Detectives In The Shadows

For anyone interested in crime fiction and television, or for those wanting to understand America's idolization of the good guy with a gun, Detectives in the Shadows is essential reading.

Maine Sunday Telegram #1 Bestseller "A first-rate novel. Suspenseful and highly entertaining." -- New York Times bestselling author Gayle Lynds Fall in Portland, Maine usually arrives as a welcome respite from summer’s sweltering temperatures and, with the tourists gone, a return to normal life—usually. But when a retired cop is murdered, things heat up quickly, setting the city on edge. Detective Sergeant John Byron, a second-generation cop, is tasked with investigating the case—at the very moment his life is unraveling. On the outs with his department’s upper echelon, separated from his wife, and feeling the strong pull of the bottle, Byron remains all business as he tries to solve the murder of one of their own. And when another ex-Portland PD officer dies under suspicious circumstances, he quickly realizes there’s much more to these cases than meets the eye. The closer Byron gets to the truth, the greater the danger for him and his fellow detectives. This taut, atmospheric thriller will appeal to fans of Michael Connelly and John Sandford.

Police Captain Howard was on a duty on a dark and stormy night when he and his fellow policeman heard fighting noises and cries for help. As they reached the crime scene it was too late, a man's body was lying on the street and a murderer has already escaped. Facing the dead end in the lack of evidence, Police Captain Howard includes in the investigation Shadow, a mysterious person who claims to be a private investigator fighting crime. The Shadow is asked to help solving this unusual case, but as the things begin to unravel, it turns out that the Shadow is more mysterious than the case.

"The wide front door hung open, a seductive invitation to a dark interior veiled by dust motes that glittered in the spectral greenish glow..." The Shadows is a historic 1920s house that inspires preservationists' dreams -- and developers' schemes. Built during Prohibition by a notorious rumrummer who vanished at sea, it was inherited by his son, a local athlete and war hero who lived down his father's wild reputation. He served a successful term as Miami mayor and raised his four young children at the Shadows -- until a shotgun ambush on a hot summer night forty-four years ago. His murder was never solved. Since then, only secrets and whispers have inhabited the Shadows. Now, a resourceful young preservationist approaches the Miami Police Department's Cold Case Squad to help block a developer's plan to bulldoze the Shadows and build high-rise towers. The detectives visit the long-abandoned pioneer house, now surrounded by a wild and overgrown subtropical forest. They discover the rumrunner's secret limestone cellar, a tunnel to Biscayne Bay, and seven small, heartbreaking new mysteries -- a lost generation. Cold Case Squad Lt. K. C. Riley and her detectives seek out the murdered man's widow and children for answers. All are evasive and paranoid, haunted by lies, guilt, and tangled pasts that each recalls differently. Ultimately the squad finds that the killer is still out there, and the old, cold case is hotter than ever. In another dazzling example of Edna Buchanan's masterful weaving of stories and histories, Cold Case Squad Detective Sam Stone uncovers a still violent and long-hidden connection between his parents' murders when he was a child and their summer as civil rights workers in Mississippi more than thirty years ago. "Life would be simple," Buchanan writes, "if people told the truth." But for those who live among the shadows, the truth is never simple. Shadows is Edna Buchanan's most suspenseful novel.

Det. Darlene O’Hara uncovers a missing college girl’s deadly double life in the #1 New York Times bestselling author’s “killer of a thriller” (Dennis Lehane). New York City, 2005. Escaping a troubled past, Francesca Pena came to the city and reinvented herself. At New York University, her beauty and charisma are the envy of her privileged pals, yet no one knows the real Francesca—who, after a night of drinking, is now missing. Detective Darlene O’Hara of the Seventh Precinct sets out to find Pena. But when the case turns high-profile and Homicide is called in, O’Hara—whose binge drinking exacerbates the massive chip on her shoulder—refuses to let go. Risking both her and her partner’s careers, O’Hara defies NYPD brass and Homicide legend Patrick Lowry to pursue her own investigation. From NYU’s ivory towers to Brooklyn tattoo parlors and skanky strip clubs, O’Hara closes in on her prey. But she has to move fast, because Lowry and the NYPD are about to make a devastating mistake that will leave the real killer free.

When a bookstore owner is accused of murdering his ex-lover, proving his innocence might lead a hard-nosed detective to a fatal attraction… Thirty-five-year-old gay bookseller Adrien English searches for love between the pages. As a sensitive intellectual with a heart condition, his dating life is gathering dust on the shelves. But when police name him the prime suspect in the brutal murder of his friend and employee, Adrien doesn't expect his best hope for romance to be assigned to the case… Detective Jake Riordan is hungry to climb the ranks. All he has to do for a promotion is nail the handsome bookstore owner for an obvious crime of passion. If only he could stop fantasizing about the suspect instead of the "normal" wife and family his career demands… As Riordan’s investigation heats up and the suspect insists on his innocence, the detective doubts both Adrien's guilt and his ability to resist the man's understated charms. Can they turn the crime into passion, or will a killer on the loose write The End?

LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA INTERNATIONAL DAGGER 2018 The first instalment in the thrilling new crime series from worldwide bestseller Arnaldur Indridason THE PAST In wartime Reykjavík, a young woman is found strangled in a dangerous area known as ‘the shadow district’. An Icelandic detective and a member of the American military police are on the trail of a brutal killer. THE PRESENT An elderly man is discovered dead on his bed, smothered with his own pillow. Konrád, a retired detective, finds old newspaper cuttings in the man’s home reporting the shadow district murder. It’s a crime Konrád remembers, having grown up in the same neighbourhood. A MISSING LINK Why, after all this time, would an old crime resurface? How are these events connected across the decades? And will Konrád’s link to the past help him solve the case and finally lay the ghosts of wartime Reykjavík to rest? ‘Arnaldur Indridason introduces a new hero... Beautifully told’ The Times ‘An international literary phenomenon’ Harlan Coben

It's all aboard! for mystery when Dinah Galloway takes the cross-country train from Vancouver to Toronto, to appear on a TV talent show. But will she make it-or be permanently derailed? Along with her sister Madge, and her fellow junior musicians, tree fanatic Pantelli Audia and history buff Talbot St. John, Dinah is shadowed by someone who wants to get hold of an $80,000 treasure left by her late dad. But what is the treasure? The redheaded, singing sleuth realizes that the secret dwells somewhere in her dad's murky past, and involves a funny, if less than respectable, ex-con named Ardle McBean, and a mysterious man with a bowl cut. The mystery accelerates when Dinah's sweet, elderly piano teacher, also on the train, disappears and the danger to Dinah increases. She struggles to keep on the tracks of the mystery before the shadows, past and present, overwhelm her.