Search Results for: in-the-beginning

A Christmas novella for fans of the hit drama series LONGMIRE now on Netflix and the New York Times-bestselling series.

On December 24, Sheriff Walt Longmire is reading A Christmas Carol when he’s interrupted by a young woman with a fine scar across her forehead and questions about Walt’s predecessor, Lucian Connally. Walt doesn’t recognize the mystery woman, but she knows him, and claims to have something she must return to Connally. Walt, at loose ends, agrees to help.

Lucian Connally swears he’s never seen the woman before. Disappointed, she begins a story that takes them back to Christmas Eve 1988, a terrible, fatal crash and a young girl who had the slimmest chance of survival.
Back to a whiskey-soaked World War II vet ready to fly a decommissioned plane and risk it all to save a life . . .

‘The characters talk straight from the hip and the Wyoming landscape is its own kind of eloquence’ New York Times

The sign read ‘Do Not Disturb’, and at first Edith Talbot ignored the pitiful whimpering that came through the door. The hotel clerk assured her that the room was occupied by a sick boy under the care of a physician. Later in the night, when the cries resumed, she felt something must be done, and she made the fatal mistake of knocking on the door …

From then on things begin to happen, strange things that at first seem like coincidence but crescendo into a series of hair-raising events.

‘Continuous action, and extra good writing’ Saturday Review of Literature

From one of the best-loved authors of the Golden Age of detective fiction, this collection of short stories by Helen McCloy features psychiatrist-sleuth Dr Basil Willing.

Beginning with her classic, Through a Glass, Darkly, which she later expanded into a full-length novel, McCloy experimented with daringly imaginative concepts within the framework of the formal, fairplay detective story. From doppelgangers to flying saucers each story demonstrates the author’s masterful combination of style, content and technique to produce some of crime fiction’s finest work.

A murder has taken place on stage and it seems that one of three people must be guilty. The crime was committed in full view of the audience and players, but no one can say whom the murderer is. There appear to be no clues, the suspects are all well trained in the art of dissimulation, and all three deny any knowledge of the crime.

It looks like the perfect murder, until Dr Basil Willing, psychiatrist-sleuth, begins to investigate the peculiar behaviour of a pet canary and a housefly.

‘From the way her buttocks looked under the black silk dress, I knew she’d be good in bed’

So begins the most hardboiled of Latimer’s novels, whose notoriety meant that it was only published in unexpurgated form in the States in 1982, 40 years after its original publication.

In this classic noir novel, St Louis private eye Karl Craven, who likes his steak rare, his liquor hard and his women fallen, arrives at the small town of Paulton to protect his wealthy client’s daughter from a religious cult. He soon finds himself involved with various unsavoury characters, as well as a femme fatale named Princess, and proves more than a match for the worst of them.

When an accident begins to look like murder…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

On a quiet country station, Detective Arthur Crook, waiting for the train to London, witnessed a near-fatal accident. Despite the arm of her companion, Miss Imogen Garland slipped and almost fell under the train. No harm was done, and Arthur Crook might not have thought anything more about it had not a newspaper item a few weeks later caught his eye. Miss Garland had once again been involved in an accident, this time fatal. Only it was not Miss Garland who had died . . .

A body in the belfry… and a gruesome mystery to uncover for the inimitable Crook and Parsons.
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

The bell of St Ethelburga’s had stopped ringing. It had pealed out its customary call to the faithful, its gentle reproach to the sluggards; but somehow that morning it did not seem to ring as long as usual. For Death had been busy in the belfry, where a startled vicar made an appalling discovery.

The murder in the church begins another mystery for the inimitable Crook and Parsons, who shine with their trademark ingenuity and impudence.

You might call Bertha Cool the broad beam of the Cool and Lam Detective Agency. As this story begins, all 200-odd pounds of her are quivering happily at the thought of a fat fee to come.

