The village of South Mardian likes the old ways. The very old ways. This may be 1957, but South Mardian still features a blacksmith, a village idiot, and an elaborate fertility ritual performed at the winter solstice. There's squabbling, of course, and worse-like when one of the ritual's main players is found beheaded, everything north of his neck having been neatly lopped off by a ritual sword. Inspector Alleyn does have to contain a certain incredulous...

Suzanne Perry is having a vivid nightmare. Someone is in her bedroom, touching her, and she can't move a muscle. She wakes, relieved to put the nightmare behind her, but when she opens the curtains, she sees a polaroid stuck to the window. A photo of her, sleeping, taken during the night. And underneath, the words: "I'm watching over you." Her nightmare isn't over. In fact, it's just beginning. Detective Inspector Phil Brennan of the Major Incident...

The Chichester is making a routine journey across the English Channel on a pleasant afternoon in June, when the steamer's crew notice something strange. A yacht, bobbing about in the water ahead of them, appears to have been abandoned, and there is a dark red stain on the deck... Two bodies later, with no sign of a gun, there certainly is a mystery in the channel. Inspector French soon discovers a world of high-powered banking, luxury yachts and international...

A MAN WHO KILLS FOR MONEY. X marks the spot - and when that spot is a corpse's naked back and the X is carved in blood, DI Tom Thorne is in no doubt that the dead man is the latest victim of a particularly vicious killer. A BRUTAL VENDETTA. This is brutal turf warfare between north London gangs. Organised crime boss Billy Ryan is moving into someone else's patch, and that someone is not best pleased. A COP WHO IS PLAYING WITH FIRE. And when an X is...

A well-dressed corpse found shot in the sand and gravel wharf sparks trouble for Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur and his unpredictable boss, Assistant Chief Constable Iles. The man is found dead in the local dockyard, shot from behind. Colin Harpur, examining the impeccably dressed corpse on his hands and knees, predicts the execution spells imminent trouble - and not just the unexpected arrival of his spiteful, brilliant boss, ACC Iles,...

Will's first thought when he saw the man's face: it was like a glove that had been pulled inside out. When police detective, Will Grayson and his partner, Helen Walker, are called upon to investigate the violent death of Stephen Bryan, a gay Cambridge academic, their first thoughts are off an ill-judged sexual encounter, of rough trade gone wrong. But as their investigation widens, their attention focuses on the biography Bryan was writing about the...

"Detective Sergeant Matthew Ryan wants to clear the name of his former boss, who stands accused of official corruption. But before he can do so, his boss disappears. Did he escape from police custody, or was he kidnapped? Or did something even worse happen to him? Suspended from duty on suspicion of aiding and abetting the audacious escape of his former boss, Ryan is locked out of the manhunt. Desperate to preserve his career and prove his innocence,...