Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Police Procedurals

You know Johnny Hawke. Hard-bitten LAPD homicide detective. Always in trouble with his captain, always losing partners, but always battling for the truth, whatever it takes. You know Penny Coyne. The little old lady who has solved multiple murders in her otherwise sleepy village, despite bumbling local police. A razor-sharp mind in a Sunday best hat. Against all the odds, against the usual story, their worlds are about to collide. It starts with a dead writer and a mysterious wedding invitation.

The odd couple of detection, the brilliant but cranky Arthur Bryant and John May of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit, return in a tense, atmospheric new thriller that keeps you guessing right to the end. This time the detectives are up against a series of bizarre murders that defy human understanding, and a killer no human hand may be able to stop.

When a teenage joyrider crashes a stolen car and ends up in a coma, a routine DNA test could be the key to unlocking the mystery of a 20-year-old murder inquiry. Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie is an expert at solving the unsolvable. With each cold case closed, justice is served. So, finding the answer should be straightforward, but it's as twisted as the DNA helix itself.

Young girls are disappearing around the country, and there is nothing to connect them to one another. Dr Tony Hill sets his team an exercise: they are given the details and asked to discover links between the cases. Only one officer comes up with a theory that is ridiculed...until one of their own is murdered. For Tony Hill the murder becomes a matter for personal revenge, and, joined by colleague Carol Jordan, he embarks on a game where hunter and hunted can all too easily be reversed.

When NYPD detective Callum Doyle’s partner is murdered, and then his replacement is also brutally killed, suspicion falls on Doyle himself. Then he receives an anonymous message: This is just the beginning. Anyone he gets close to will die - and that includes his family. Desperate to find out who is responsible, but with his every move putting others in danger, Doyle has to ask himself: how low would he sink in order to get his life back?

A quiet night on a country road. The stillness shattered by a car engulfed in flames, and a burned body discovered in the driver's seat. As the investigation unfolds, DCI Carol Jordan and psychological profiler. Tony Hill quickly realise that this is more than just a tragic accident. And so begins the hunt for a truly terrifying killer, someone who believes he is invisible, untraceable and untouchable.

A twisted killer targeting psychologists has left a grisly trail across Europe. Dr Tony Hill, expert at mapping the minds of murderers, is reluctant to get involved. But then the next victim is much closer to home....Meanwhile his former partner, DCI Carol Jordan, is working undercover in Berlin on a dangerous operation to trap a millionaire trafficker. When the game turns nasty, Tony is the only person she can call on for help.

In August 1992 a young mother and her two small sons were brutally murdered in the woods behind their home. Her neighbour, Andrew Gyle, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment. Now, 23 years later, a macabre discovery throws new light on the case. Could there have been a shocking miscarriage of justice?

When psychological profiler Tony Hill comes across a series of suicides among women tormented by vicious online predators, he begins to wonder if there is more to these tragedies than meets the eye. Could it be murder? But what kind of serial killer wants his crimes to stay hidden? Tony and DCI Carol Jordan begin the hunt for the most dangerous and terrifying kind of killer - someone who has nothing to fear and nothing to lose.

Detective Inspector Vincent Ruiz is lucky to be alive. A bullet in the leg, another through the hand, he is discovered clinging to a buoy in the River Thames, losing blood and consciousness fast. It takes six days for him to come out of his coma, and when he does, his nightmare is only just beginning. Because Vincent has no recollection of what happened, and nobody believes him.

Elvie McCulloch's sister, Sophie, has been missing for 57 days. She went out for a run - and never came home. Several young women in the area have disappeared in similar circumstances, and Elvie's family fears the worst. Teaming up with retired detective Billy Hopkirk, Elvie determines to find out the truth. But as the pair alternately collaborate with and infuriate investigating police detectives Anderson and Costello, they find themselves up against a terrifying enemy. Someone they call The Night Hunter.

East Berlin, 1975: When Oberleutnant Karin Müller is called to investigate a girl's body at the foot of the wall, she realises this is a death like no other. It seems the girl was trying to escape - but from the West. The Stasi want her to discover the identity of the girl but assure Müller the case is otherwise closed. This is not a regime that tolerates a curious mind, and Müller doesn't realise that the trail she's following will lead her dangerously close to home.

Guilty. One word on a beggar’s cardboard sign. Now, he is dead; stabbed in a wintry Copenhagen street, the second homeless victim in as many weeks. Dagbladet reporter Jensen, stumbling across the body on her way to work, calls her ex lover DI Henrik Jungersen. As, inevitably, old passions are rekindled, so are old regrets, and that is just the start of Jensen’s troubles. When a third body turns up, it seems certain that a serial killer is on the loose. With her teenage apprentice, Gustav, Jensen soon finds herself putting everything on the line to discover exactly who is guilty.

Stephen Bryan, a gay academic, is found brutally murdered in his bathroom. Will Grayson and Helen Walker, police detectives investigating the case, at first assume that his death is the result of an ill-judged sexual encounter. But doubts are soon raised. Bryan's laptop has gone missing - could the murder be connected to a biography he was writing on the life and mysterious death of fifties screen legend, Stella Leonard?

As dawn breaks on a snowy February morning, a refrigerated lorry is found parked in the heart of London's Chinatown. Inside, 12 women, apparently illegal immigrants, are dead from hypothermia. But in the cab, DC Max Wolfe finds 13 passports. Twelve dead women. Twelve passports. The hunt for the missing woman will take Max Wolfe into the dark heart of the world of human smuggling, mass migration and 21st-century slave markets.

When a young woman is found dead in a peat bog near the banks of the river Tiber, Teresa Lupo, a maverick pathologist, thinks she is the victim of an ancient pagan ritual. Inspector Leo Falcone, however, knows this case is recent history and the horror is still very much alive.

An elderly woman is found dead, her death peaceful but unexpected. Days later, a middle aged former television journalist dies in a similar manner. Both deaths prove to be murder, but with no obvious links between the two victims. When a former neurologist is also found murdered, it appears that DCI Kenny Murrain is dealing with a random multiple killer.

The Thames is London's most important yet neglected artery. When a young woman is found chained to a post in the tide, no one can understand how she came to be drowned there. That's only part of the problem. Bryant's deteriorating condition prevents him from handling the case. To make matters worse, May makes a fatal error of judgment that knocks him out of action.

In an adventure that's as twisting as the river, will there be anything left of the Peculiar Crimes Unit when it's over?

Detective Nic Costa faces his hardest case yet. When the sins of the past echo the crimes of the present... When British academic Malise Gabriel falls to his death from a Rome apartment, detective Nic Costa suspects more than a simple accident. Nic is sure Malise's family are hiding vital information. As the investigation deepens, Rome’s seedy side is uncovered, revealing a web of deceit, treachery and corruption. The key to the truth lies with the Gabriels.

The unthinkable has happened at London's Peculiar Crimes Unit. In the depths of winter, a member of staff has been found murdered, and everyone who works there is suddenly a suspect. But Arthur Bryant and John May, the eccentric elderly detectives who run London's strangest crime division, aren't on hand to solve the crime. They've ventured into the heart of the English countryside, only to become stranded on a desolate snowbound section of road.