Detective Thriller Westerns

A killer is on the loose in the Arizona Territory. One by one, Tonto Basin ranchers are being murdered for their livestock - and the Cattle Raisers' Association has hired two range detectives to catch the culprit. From the looks of them, Stovepipe Stewart and Wilbur Coleman are just another pair of high-plains drifters. But with their razor-sharp detective skills and rare talent for trouble, they're the last remaining hope for one young cowboy who's been arrested for the murders. Stovepipe and Wilbur believe the boy is innocent.

This collection includes What Vengeance Comes, Cold Sanctuary, and Crimson Deep.

Former detective sergeant Norman Norman’s retirement is boring him to tears. So when he’s asked to assist an upcoming female DI and mentor a new team of misfits in a sleepy Welsh coastal town, he jumps at the opportunity. But the training has barely begun when a woman’s corpse washes up on the sand. With no reports of missing persons, DS Norman is stumped...until the post-mortem reveals a shocking hint to the culprit being local. But with a growing list of suspects who all have alibis, the experienced cop and his fledgling team’s first case could be their last.

Meet Detective Inspector Dan Hellier, a man who needs to redeem his career and catch a killer. Soon after DI Hellier returns home to Exeter under a cloud, the body of a talented young singer is found in the woods. When her death reveals links to the boss of a recording studio, a predatory gang and a school music teacher, Hellier knows he has his work cut out. Before more innocent people are put in danger, Hellier will need to untangle the web of lies and work out which of many suspects are guilty of murder.

NYPD detective John Decker thinks his family’s dark past is behind him when he’s offered the job as town sheriff in his sleepy southern hometown. Happy for a change in scenery, and a quieter way of life, he accepts the position. But when a pair of mutilated bodies are found in the woods just days before a massive storm is due to make landfall, the similarities dredge up the horrific memories of his mother’s unsolved murder almost thirty years ago. A murder that drove his father to madness and an early grave, and John to abandon his high school sweetheart and escape to New York.

A killer is on the loose in the Arizona Territory. One by one, Tonto Basin ranchers are being murdered for their livestock -and the Cattle Raisers Association has hired two range detectives to catch the culprit. From the looks of them, Stovepipe Stewart and Wilbur Coleman are just another pair of high plains drifters. But with their razor-sharp detective skills and rare talent for trouble, they’re the last remaining hope for one young cowboy who’s been arrested for the murders.

Callum is lured to an isolated boathouse by an attractive older woman. When she gets him alone, she knocks him out with a single blow. Surrounded by hills and lakes, Still Waters is home to a close-knit community of wealthy retirees. It's an unlikely setting for violence. The police don't take Callum's disappearance seriously: he's 24-years-old, after all. But Callum's mother, a Still Waters resident, knows that something is very wrong. Then a body is discovered floating in the lake. Head bashed in. But it's not Callum. And someone tweets: Come out to play one last time, Alice.

Jack the Ripper faded into history over a century ago, his identity lost to the ages. Until a work crew restoring a Mayfair home make a shocking find. A secret basement room walled up since Victorian times. The Whitechapel murderer's lair. And inside, a corpse that has waited in silent darkness for over a hundred years. But it won't stay that way… Within hours of the room's discovery, the body goes missing, and the murders begin anew. With a violent killer on the loose and the body count rising, John Decker, still new to CUSP, is sent to England, along with seasoned operative Colum O'Shea.

Early one morning, DS Robin Butler is summoned to a crime scene. Not as a policeman, but as best friend to renowned meteorologist, Dr Finn Mason. The morning after studying an enormous storm, Finn has locked himself in a van. Bloodied, confused, and with no memory of how he came to be there. And alongside him - a dead body.

When Detective Maria Miller walks up creaking stairs into the attic of the old brownstone she senses this isn’t an ordinary crime scene. The brutality of the murder is enough to shock even an experienced detective like Maria. But there’s something else. An unsettling presence seems to lurk in the shadows sending a chill through Maria’s bones, making her desperate to run back down the stairs and never return. The killing is identical to the murder of an actress sixty years before, a crime that tore a family apart and sent shockwaves through New York City.

