When it comes to the woman he loves, D.C. Dangerous Davies knows how to push the boat out: a walk through Kensal Green Cemetery, a meat pie in a greasy spoon and a weekend away complete with flannel pyjamas. Dangerous has two things on his mind: Jemma Duval, the beautiful, black, hymn-singing social worker and 'Lofty' Brock, the harmless old eccentric who drowned in the canal. To prove that Lofty's death was no accident, Dangerous sets out to do some undercover work on his own. He soon discovers something sinister is going on: something that requires intuition, dedication, brilliant deduction - and a timely blow with a blunt instrument.
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Percey Clay, one of America's foremost pilots and the uncompromising owner of a struggling charter flight service, was in the wrong place at the wrong time - she's now the target of the Coffin Dancer. Brilliant quadriplegic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme knows the killer only too well. he's a man who's raised murder to a form of high art and his weapons are knowledge of human nature. Rhyme must use his insight into the criminal mind to combat this hitman's genius.
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In Peak Forest, Derbyshire, a curious and anachronistic privilege still existed - a seventeenth century chapel outside the jurisdiction of bishops, where the priest had the right to solemnise marriage according to a set of rather liberal rules. In 1758, a young eloping couple were murdered on their way to Peak Forest. Two hundred years later, Julie Wimpole comes as a stranger to the village of Peak Low and everyone believes she is there to qualify for the fifteen days of residency needed in order to marry. But some of the villagers seem to know more about her than they like to admit - and she seems to know a lot about them. What did Julie know about another girl who was murdered in 1940 as she waited for residency qualification to marry?
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Lew Archer is hired to find a stolen, valuable painting by Richard Chantry, who disappeared mysteriously in 1950 from his home. Archer deftly negotiates the web of dealers and collectors until he is drawn into family complications, masked brutalities and old secrets stretching back fifty years, when money talked - or bought silence... -
At Risk: Patricia Cornwell
$12.00A Massachusetts state investigator is called home from Tennessee, where he's completing a course at the National Forensic Academy. His boss, the district attorney - an attractive but hard-charging woman - is intending to run for governor and as a showcase she's planning to use a new crime initiative, At Risk. Its motto: 'Any Crime, Any Time. She's also looking to employ some cutting-edge DNA technology and she thinks she's found a 20-year old murder - in Tennessee. Solving the case would make them all look pretty good - right? Her investigator is not so sure - not sure about anything to do with this woman, really - but before he can say anything, a shocking piece of violence intervenes, an act that shakes everyone's lives and the lives of those around them. It's not a random event - is it personal? Professional? Whatever it is, the implications are very bad indeed - and they're about to get worse.
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Scotland Street, in Edinburgh's Bohemian New Town, has more than its fair share of eccentrics and students. When Pat - on her second gap year and a source of worry to her parents - is accepted as a new tenant at number 44, she isn't sure how long she'll last. Her flatmate Bruce, a rugby-playing surveyor, is impossibly narcissistic, carelessly philandering and maddeningly handsome. Downstairs is gloriously pretentious Irene, whose precocious 5 year old is in therapy after setting fire to his father's copy of The Guardian. And then there is shrewd, intellectual Domenica MacDonald mysteriously employed but a sharp-eyed observer of the house's activities in her spare time...https://cosmiccauldronbooks.com.au/p/espresso-tales-alexander-mccall-smith/
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Nero Wolfe's first client in the case wasn't a troubled millionaire - it was Peter Drossos, a street urchin with scarcely enough to finance an orchid. But within a day he was dead - just like the next two people who came to Wolfe. And the case of the kidnapped woman with the earrings like golden spiders wasn't a joke anymore...
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When Martin Fox, champion Formula One racer has a near-fatal crash, he has a life-after-death experience as the doctors work to save his life. As he recuperates, Selena Porter waits for the return of his health and hopefully, his love. But Martin is now obsessed with the possibility of an afterlife. Karl Dorfman, an anaesthetist, is also investigating and experimenting in this field, but with two fatalities behind him he now has to experiment in private. Detective Sergeant William Schaeffer is trying to unravel a series of murders terrorising the back streets and sleazy bars and finds himself more and more involved with these two men and their odd pursuit.
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Chaos erupts when the Governor of Virginia orders that speed traps be installed on all streets and highways, and warns that motorists will be caught by monitoring aircraft flying overhead. But the eccentric inhabitants of Tangier, an island approximately 14 kilometres off the coast of Virginia in Chesapeake Bay, respond by threatening to secede and set up an independent state, claiming that their independence lies in the history of America's first settlers, those who set sail from England's Isle of Dogs in 1607. Judy Hammer, newly installed as the superintendent of Virginia State Police and Andy Brazil, state trooper and Hammer's right-hand confidante, are at their wit's end as they try to protect the public from the politicians - and vice versa.
