weeks later, George Marshalson lives every father's worst nightmare: he discovers the murdered body of his eighteen-year-old daughter on the side of the road. Wexford steps into the case but soon a second teenage girl is murdered - a victim unquestionably linked to the first - and another family is shattered...

The assignment begins with a simple errand - a parcel to deliver. But to Alan Stewart, standing on a deserted road in Iceland with a murdered man at his feet, it looks anything but simple. The desolate terrain is obstacle enough. But when Stewart realises he has been double-crossed and that the opposition is gaining ground, his simple mission seems impossible....

February 1355: Oxford explodes in one of the most serious riots of its history. Fearing for their lives, the scholars flee, and some choose the University at Cambridge as their temporary refuge. But they don't remain safe for long. Within hours of their arrival, the first of their number dies, followed quickly by a second. When Matthew Bartholomew begins to investigate the deaths, he uncovers evidence that the Oxford riot was not a case of random violence, but part of a carefully orchestrated plot.

Teenage girls are being picked up on the seafront, and two of them are found dead. DI Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell has barely set foot on her old patch before she is up to her jet-lagged neck in somebody else’s tragedy.