Raven Black
Ann Cleeves
It is a cold January morning and Shetland lies buried beneath a deep layer of snow. Trudging home, Fran Hunter’s eye is drawn to a vivid splash of...
Death at the Wedding Feast
Deryn Lake
Apothecary John Rawlings has travelled to Devon to be by the side of his mistress, Elizabeth di Lorenzi, who is due to give birth to their child. Leaving...
The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries
Maxim Jakubowski
Leading crime critic Maxim Jakubowski presents this year's must-have collection of British crime fiction. This latest volume of the acclaimed annual collection presents over 20 short stories of...
One Good Turn
Kate Atkinson
It is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident - an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army,...
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
Kate Summerscale
It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant, detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family...
The Redeemer
Jo Nesbo
bookbite, booktrust, read, reading, write, writing, book, booklist, book of the month, book club, over 60, older, retired
The Complaints
Ian Rankin
Nobody likes The Complaints - they're the cops who investigate other cops. Complaints and Conduct Department, to give them their full title, but known colloquially as 'the Dark...
The Pelican Brief
John Grisham
Two Supreme Court Justices are dead. Their murders remain unsolved. Darby Shaw, a brilliant and beautiful New Orleans legal student, draws up a speculative legal brief which links...
Brighton Rock
Graham Greene
A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Seventeen-year-old Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared...
Hercule Poirot's Christmas
Agatha Christie
It is Christmas Eve. The Lee family reunion is shattered by a deafening crash of furniture, followed by a high-pitched wailing scream. Upstairs, the tyrannical Simeon Lee lies...
Forget me not
Mandasue Heller
Manchester's Westy Lane is the hunting ground for a killer who leaves a tiny blue flower in the torn body of each victim after he kills her. Lisa...
The Night Calls
David Pirie
While a young medical student at Edinburgh, Arthur Conan Doyle famously studied under the remarkable Dr Joseph Bell, who was a pioneer in criminal investigation. The Night Calls...
Dancing With The Captain
Jack Dunnill
Are all cruises like this? It was a whole new world to award-winning tabloid reporter Alan Hale. He was more accustomed to hard news assignments such as flying...
The Big Sleep
A Philip Marlowe Mystery
Raymond Chandler
Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants...
Along Came a Spider
James Patterson
He had always wanted to be famous. When he kidnapped two well-known rich kids, it was headline news. Then one of them was found - dead - and...
The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Alexander McCall Smith
Wayward daughters. Missing Husbands. Philandering partners. Curious conmen. If you've got a problem, and no one else can help you, then pay a visit to Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's...
A Pocket Full of Rye
Agatha Christie
BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation starring June Whitfield as the deceptively mild spinster sleuth. A Pocket Full of Rye With only one bizarre clue to the agonizing death...
A Taste for Death
PD James
Two men lie in a welter of blood in the vestry of St Matthew's Church, Paddington, their throats brutally slashed. One is Sir Paul Berowne, a baronet and...
The Killer Inside Me
Jim Thompson
Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a pillar of the community in his small Texas town, patient and thoughtful. Some people think he's a little slow and boring but...
Roseanna
The Martin Beck Series
Maj Sjowal and Per Wahloo
Perennial launch the classic Martin Beck detective series from the 1960s -- the novels that have inspired all crime fiction written ever since. Widely recognised as the greatest...
Wash this Blood Clean from my Hand
Fred Vargas
Between 1943 and 2003 nine people have been stabbed to death with a most unusual weapon: a trident. In each case, arrests were made, suspects confessed their crimes...
Strangers on a Train
Patricia Highsmith
The psychologists would call it folie à deux... 'Bruno slammed his palms together. 'Hey! Cheeses, what an idea! I kill your wife and you kill my father! We...
American Tabloid
James Ellroy
Set in America in 1958, this is a story of three men beneath the glossy surface of power, allied to the makers and shakers of the era. As...
Tail of the Blue Bird
Nii Ayikwei Parkes
Tail of the Blue Bird is a beautifully written fable... Parkes' novel hinges on a clash between new and old. In this case, however, it's not wealth and...
Postmortem
Patricia Cornwell
A serial killer is on the loose in Richmond, Virginia. Three women have died, brutalised and strangled in their own bedroom. There is no pattern: the killer appears...
Perfume
Patrick Suskind
Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets of Paris as a child, but grows up to discover he has an...
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson
Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her...
Black and Blue
Ian Rankin
Rebus is juggling four cases trying to nail one killer - who might just lead back to the infamous Bible John. And he's doing it under the scrutiny...
Fever of the Bone
Val McDermid
'You should have been a detective. If there's one thing the last year has proved, it's how good you are at finding things out. Not simple things. Hard...
The Monster in the Box
Ruth Rendell
He had never told anyone. The strange relationship, if it could be called that, had gone on for years, decades, and he had never breathed a word about...
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