The Drop

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.

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.

Our hero is Jack McEvoy, a Rocky Mountain News crime-beat reporter. As the story opens, Jack's twin brother, a Denver homicide detective, has just killed himself. Or so it seems. But when Jack begins to investigate the phenomenon of police suicides, a disturbing pattern emerges, and soon suspects that a serial murderer is at work.

A young woman finds herself caught up in a scam which may cost her the one thing she values more than her life.... Cassie Black has been lured back to the criminal profession she gave up--robbing gamblers of their winnings--by a proposition that is just too good to miss. The job goes as planned except that the target has too much money. It can only mean someone very powerful is going to be very angry indeed. Cassie finds herself on the run from a killer who seems to know her every move in advance.

Henry Pierce has a whole new life - new apartment, new telephone, new telephone number. But the first time he checks his messages, he discovers that someone had the number before him. The messages on his line are for a woman named Lilly, and she is in some kind of serious trouble. Pierce is inexorably drawn into Lilly's world, and it's unlike any world he's ever known. It is a night-time world of escort services, websites, sex, and secret identities.

Back when Harry Bosch was just a rookie homicide detective, he had an inspiring mentor who taught him to take the work personally and light the fire of relentlessness for every case. Now that mentor, J.J. Thompson, is dead, but after his funeral his widow hands Bosch a murder book that Thompson took with him when he left the LAPD 20 years before - the unsolved killing of a troubled young man in an alley used for drug deals.

Three stories, brought together in one edition, from 'crime-writing genius' Michael Connelly. In the title story, a fatal accident on Mulholland Drive turns out to be part of an ingenious plot - but is it too ingenious? In Two Bagger, a dedicated cop working for the Gang Intelligence Unit finally gets the payoff he's worked so hard for - but it's not what he's expecting. In Cahoots, a team of scam artists meet for a high-stakes poker game but who is scamming who?

When quiet Ellen Lang enters Elvis Cole's Disney-deco office, she's lost something very valuable - her husband and young son. The case seems simple enough, but Elvis isn't thrilled. Neither is his enigmatic partner and firepower Joe Pike. Their search down the seamy side of Hollywood's studio lots and sculptured lawns soon leads them deep into a nasty netherworld of drugs and sex - and murder. Now the case is getting interesting, but it's also turned ugly.

When Matt Ballard was starting out his career, three boys were murdered in the same area, the remote and bleak Gibbet Fen. When the main suspect was killed in a hit-and-run, the killings stopped. But Matt was not satisfied that the real murderer had been caught. Over 25 years later, Matt gets a photo in an unmarked envelope. It's of the Gibbet Fen crime scene. And the picture was taken before the murder took place. More photos arrive, relating to the historic murders, as well as intimate pictures of Matt's very secret private life.

Amos Decker is a former professional football player whose career was ended by a terrible hit. Now a police detective, Amos is still haunted by a side effect from the accident he can never forget. One night Decker comes home from a stakeout to find his wife, young daughter, and brother-in-law horrifically murdered. Obviously scarred and nearly broken, Decker has to use his skills as a detective and his unusual brain capacity to try to catch the monster who killed his family.

They're called Lincoln Lawyers: the bottom of the legal food chain, the criminal defence attorneys who operate out of the back of a Lincoln car, travelling between the courthouses of Los Angeles county to take whatever cases the system throws in their path.

Death is my beat. Those words, spoken by the narrator and hero of The Poet, Jack McEvoy, could also apply to Michael Connelly. Time and time again in these riveting pieces, we make the connection between Connelly the crime reporter and Connelly the novelist: On the day I arrived in Los Angeles I sat in the newspaper editor's office being interviewed for a job on the crime beat.

In 1949, Aloysius Archer arrives in the dusty Southern town of Poca City. He has nothing but a handful of dollars, the clothes he’s wearing and an appointment with his new parole officer. After his wartime experiences in Italy and a prison sentence for a crime he didn’t commit, Archer is looking for a fresh start and a peaceful life. On his first night of freedom, Archer meets local business tycoon Hank Pittleman, who promises Archer handsome compensation to work as his debt collector. 

A dark and disturbing new story from the master of the crime genre. A famous writer asks a box man to open an old safe that comes with the mansion he's just bought. It's not as easy a job as he's used to, but with money being tight and a child on the way, it'll pay to persevere - unless, of course, this is actually the job that will change things and haunt him for ever. Read by David W. Collins.

When the luxury cruiser, hastily renamed Great Britain, berths in Kinloch harbour, the pressure is on DCI Jim Daley. The UK Government are taking a high-powered group of businessmen and women on a tour of the British isles, golfing and seeing the sights, as part of a push for global trade. But when one of the crew goes missing, and an elderly local ornithologist disappears, will the pressure become too great?