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A rigid man of fifty leads a solitary, apparently respectable life, as clerk and bookkeeper for a small business and part-time rent collector for his landlord. He has rented a flat in a London suburb for twenty years because deep in its cellar, unbeknownst to anyone else, is a mannequin that he periodically "strangles" in order to satisfy his homicidal urges. The figure's location in the cellar, the darkness, the furtiveness, all are essential for his satisfaction. But his hardly-won balance is threatened when a young man, healthy in mind and body, a doctoral candidate in psychology, becomes a roomer in the house. The danger the older man senses from the moment the new tenant appears is horribly realized for him when the young man finds the mannequin and uses it as the figure in the bonfire at the Guy Fawkes Night celebration he has organized for the local children. The respectable fifty-year-old now must go back to the streets to find flesh more yielding than a mannequin's...
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A medieval crime mystery - and the detectives are the local prostitutes desperate to clear their names. Magdalene la Batarde is the madam of the Old Priory Guesthouse. She and her women are expected to engage in sinful delights, but murder isn't one of them - until Baldassare, the messenger, dies. Though he wasn't a regular client, Magdalene and the girls refuse to let his death go unavenged. Their motive isn't aren't completely altruistic - chances are if they don't find the killer, they'll be assumed guilty because they're whores. The bishop of Winchester, who was served by Baldassare for many years, orders handsome Sir Bellamy of Itchen to investigate. Bellamy is enchanted by Magdalene and while he doesn't believe she is a murderer, she is involved somehow and he's certain she's hiding something.
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On the night of the twelfth of June, ten year old Ted Lister failed to return home. His tortured body was found in a Sussex cornfield - the third such murder in twelve months. At Trenchard House, Kenneth Manifold, the new master has arrived to take the place of a staff member who has retired with a nervous breakdown. Not all the pupils were a threat to mental health - although one or two were rather special... -
When scheming millionaire Sigsbee Manderson's brains are blown out, the world lost nothing worth a single tear. Not one man mourned him. But one man is duty bound to find and arrest his killer. That man is Trent, successful artist, journalist and detective, renowned for his powers of deduction and able to see the significance of negligible facts. But even he could not foresee the importance of a woman sitting close to a sheer cliff edge, her eyes fixed on the smoke of a distant liner, and her face full of dreams...
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Undertow: Sydney Bauer
$10.00Following an alleged conversation between respected attorney Rayna Martin and teenager Christina Hayes during a boating trip at Cape Ann, Massachusetts, one of them is dead and the other one is arrested for murder. Boston lawyer David Cavanagh faces his toughest case ever when what appears to be a tragic but blameless accident turns into something else entirely. With the victim's father one of the most powerful politicians in the U.S. Senate and the Assistant D.A. prepared to put his personal ambition ahead of legal justice, David finds his most dangerous battle is taking place outside the courtroom. Lies, deception, blackmail, threats - and finally the precision of an assassin's bullet combine make a shocking finale.
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Antony Gillingham chooses Woodham for a holiday, because he likes the look of the station. Nearby is the Red House, the home of Mark Ablett, where his friend Bill Beverley is a guest at a house party. When Antony calls to see Bill, he finds the dead body of Mark's brother Robert, shot between the eyes. It looks like murder; and the host is nowhere to be found. Having served briefly as a valet, newspaper reporter, shop assistant and waiter, Antony's ready for a new profession: sleuthing. Every Sherlock Holmes must have a Dr. Watson - or in this case, his friend Bill. There's a suspect ready to hand and they set out to trap the possible killer.
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London, 1871. The rich man in his Bayswater villa, the poor man at his gate casing the place. For many, crime was the only way to get a start in life and ostentatious wealth was a temptation. In a time of an emergent police force and no telephones, a wave of burglaries terrorises the well-to-do. It was enough to put ideas into Val Leary's head. An Irish labourer, he lacked the tools, the expertise and the capital but the Soho underworld would provide those. What he needed was an inside contact. That's where Janey came in: a kitchenmaid, the lowest of the servants, in an age when dismissal without references was tantamount to certain death. Will she risk it?
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Who killed Marius Steen, the theatre tycoon with a fortune to leave his young mistress Jacqui? And who killed Bill Sweet, the shady blackmailer with a collection of compromising photographs? Charles Paris, the middle-aged actor who keeps going on booze and women, takes to detection by assuming a variety of roles - among them that of McWhirter of the Yard! In that role he precipitates the crime; as one of the blackmailer's victims he finds himself in bed with the blackmailer's wife and he also has a small part in a horror film - The Zombie Walks - in which the murderer tries to shoot him. He eventually arrives at the solution via the petrol crisis and an abortive attack of German measles! -
Who can forget Hammett's classic story? Who wouldn't believe the sweet and innocent Miss Wonderly as she tells the tale of her sister's disappearance? Certainly not Sam Spade, the hard-case detective she hires to help her. Spade soon notices that people close to the little lady end up dead: like Spade's partner...and Floyd Thursby, the man he was hired to tail. Is there a connection between the murders and the mysterious black figure of a bird? From the author of The Thin Man.