All Bertha has to do is guard the priceless treasures of wealthy explorer Dean Crockett II, who is about to throw a fabulous party. But somebody’s hand is quicker even than Bertha’s gimlet eye, and one valuable jade Buddha and a primitive blowgun disappear.

That’s when brainy bantam-weight Donald Lam steps in, and the pace sets off fiercely, before reaching a sensational, unexpected climax.

When Norda Allison saw her husband-to-be slap his young son, she immediately called off the wedding. Now she is terrified. Her ex-fiancé has beaten up her new boyfriend, and anonymous newspaper clippings are flooding her mailbox – articles graphically depicting what jilted men do to the women who leave them.

Then Norda’s life takes an even darker turn. It begins with a barking dog, a child’s scream, a gun shot, and the discovery of a dead body – and takes a further twist when Norda is arrested and charged with brutal murder. Now only the brilliant courtroom strategist Perry Mason stands between Norda and a sentence of certain death …

Held captive in a dark room in New York State, a young woman is at the mercy of a killer. As guide-dog trainer Joanna finds herself fighting her attraction to blind sculptor Jack Donovan she also begins to feel dangerously unwelcome. Meanwhile, another object of beauty is being stalked …

‘Hilary Norman specialises in creepy thrillers and this one is just as gripping as her previous work’ Woman’s Own

‘We have an agent in East Germany whom we wish to get out …’

There was nothing unusual about these words to the urbane British Intelligence chief who spoke them. He might have been discussing the weather. But to Martin Ainsworth it was the beginning of a nightmare journey from Munich to Istanbul.

They had picked Martin for the job. They had planned everything. They had made it all very simple. But they hadn’t counted on everything going wrong …

‘If I Should Die is a page turner thriller with great characters and literally heart-stopping suspense – I loved it!’ Mary Higgins Clark

In cities all over the USA people whose lives have just been saved by a medical miracle are dying mysterious and violent deaths. Chicago policeman Joe Duvall realises his sister’s life may be at risk, and a desperate race against time begins.

‘An exciting and compelling piece of storytelling. Fast moving and full of suspense’ Publishing News

Why, on a wet and stormy night, did the old and very ill novelist Dan Braile decide to take a walk?
When he doesn’t come back his family are at first reluctant to call the police, despite the fact that he had claimed someone was trying to poison him. But they become steadily more tense as the evidence points towards a horrifying conclusion – and under the strain their united front begins to crack . . .

‘A consummate professional in clever plotting, characterisation and atmosphere’ Washington Post

Professor Alistair Dirke thought himself a reasonable man – he could scarcely acknowledge the suspicion that was beginning to grow in his mind every time he saw his wife Rose with Paul Eckleston . . . Paul seemed to be there very often these days.

Yet soon a more terrible suspicion was to grow and spread through the little community of Rollway, where the Dirkes had lived in peace with their neighbours. A valuable collection of coins goes missing and then a man is murdered.

Retired Andrew Basnett returns to Knotlington, where he once worked as an assistant lecturer, to an old friend who needs some advice. Two years earlier a member of the Fine Arts Department was murdered. Yet the killer had been caught and sentenced, so why should Andrew’s friend need help?
Many believed Stephen Sharland, who is serving a life sentence for the murder, was innocent. But before Andrew even begins making enquiries, there is another murder, and Andrew finds him in a complex web of emotion, struggling to sift truth from lies.

Roberta Ellison lives in Madeira where she had settled with her late husband after being crippled in a motor accident. Domestic help was easy to come by and the climate was ideal.

Then her sister Camilla comes to the island to help her to find a companion, bringing problems of her own with her, problems that at first seem trivial, but that soon involve the sisters in a violent and mystifying spiral of events. As more newcomers appear, so Camilla’s history begins to unfold and it emerges that all is not as it seems . . . and then murder strikes.

The ad in the Daily Telegraph read: ‘Wanted: a man of resource and courage to act as companion’.

