Showing results by publisher "Tantor Audio" in Traditional Detectives

The story opens with the apparently accidental drowning of a sixth form student in the Norfolk countryside. As a matter of routine, or so it seems, the case passes across the desk of Detective Sergeant Smith, recently returned to work after an internal investigation into another case that has led to tensions between officers at Kings Lake police headquarters. As an ex-DCI, Smith could have retired by now, and it is clear that some of his superiors wish that he would do so.

When another resident of the Rosemary House care home is found dead in her chair one Saturday evening in December, no one is very surprised - not until the results of a routine post-mortem reveal something extraordinary. Sergeant DC Smith and his team have to tread carefully as they investigate what took place, and Smith himself has to confront some difficult memories. Others, meanwhile, seem intent on getting him to leave the force altogether.

When a worker goes missing from a North Sea gas platform, there seem to be just two possible explanations - it was a tragic accident or a suicide. It does not take Smith and his detectives long, however, to discover that James Bell led a double life back onshore in Kings Lake, a life complicated enough to make him at least one dangerous enemy. Before the case can be unraveled, Smith must get a new team working together.

Mark Randall lay dead in a field near Lowacre long before Smith had done what he had to do in Belfast. By the time he went back to work, the investigation was well underway. "It's not my case," he says more than once, and he really doesn't need it to be; he has enough to think about as it is. But going around the Norfolk countryside dotting the i's and crossing the t's, speaking to the local farmers and the Brothers of St. Francis from Abbeyfields, Smith begins to suspect that the investigation might be heading in entirely the wrong direction.

In the peace and tranquility of the woods at Pinehills on a Saturday afternoon, a mobile phone begins to ring. The phone belongs to DC Smith, and it isn't unusual that the call is from Kings Lake Central police station; what is unusual is the fact that he seems to be the subject of an investigation rather than taking part in one. What can the links be between a prisoner's violent death in another county, the disappearance of two teenagers, and the highest profile case in Kings Lake for many years?

Change is afoot at Kings Lake Central police station. A most unexpected new detective inspector takes up his post this Monday morning, and the oldest detective in the place takes a momentous decision. Around them, other officers are considering their own situations, and even the building itself seems to be facing an uncertain future. But life and death go on, nevertheless, and by lunchtime someone will make a grim discovery on the Norfolk saltmarshes. A stranger seems to have suffered a slow and agonizing death out there.

Private investigator Atticus Priest is employed by a disgruntled ex-husband to dig up dirt on his estranged wife. But when she goes missing after swimming in the River Avon, Atticus uncovers a conspiracy between five lifelong friends that goes back years. The friends did something when they were younger that they're not proud of. It's something that would land them in a world of trouble if it ever came to light. Something they've been trying to bury ever since. But Atticus finds one secret and then the next. 

Cyrus Barker is undoubtedly England's premiere private enquiry agent. With the help of his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, he's developed an enviable reputation for discreetly solving some of the toughest, most consequential cases in recent history. But one evening in 1888, Robert Anderson, the head of Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigation Department (CID), appears at Barker's office with an offer.

Detective Sergeant Chris Waters got the call at 05.29 that July morning. This is it, said DCI Reeve, you'll be first there, it's all yours, you're the crime scene manager. Suddenly, after months of waiting and wondering, Waters finds himself in at the deep end, and alone at the scene of a puzzling murder. As the investigation proceeds, the detectives at Kings Lake Central find themselves visiting familiar places and talking to some familiar faces, while old enmities reappear in the incident room. Before this is over, Chris Waters will need to make a career-changing decision.

At the request of Her Majesty's government, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker agrees to take on his least favorite kind of assignment - he's to provide security for a secret conference with the French government. But shortly after the parties land at the island, Lord Hargrave is killed by a sniper shot, and the French ambassador's head of security is found stabbed to death. The only means of egress from the island - a boat - has been sent away, and the means of signaling for help has been destroyed.

