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How do you catch a killer when the murder goes unnoticed?
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

The victim was certainly deserving of death, but not the hard, cruel death he found. No one deserved that . . .

At first, the killer goes unsuspected. Someone else would pay the price for the crime – an innocent woman would pay and the murderer was willing to arrange other, more ‘accidental’ deaths to ensure it . . . until solicitor-detective Arthur Crook steps in.

In one of his most baffling cases, Crook only has two guiding principles: his client is always innocent and, come hell or high water, he always gets his man.

D.A. Doug Selby was in trouble again. An enticing redhead had been murdered; the county newspaper, The Blade, was after his neck; he had an unsolved jewellery theft on his hands and that sly, unscrupulous attorney A.B. Carr was running circles around him.

Selby knew that somehow or other all four of his troubles were tied up in one explosive bundle. But how could he open the bundle … without setting off more murder?

The murdered man had been shot – twice. Either bullet could have caused the death.

D.A. Doug Selby had both the bullets and one of the guns. On that gun were the fingerprints of Pete Ribber, a known criminal. The other bullet was from a different – and missing – gun.

Which bullet had caused the death? That was the D.A.’s problem. Because there’s no law against firing a bullet into a corpse …

When a lone runner is found dead on Miami Beach’s North Shore, Detective Sam Becket’s first concern is for his adopted daughter, Cathy, a student at Trent University. Cathy is also a runner, and she’s vulnerable.

Sam fears for the stability of his close-knit family, and especially for his wife Grace, blissfully pregnant after repeated miscarriages. As Sam and his team start to investigate, a connection emerges with another homicide on Pompano Beach, and others are drawn into the web: a troubled young boy being treated by Grace for his drug problem and Kerry Flanagan, a charismatic runner to whom Cathy feels powerfully drawn …

Alex Levin hasn’t met anyone as passionate about cleaning as Frankie Barnes. She’s found the perfect career to suit her hygiene obsession. But unbeknown to her new employer, Frankie suffers from other compulsions and the greatest is the compulsion to have.

All Frankie wants is a home as lovely as the ones she cleans. She’ll do anything to achieve her aim. But her first attempt has gone horribly wrong, and her dream house loses its shine when she thinks about the two bodies rotting in the cellar. Next time Frankie intends to be more careful – and Alex’s home is the prettiest cottage Frankie’s ever laid eyes on …

Though they live fulfilling, independent lives in three different countries, Olivia Segal, Jamie Arias and Annie Aldrich Thomas remain bound to each other by a past tragedy – and by their pact always to be there for each other at times of great need.

In a London vault lies a story waiting to be read; a tale of evil more than fifty years old, a link with the past and a present danger more terrifying than anything the friends could have dreamed up in their wildest nightmares.

Six men have failed to appear in a West End court, so it’s time for Scotland Yard to make a few undercover enquiries. They enlist the help of Detective-Constable Cordari, who leads them to a mysterious organisation smuggling criminals out of the country.

There ensues a relentless chase that moves to Algeria and back to London. In the meantime, Cordari has vanished in the same horribly mysterious way as others before him.

‘A plot that grows to grim and sinister proportions. An ingenious story with plenty of excitement’ Manchester Evening News

‘The Lying voices’ were the clocks that filled the room where Arnold Thaine was shot dead. They ticked in a hundred different rhythms but every single one was wrong. So the fact that a bullet had stopped one of them gave no clue to the time of his murder . . .

On the day of Thaine’s death, Justin Emery was visiting his old friend Grace DeLong, who had been to visit Thaine that morning. But who was the woman in the brown mackintosh who had entered Thaine’s study? Who were the other two visitors? And was anything to be learned from the broken clock?

Andrew Basnett, retired botany professor, accompanies an old friend, whose sister has received a blackmail letter, to her home in a Berkshire village. The letter had obviously been put in the wrong envelope, but it seems to indicate that a murder has been committed in Lindleham, where, strangely, several people are missing.

But as Andrew quietly investigates the neighbours, the realisation dawns that his friends, too, have something to hide.

In Queens, in the middle of a brightly lit street, a woman is savagely stabbed to death. The victim, Anna Grace, was a nurse devoted to helping others. But no one tries to help her on the last night of her life, even as she screams.

Homicide cop Miranda Torres vows to bring the killer to justice. Then a series of mob hits in the city takes the case in an astonishing new direction. And when Miranda discovers why Anna was murdered, she must catch a killer who will soon hold her life in his hands.

A young couple, the Trents, arrive on the lonely islet of Ruffa – where a large house has been lent to them for part of their honeymoon – and stumble upon mystery.

Gold is being exported from Ruffa in quantity. Where does it come from? From the Armada wreck in the bay? Or from some old Norseman’s hoard like the Traprain Law treasure. Or has the other tenant discovered the secret of making gold? The Trents are set on a surprising course to find out …

‘Mr J. J. Connington is a name revered by all specialists on detective fiction’ Spectator

When Oswald F. Preston is shot dead on the 10.35 local train from Horston, two obvious suspects are immediately in the frame: his wife’s lover and an employer with a grudge. With red herrings a-plenty, and a number of other contenders for murderer, including a young heiress, Superintendant Ross has his work cut out for him.

Scott and Usher both need money, and they need it badly. One to save his farm, the other his future. Usher is an experienced criminal and housebreaker, but Scott is a rookie – he’s desperate for cash, but petrified of the implications that his actions might have.

To make enough money for their purposes, the pair must commit at least two burglaries – but when things go wrong they discover themselves capable of a degree of violence and level of treachery that lead to a climax of nightmarish proportions.

A chilling Gothic tale of warped passion and bizarre murder by the master of the historical whodunit.