Ex-con Macbeth Bain must stay on the right side of the law, and this job seems like the perfect opportunity for him to prove that he can. A woman needs protection from a jealous husband – the only thing is, this husband has been dead for seven months. His phone calls, however, continue unabated, or so the widow maintains. Crazy? Bain doesn’t think so. But it’s not until his third day on the job that the real trouble starts. And when the noose begins to tighten, Bain knows he must break out soon or it will be too late.

Newly extradited to England from California on charges of fraud, Philip Page faces a long prison sentence. The police are already convinced of his guilt, having been furnished with apparently watertight evidence by an anonymous informant, but Page believes he has been framed.

Released on bail, he sets about unmasking the mystery witness. When maverick investigator John Raven is called by one of the suspects, Page and Raven soon realise they want the same thing. So begins a gripping race against time to expose the source of the evidence and clear Page’s name.

Terminally ill Polish refugee Henryk Lamprecht, a decoder for British Security, has a score to settle with the Russian who killed his wife and daughter. As he is close to death, he has no time to lose when an opportunity he has been waiting for turns up.
But now, through a chance meeting with his old friend Zaleski, ex-cop John Raven is involved, and so is Lamprecht’s English sweetheart. And so the game of cat-and-mouse begins . . .

‘Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller’ Guardian

It is extremely bad luck for Sarah Atkins that she is very slightly over the limit when she knocks down and kills a man in a patch of fog. It is even worse luck that the man is Jonathan Cool, a well-known pop star.

There are three witnesses: Cool’s girlfriend, Sarah’s husband and Sarah, whose fate will turn on their testimony. But as the evidence unfolds, it begins to appear that this may not have been a run-of-the-mill accident, and it is down to her solicitor, Rosa Epton, to unravel the truth.

William Clarence Verity is a sergeant in Scotland Yard’s ‘Private Clothes Detail’. His beat is the underworld of Victorian London – as seething maze of alleys and bordellos, peopled with sneak thieves, thugs, murderers and their doxies.

From far-off Bengal there comes to Verity a tantalising hint of major crime in the making. Despite his superiors’ instructions, Verity determines to run the plotters down. And there begins a battle between Verity’s sturdy resolve and the devilish cunning of his unseen adversary: Lieutenant Verney Dacre, retired officer of cavalry, woman-beater and gentleman cracksman.

The stakes are Verity’s career – indeed his freedom – and half a ton of bullion.

Clay Burden married his wife Rhonda because he was tired of being on his own. Val had walked out on him – and if he couldn’t have Val, maybe marriage might make him forget her. Six years later, working in Paradise City, Clay meets Val again. Married to the sinister Henry Vidal, she’s changed: still beautiful and passionate, still compelling, but tense and nervous and driven by odd fears and anxieties.

When Clay leaves his job and joins the Vidal empire, what begins as a sneaking feeling of unease hardens into stone cold certainty. Val must be released from the hypnotic influence exerted over her by her husband – even if Clay has to murder to set her free …

Joey Luck and his daughter Cindy are small-time criminals going nowhere fast, until they join forces with Vin Pinna, a hardened criminal on the run from Miami.

They soon begin to set their sights higher and turn their hands to kidnapping. But their hostage, ex-movie star Don Elliot, seems to have different ideas. When he wants in they form a ‘quartet in crime’, and this time the stakes are higher still – eight Russian stamps worth a million dollars.

‘Realistic and suspenseful far beyond his average’ Observer

Mark Girland’s problems begin when a beautiful blonde is found lying on a dark deserted quai in Paris – the initials of the top Chinese atomic scientist tattooed on her upper thigh.

The girl is suffering from acute amnesia. Girland, desperate for money, is ordered by the CIA to get any information he can – by posing as her husband.

But the appeal of the mission begins to wear thin when Girland discovers he has involved himself in a life and death race to extract vital atomic secrets from the scientist’s beautiful mistress.