Showing results for "The Group" in Crime Fiction

Dexter Morgan isn't exactly the kind of man you'd bring home to your mum. At heart he's the perfect gentleman: He has a shy girlfriend and seems to lead a quiet, normal life bordering on the mundane. Despite the fact that he can't stand the sight of blood, he works as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police. But Dexter also has a secret hobby: He is an accomplished serial killer. So far he's killed 36 people and has never been caught because he knows exactly how to hide the evidence.

Kirby Cornell needs a break from everything; most of all, her slobbish housemates and the terrible thing they all did. Luckily, that hasn’t caught up with her just yet. Until a new message on their old group chat pops up: Everyone in the group chat will die. It’s the first text her ex-flatmate and social-media sleuth Esme has sent for ages, but that’s not the really weird thing. The really weird thing is, Esme died twelve months ago…

When editor Susan Ryeland is given the tattered manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has little idea it will change her life. She's worked with the revered crime writer for years, and his detective, Atticus Pund, is renowned for solving crimes in the sleepy English villages of the 1950s. As Susan knows only too well, vintage crime sells handsomely. It's just a shame that it means dealing with an author like Alan Conway.... But Conway's latest tale of murder at Pye Hall is not quite what it seems.

In the fifth of his best-selling series Ben Aaronovitch takes Peter Grant out of whatever comfort zone he might have found and takes him out of London - to a small village in Herefordshire where the local police are reluctant to admit that there might be a supernatural element to the disappearance of some local children. But while you can take the London copper out of London you can't take the London out of the copper. Travelling west with Beverley Brook, Peter soon finds himself caught up in a deep mystery and having to tackle local cops and local gods. And what's more all the shops are closed by 4pm....

Peter Grant is learning magic fast. And it’s just as well - he's already had run-ins with the deadly supernatural children of the Thames and a terrifying killer in Soho. Progression in the police force is less easy, especially when you work in a department of two. A department that doesn't even officially exist. A department that if you did describe it to most people would get you laughed at.

A compelling thriller introducing a driven young detective trying to prove herself in the LAPD. Renée Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none as each morning she turns her cases over to day shift detectives. A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor.

Ben Aaronovitch has stormed the best-seller list with his superb London crime series - a unique blend of police procedural; loving detail about the greatest character of all, London; and a dash of the supernatural. A mutilated body in Crawley. Another killer on the loose. The prime suspect is one Robert Weil: an associate of the twisted magician known as the Faceless Man? Or just a common or garden serial killer? Before PC Peter Grant can get his head round the case, a town planner going under a tube train and a stolen grimoire are adding to his caseload.

I was my dad's vinyl-wallah: I changed his records while he lounged around, and that's how I know my Argo from my Tempo. And it's why, when Dr Walid called me to the morgue to listen to a corpse, I recognised the tune it was playing. Something violently supernatural had happened to the victim, strong enough to leave its imprint like a wax cylinder recording.

Mickey Haller is a Lincoln lawyer, a criminal defence attorney who operates out of the back of his car, a Lincoln, taking whatever cases the system throws in his path. He's been in the business a long time, and he knows just how to work it. When a Beverly Hills rich boy is arrested for brutally beating a woman, Haller has his first high-paying client in years. The evidence mounts on the defence's side, and Haller might even be in the rare position of defending a client who is actually innocent.

'And in Edinburgh of all places. I mean, you never think of that sort of thing happening in Edinburgh, do you...?' 'That sort of thing' is the brutal abduction and murder of two young girls. And now a third is missing, presumably gone to the same sad end. Detective Sergeant John Rebus, smoking and drinking too much, his own young daughter spirited away south by his disenchanted wife, is one of many policemen hunting the killer.

At the end of a long, dark night Detectives Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch cross paths for the very first time. Detective Renée Ballard is working the graveyard shift again and returns to Hollywood Station in the early hours only to find that an older man has snuck in and is rifling through old file cabinets. The intruder is none other than legendary LAPD detective Harry Bosch, working a cold case that has gotten under his skin. Ballard kicks him out, but eventually Bosch persuades her to help, and she relents.

Sherlock Holmes is dead. Days after Holmes and his arch-enemy Moriarty fall to their doom at the Reichenbach Falls, Pinkerton agent Frederick Chase arrives in Europe from New York. The death of Moriarty has created a poisonous vacuum which has been swiftly filled by a fiendish new criminal mastermind who has risen to take his place.

A junkie lies dead in an Edinburgh squat, spreadeagled, cross-like on the floor, between two burned-down candles, a five-pointed star daubed on the wall above. Just another dead addict - until John Rebus begins to chip away at the indifference, treachery, deceit and sleaze that lurks behind the facade of the Edinburgh familiar to tourists.

There's something going bump on the Metropolitan line, and Sergeant Jaget Kumar knows exactly whom to call. It's PC Peter Grant's specialty.... Only it's more than going 'bump'. Traumatised travellers have been reporting strange encounters on their morning commute, with strangely dressed people trying to deliver an urgent message. Stranger still, despite calling the police themselves, within a few minutes the commuters have already forgotten the encounter - making the follow-up interviews rather difficult.

In 1993 Harry Bosch was assigned the case of a missing person, Marie Gesto. The young woman was never found - dead or alive - and the case has haunted Bosch ever since. Thirteen years later Bosch is in the Open Unsolved Unit when he gets a call from the DA's office. A man accused of two killings is willing to confess to several other murders in a deal to avoid the death penalty. One of his victims, he says, is Marie Gesto.

Six months ago Harry Bosch left the LAPD before they could fire him and then hired maverick defense attorney Mickey Haller to sue the department for forcing him out. Although it wasn't the way he wanted to go, Harry has to admit that being out of the game has its benefits. Until Mickey asks him to help on one of his cases, and suddenly Harry is back where he belongs, right in the centre of a particularly puzzling murder mystery.

Gregor Jack, MP, well-liked, young, married to the fiery Elizabeth - to the outside world a very public success story. But Jack's carefully nurtured career plans take a tumble after a 'mistake' during a police raid on a notorious Edinburgh brothel. Then Elizabeth disappears, a couple of bodies float into view where they shouldn't, and a lunatic speaks from his asylum...

Terry McCaleb's enforced quiet lifestyle on the island of Catalina is a far cry from the hectic excitement of his former role as an FBI profiler. However when small-time criminal Edward Gunn is found dead, McCaleb becomes embroiled in a disturbing and complex case leading him to cross the path of Harry Bosch. This infamous detective has always teetered on the brink of darkness in order to get inside the head of the killer. Is it possible he has stepped across that finely drawn line and embraced darkness?

Mickey Haller gets the text, "Call me ASAP - 187," and the California penal code for murder immediately gets his attention. Murder cases have the highest stakes and the biggest paydays, and they always mean Haller has to be at the top of his game. When Mickey learns that the victim was his own former client, a prostitute he thought he had rescued and put on the straight and narrow path, he knows he is on the hook for this one. He soon finds out that she was back in LA and back in the life. Far from saving her, Mickey may have been the one who put her in danger.

When down-at-heel lawyer Mickey Haller gets the news that his old colleague Jerry Vincent has died, he also gets an unexpected windfall. Jerry had left instructions that Mickey should inherit all of his clients - putting Mickey's stalled career back on track at a stroke. Not only that, but Vincent was about to go to bat for Walter Elliot, the Hollywood mogul accused of brutally slaying his wife and her lover, in a trial that promises big fees and an even bigger place in the media spotlight.