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John Calvin had reached the end of the road: it had ended at a luxurious villa in Mallorca, and was strewn with currency regulations he had broken or evaded and other men's wives he had taken and discarded. With the law catching up with him, no-one was really surprised when a note is found in his typewriter, and his body in one of the island's remoter beauty spots. Shot through the head. Suicide, obviously. But was it? Inspector Alvarez has found plenty of motives for murder among the English and Spanish residents. Had someone settled a score? But every time Alvarez fits the pieces of the puzzle together, there's one or two pieces left over. And when the puzzle is finally completed, it's a much different picture to what he or anyone else had thought.
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A Caribbean Mystery: Dozing in the West Indian sun, an old soldier talks of safaris and scandals. After hinting that he has knowledge of a murder and showing a photograph, he is found dead - providing a most exotic case for Miss Marple. Sleeping Murder: Soon after Gwenda moves into her new home, odd things start to happen. Despite her best efforts to modernise the house, she only succeeds in dredging up its past. And she feels an irrational sense of terror every time she climbs the stairs. Gwenda turns to Miss Marple to exorcise her ghosts. Have they dredged up a “perfect” crime committed many years before? 4.50 From Paddington: For an instant the two trains ran together, going in the same direction side by side. In that moment, Elspeth, riding in the one train, witnessed a murder in the other. Helplessly, she stared out her carriage window as a man remorselessly tightened his grip around a woman’s throat. The body crumpled....then the other train drew away. But who, apart from Miss Marple, would take her story seriously? After all, there were no suspects, no other witnesses... and no corpse! At Bertram's Hotel: An old-fashioned London Hotel is not quite as reputable as it seems… When Miss Marple comes to London for a holiday, she finds what she’s looking for at Bertram’s Hotel: traditional decor, impeccable service... and an unmistakable atmosphere of danger behind the highly polished veneer. Yet not even Miss Marple can foresee the violent chain of events set in motion when an eccentric guest makes his way to the airport on the wrong day… -
Inspector Montalbano is considering retirement. Everything seems to be going to the dogs and even his favourite restaurant has closed. But when he bumps into a dead body during a bracing swim, his detective instincts are awakened again - particularly when the most likely identity of the corpse is a man already long buried... -
Red Dragon: Sexual hunger; demonic violence; sinister logic - the lethal components driving a psychopath i n the grip of an unimaginable delusion; a boastful killer who sends the police tormenting notes; a tortured, torturing monster who finds ultimate pleasure in viciously murdering happy families. He calls himself - The Red Dragon. Silence of the Lambs: There's a killer on the loose who knows that beauty is only skin deep, and a trainee investigator who's trying to save her own hide. The only man who can help is locked up in an asylum. He's willing to put a brave face on - if it'll help him escape...
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Dana Saunders, host of Back Talk, is breaking new ground on the airwaves. But even as her guest, a 'reformed' child rapist takes his place in the hot seat, another child is being viciously assaulted. When rookie firefight Lennie Finn finds the terrified victim, memories of her own past come crashing down around her. And with a serial rapist on the loose, she's not the only one feeling scared. As the danger stalks closer to home, Lennie and Dana must nail the killer before history repeats itself. Before it's too late.
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A year ago Jamie Kincaid learnt that her beloved cousin Nate had been murdered, beaten to death in what police suspect was a drug deal gone wrong. He was found by his childhood friend Dillon - who's always been the baddest of the bad boys, leading Nate astray. Jamie believes he has the answers to her questions about Nate's death. She shows up unannounced on his doorstep, and Dillon is as dangerous and seductive as ever. Then things start disappearing. Strange accidents happen. Dillon knows more than he's saying...
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The lady calling had the voice of an angel. She looked like one too, but she was on the road to a private hell. When ex-lawyer and star athlete Eddie Priest receives a cry for help from the victim of a scare campaign, he doesn't take it seriously - but after her suspicious death, Eddie can't back away. A man is missing in the sugarcane fields of Florida and someone's trying to eliminate all traces - till an inquisitive woman stirs up a hornet's nest of greed and corruption. Now there's a violent 'enforcer' on the loose, clearing up and settling scores. And by the time he completes his nightmare agenda, the cane fields will be watered with blood.
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When notorious investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn booked into Mr. Chandler-Powell's private clinic in Dorset for removal of a disfiguring and long-standing scar, she had every prospect of a successful operation by a distinguished surgeon, a week's peaceful convalescence in a beautiful Dorset manor house and the beginning of a new life. She would not leave Cheverell Manor alive. Dalgliesh and his team, called in to investigate the murder and later a second death are confronted with problems even more complicated that the question of guilt or innocence.
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Lindsay Boxer, San Francisco's only woman homicide detective, is ready to reconvene the Women's Murder Club when a little girl is shot outside a church. They start to track a mystifying killer - one who quickly turns his pursuers into victims. Further murders lead them to suspect the killer is an ex-cop, but nothing will prepare them for the demented logic behind the killer's choice of victims.