Two women: one a vile old bawd, dead, it seemed, of fright; the other, Peg, a headstrong, ravishing young heiress. Their lives are linked by a mysterious portrait and a child’s nursery rhyme – a rhyme that spells disgrace and death for the lusty young Peg unless her unwilling lover can trace the connection.

‘No one is so consistently successful as Carr’ New York Times Book Review

‘Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller’ Guardian

Every thief dreams of committing the perfect crime. Cameron, Thorne and Gun are convinced that the jewel robbery they have planned cannot possibly go wrong, but jealousy mistrust and fear doom the enterprise from the start.

One of them dies a slow, hideous death; the other two find they have walked into hell. Soon, a beautiful woman and two desperate men find themselves trapped by their own actions. And when the thread of tension snaps they learn that death can indeed be a friend.

For the police it was an open and shut case: Stephen Lumley was guilty of taking part in the robbery at his uncle’s jewellery shop. All the evidence was against him – he was unemployed and in debt, he’d made threats in the past against his uncle, Bernard Hammond, and he’d tried to escape when the other thieves fled the scene.

Yet Lumley maintains his innocence, and the only person who believes him – apart from his wife – is his lawyer, the intuitive Rosa Epton. Rosa’s efforts to learn the truth are frustrated by the elusiveness of a possible lead, so Lumley must stand trial at the Old Bailey. Undeterred, Rosa carries on her private enquiries with little success, until, that is, her lead turns up – dead.

Deepwood Grange is no longer what it was in the thirties: the beautiful old house has been converted into luxury apartments, and the original family is long gone. But on a rare visit to her godmother, solicitor Rosa Epton finds herself quite entertained by the eccentric residents of the other flats. Until, that is, one of them turns up dead in the chimney of an empty apartment, and her godmother becomes a prime suspect.

Then her godmother disappears, and Rosa’s involvement becomes even more personal …

When Karl Rainer Andor came to Berlin for the last time it was sacrifice, not victory, that was uppermost in his mind. He intended to use the plutonium bomb he had elaborately planted to effect the reunification of Germany, but he didn’t expect to survive.

The ‘allied’ powers are concerned as much with scoring off each other as with finding the bomb – or with seducing or frightening Andor into telling them where it is. And eventually they are faced with the impossible task of evacuating the historic capital of Germany.

Mark Girland, good-for-nothing secret agent with a distinct weakness for money and women, finds himself in Prague for his latest adventure. But events in the Communist country prove all too much for Girland as he comes face-to-face with a sinister world of deception, fraud and corruption.

‘The same compulsive readability and sheer hard story-telling as in every other’ Sheffield Telegraph

For years Panicking Ralph Ember and Mansel Shale have run profitable drugs empires in peaceful cooperation with each other – and Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles turns a blind-eye to their trade as long as it keeps violence off the streets. But this happy arrangement is threatened by foreign dealers moving in and offering punters not just drugs, but exploited girls from Eastern Europe.

These invaders have no respect for the old way of managing things and soon bloody gang warfare breaks out in a deadly scramble for territory.

‘Another dodgy gavotte by the master of the revels . . . brilliant’ Literary Review

For years Colin Harpur’s dubious boss, Assistant Chief Constable Desmond Iles, ran an ‘arrangement’ with Mansel Shale and Panicking Ralph Ember, owner of the Monty Club: Iles would protect their drug businesses if they ensured peace on the streets.

But when a small-time crook’s house is firebombed and he and his daughter are both killed the pact is knocked sideways and gang war erupts. With the relaxation of drugs law legislation, Shale and Ember have serious competition. Their profits slide and an all-out battle for survival begins.

‘Most other British Police writers are foam rubber truncheons to James’ iron riot baton’ Time Out

Eleri ap Vaughan, Keith Vine’s best dealer, has turned to other drugs wholesalers for her supplies. Now she has to die. For the threat of invasion by rival syndicates cannot be ignored, particularly as an elegantly dressed spy from London, nicknamed Lovely Mover, is in the area. Eleri’s death must serve as a warning to others to stay loyal.

It’s at times like these that Vine’s new partner, Detective Chief Inspector Colin Harpur, will prove invaluable – for example, in sweeping the murder scene for incriminating evidence. Harpur, however, is playing a dangerous game, and he now finds himself in the precarious position of covering up a murder and investigating it.

‘There is nothing else quite like this series…all delivered in a ferociously poetic voice that is uniquely Bill James’ The Times

The fifth title in the popular Harpur and Iles series.

Sarah Iles’ latest young lover, Ian Aston, and the seedy gangland club he frequents both possess the intense attraction of the forbidden. When one night at the Monty they witness a fatal knifing, they unwittingly learn far too much for their own good of a deadly plot that could, if successfully executed, rearrange the city’s criminal power structure.

Immediately, the unfaithful wife and petty criminal become targets of both police and underworld observation. In Come Clean Bill James once again explores that no-man’s-land of law enforcement, where human concern and naked expediency stand perennially at odds with each other.

Classic police procedural by a ‘born storyteller’ (Sunday Times), who combined natural flair with his experience in the police to truly authentic effect.

Hell is a City is the first of Maurice Procter’s Inspector Martineau series and was made into taut, fast-paced film in 1959 by Hammer Studios, set against the grimy back streets and rain-streaked bright lights of Manchester.

When hardened criminal Don Starling escapes from jail, killing a prison guard in the process, Inspector Philip Martineau knows he will stop at nothing to make good his escape. The two men have known each other since childhood, and Starling blames Martineau for his incarceration a decade earlier. As the story hurtles to its conclusion, the two men meet in a final, violent confrontation.