In September 1926, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher visits Sybil Sutherby, a school friend now living in Derbyshire as the confidential secretary to a novelist. Suspecting that something is seriously amiss, Sybil has asked Daisy to discretely investigate. Upon arrival, Daisy finds a household of relatives and would-be suitors living off the hospitality of Humphrey Birtwhistle, who had been supporting them through his thrice-yearly, pseudonymous Westerns. When he took ill, though, Sybil took over writing them while he recovered, only to see the sales increase. Now, she fears that someone in the household is poisoning Birtwhistle to keep him ill and Sybil writing the better-paying versions.

Popular crime novelist Laurence Shames consistently draws favorable comparisons to Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. In his Key West tales, Shames paints vivid, hilarious portraits of the sun-splashed “paradise” he calls home. The retired Pete Amsterdam isn’t really a private investigator. But he has a license, a gun, and a listing in the phone book—all so he can write-off his wine cellar as an “office.”

"A rocket ride of action, political intrigue, and suspense."—San Diego Magazine "A sharp thriller. Russell has us in the palm of his hand."—Chicago Tribune "Ingeniously imagined and skillfully told, Political Suicide must be included in any list of this year's best thrillers."—San Diego Union-Tribune Will Travis is an undercover corporate investigator whose job involves low-key assignments like checking out the service at Washington, DC, hotel bars and reporting back to management. But his evening takes an unexpected turn when he interrupts an attempted murder. Soon, Will is on the ...

Barely a month since his promotion to Inspector, DI Ford is called in to investigate the murder of a young nurse and her son in a small flat in Salisbury. There are few clues, and no apparent motive, but Ford can sense that there's a serial killer at work. After all, he knows from brutal personal experience how killers cover their tracks.... It's been six years since Ford lost his wife in a climbing accident - an accident he caused. He is desperate to keep the truth hidden, especially from his son, Sam.

A father is found dead in his posh West London home. Stabbed to death. By somebody who couldn’t stop. There are seven or eight puncture wounds. There’s no time to relax for recently married DI Rob Miller. Now a second man is found brutally murdered in the same frenzied manner. Do the police have a serial killer on their hands?

In a tunnel deep beneath an Alaskan mountain, a man is brutally murdered. Just one in a series of grisly deaths, it is not long before whispers grow that the Qalupalik, a terrifying creature born from centuries of superstition and fear, has come to wreak havoc on the small coastal town of Shackleton, Alaska. With no way to stop the slayings, the town turns to disgraced ex-cop John Decker, hoping he can do what they could not. The assignment, far from his native Louisiana, might be just what Decker needs to put the past behind him.

England, 1914. Joanna Blalock's keen mind and incredible insight lead her to become a highly skilled nurse, one of the few professions that allow her to use her finely tuned brain. But when she and her 10-year-old son witness a man fall to his death, apparently by suicide, they are visited by the elderly Dr. John Watson and his charming, handsome son, Dr. John Watson Jr. Impressed by her forensic skills, they invite her to become the third member of their investigative team.

After a dog walker discovers human remains in a badger sett in the idyllic Salisbury countryside, DI Ford is called in to lead the ensuing murder investigation. When a second victim turns up in a nearby pond, Ford is determined to find the connection. Both victims met their fate near the sprawling Alverchalke Estate, ancestral home of a decorated war hero and his family. One was a dogged eco-activist and vocal critic of Lord Baverstock. The other was a petty criminal and poacher, youngest brother of a notorious local crime family.

Deep in the Florida woodlands, a pair of recreational divers are attacked and killed. Miles away, a research team captures an impossible sight on their remote-operated submersible. Meanwhile, a team of bank robbers speeds toward their Florida hideout. As deaths mount, ex-sheriff John Decker is called from a much-needed vacation by a longtime friend, to help a baffled police department track an impossible enemy. Thrust into one of the most dangerous situations of his life, Decker must combat not only a ruthless killer but a cadre of criminals with nothing to lose.

A young female soldier is found on Salisbury Plain, her throat cut and a bloody knife in her dead hand. Everyone assumes that she killed herself. But something doesn’t feel right to DI Ford; the whole scene seems staged. Convinced of foul play, and despite fierce opposition from the army brass and his own superiors, Ford launches a murder investigation.