Two weeks of rest and recuperation - that's what the doctor ordered. Detective Sergeant DC Smith could listen to some music, make some of his own, and maybe even catch up on his reading; he is almost looking forward to it. And then there is a knock on the door. It's only his next-door neighbor, but it is the beginning of a sequence of events that will bring him face to face with some of the darkest episodes and the most dangerous people from his own past.

New adventures of the iconic sleuth, an icon of detective fiction. Readers, listeners, investigators, and artists have come across Sherlock Holmes and his mythical stories of crime and adventure for generations. Now comes an outstanding anthology of never-before-seen short fiction stories featuring the much-loved powers of deduction and unerring quest for the truth - however improbable it might first appear. The Book of Extraordinary New Sherlock Holmes Stories brings together some of the most renowned American and British crime and thriller authors of today.

The country doctor had come to 221B Baker Street, the famous lodgings of Sherlock Holmes, with an eerie tale---the legend of the Hound of the Baskervilles, the devil-beast that haunted the lonely moors around the Baskervilles' ancestral home. The tale warned the descendants of that ancient family never to venture out on the moor "in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted."

Private enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn receive in the mail an unexplained key stamped with the letter Q. Barker, recognizing it for what it is, uses the key to unlock an anonymous door in the alleyway, which opens to an underground tunnel leading to Downing Street. The Prime Minister has a small task for Cyrus Barker. A Foreign Office agent stole a satchel in Eastern Europe, but was then himself murdered at Charing Cross. The satchel contains a document desperately wanted by the German government, but while the agent was killed, the satchel remains in English hands.

Gabriel Kensington and his wife, Lydia, have been brutally slain in their luxurious home in New Mexico. A frantic, whispered phone call from their teenage daughter, Addis, and her best friend, Emerson, quickly alerts the authorities to the killings. But when detective Alyssa Wyatt and the squad appear at the house, the unthinkable has happened. The girls are nowhere to be found...and neither is the killer. In a race against time, it's up to Alyssa Wyatt and her partner, Cord, to find the missing girls - and discover just why the Kensingtons have been targeted.

A colonel receives five seeds in the mail---and dies within weeks. A young bride disappears immediately after her wedding. An old hat and a Christmas goose are the only clues to a stolen jewel. A son is accused of his father's murder. These mysteries---and many more---are brought to the house on Baker Street where detective Sherlock Holmes resides. No case is too tricky for the world's most famous sleuth and his incredible powers of deduction.

It's been six weeks since Jack McBride's life went to hell: The resolution of his first case as chief sparked a county-wide drug war, his brother Eddie rode into town with a pocket full of cocaine and trouble on his mind, his estranged wife returned from her one-year sabbatical determined to win him back, and Ellie Martin ended their brief affair. 

London 1885. Something's not right at Shoreditch Workhouse and reporter Penny Green is struggling to convince someone to listen. After spending time there undercover, she knows that more can be done for the deserving poor beneath its roof. But does anyone else care? When two workhouse inmates die in a fight, the police and the coroner accept the simplest explanation. Penny undertakes her own investigation with Inspector James Blakely's help and it's not long before they make themselves unpopular.

It's their usual Thursday girls' night in, and best friends Skye, Elena, and London are enjoying hanging out at Skye's house in New Mexico, eating junk food, drinking wine, and playing with Skye's little children, Carter and Abigail. Until the intruders arrive. Hearing the horrific screams from Elena and Skye, London hides the children, tiptoes out to see what has happened . . . and disappears. After Carter raises the alarm, Detective Alyssa Wyatt is called in to investigate a bloodbath that appears to have no motive, no evidence, and worse still—no sign of London.

In 1890, the first Japanese diplomatic delegation arrives in London to open an embassy. Cyrus Barker, private enquiry agent and occasional agent for the Foreign Service Office, is enlisted to display his personal Japanese garden to the visiting dignitaries. Later that night, Ambassador Toda is shot and killed in his office and Cyrus Barker is discovered across the street, watching the very same office, in possession of a revolver with one spent cartridge.