I’m the writer of an award-winning, best-selling series called the Lane Winslow Mysteries. They take place in British Columbia right after the Second World War, and feature an intelligent, canny, beautiful, polyglot who has just retired from spying for the British—this character inspired by my own beautiful multilingual mother, who did intelligence work in the war. I love the mystery genre, and while no one loves a burned-out, borderline alcoholic inspector who's divorced and has children who won’t return his calls more than I, I've always really adored what I call the “gentleman inspectors.” Men who are happily married, or will be soon, smart, educated, ethical, emotionally complex people you’d like to meet one day.
This is not the first book in which Lord Peter appears, but it is the first of the books that include Harriet Vane, with whom he falls hopelessly in seemingly unrequited love when he saves her from the noose. Written in 1930, Lord Peter is an actual gentleman with all the deceptively shallow mannerisms and slang of a young Bertie Wooster about him, but he of course is covering up his blinding intelligence and his very vulnerable heart. Besides collecting rare books, playing faultless Bach on the piano ,and struggling with bouts of shell shock from the trenches in France, his great joy is solving murders. And he has beautiful manners. When asked why she had invented Lord Peter, Dorothy L. Sayers answered, “I wanted to create the perfect man.”
The sixth book in Dorothy L Sayers' classic Lord Peter Wimsey series, introduced by actor Edward Petherbridge - a must-read for fans of Agatha Christie's Poirot and Margery Allingham's Campion Mysteries.
'D. L. Sayers is one of the best detective story writers' Daily Telegraph
Can Lord Peter Wimsey prove that Harriet Vane is not guilty of murder - or find the real poisoner in time to save her from the gallows?
Impossible, it seems.
The Crown's case is watertight. The police are adamant that the right person is on trial. The judge's summing-up is also clear. Harriet Vane is guilty…
The Blessing Waygives us Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn a long-serving member of the Navajo Tribal Police force. He’s had an early childhood education at boarding school, but he goes on to get a master’s in anthropology at the University of New Mexico, so he has an expanded point of view of both Navajo and white cultures which gives him a broad and educated perspective. By nature he is calm, unhurried and methodical, and courteous in his approach, even with people he knows are guilty. He is married to Emma, and she is the emotional center of his world.
Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!
“Brilliant…as fascinating as it is original.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
From New York Times bestselling author Tony Hillerman, the first novel in his series featuring Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn & Officer Jim Chee who encounter a bizarre case that borders between the supernatural and murder
Homicide is always an abomination, but there is something exceptionally disturbing about the victim discovered in a high, lonely place—a corpse with a mouth full of sand—abandoned at a crime scene seemingly devoid of tracks or useful clues.…
This book is a spy novel with a satirical edge which will take you on a heart-pumping journey through the streets, mountains, jungles, and beaches of Colombia. Our Man in Havana meets A Clear and Present Danger.
Stuart Kaminski brings us the wonderful detective, Porfiry Rostnikov, a barrel of a man who wanted to be a wrestling champion in his youth, and surely the only honest policeman in the Soviet system. He is kind and generous and will fix the plumbing of anyone in his building for the sheer joy of it. He is entranced by the geometry of pipes and their challenge. He is also a man of a certain age who has seen it all and has no illusions. His relationship with soviet authorities is tricky; they suspect his Jewish wife, and his love of Ed McBain books, but he’s the only man who can catch the crook and save the state embarrassment.
“Never miss a Kaminsky book, and be especially sure not to miss Death of a Russian Priest.” —Tony Hillerman, New York Times–bestselling author
In the darkest hours of communist rule, Father Merhum fought to protect the sanctity of the Orthodox Church. Now the Soviet Union is gone, but the bureaucracy survives, and within it lurk men who would do anything to undermine the fragile new Russian democracy. Father Merhum is on his way to Moscow to denounce those traitors when he is struck with an ax and killed.
As police inspectors Porfiry Rostnikov and Emil Karpo dig into the past…
Still Life introduces Armand Gamache, of the Surete du Quebec, another man with a happy marriage and a prodigious education, perfectly bilingual because of his time at Cambridge. His belief in kindness is a guiding principle in his work, and he is honest to the core. He famously lives in the Brigadoon-like village of Three Pines, which ‘does not appear on any historical map’. Like his colleagues here, he is a deep and analytical observer of the human condition and believes in thinking before he speaks.
In Still Life, bestselling author Louise Penny introduces Monsieur L'Inspecteur Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec, a modern Poirot who anchors this beloved traditional mystery series.
Winner of the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys awards.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain…
Noam Chomsky has been praised by the likes of Bono and Hugo Chávez and attacked by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Alan Dershowitz. Groundbreaking linguist and outspoken political dissenter—voted “most important public intellectual in the world today” in a 2005 magazine poll—Chomsky inspires fanatical devotion and fierce vituperation.
Meet Commisario Guido Brunetti, who works for the Venetian Questura. Though born poor himself, he is married to an aristocratic professor of literature whom he adores, and who makes fantastic food. Brunetti is another honest man in a police force with a largely fluid sense of ethics. He is genuinely curious and admires people who can do things, making him generous in his ability and desire to work collaboratively. He lives in Venice and knows the city intimately, both at the highest levels and at the lowest, and he is especially cognizant of the twists and turns of officialdom, and how one must always calculate with how much must be compromised in an effort to really deliver justice.
'A splendid series . . . with a backdrop of the city so vivid you can almost smell it.' The Sunday Telegraph
Winner of the Suntory Mystery Fiction Grand Prize __________________________________
The twisted maze of Venice's canals has always been shrouded in mystery. Even the celebrated opera house, La Fenice, has seen its share of death ... but none so horrific and violent as that of world-famous conductor, Maestro Helmut Wellauer, who was poisoned during a performance of La Traviata. Even Commissario of Police, Guido Brunetti, used to the labyrinthine corruptions of the city, is shocked at the number of…
It is 1948 and Lane Winslow is visiting an
elderly Russian friend in beautiful sleepy New Denver when she meets a veteran
of the US 104th, a member of the long-forgotten Indigenous Sinixt
Nation returning to his homeland. They
stumble on a shallow grave in the friend’s garden…is it the railroad baron
missing since 1921? Her husband, Inspector Darling of the Nelson police
investigates under a cloud of suspicion and vicious gossip that he is on the
take. The action spirals into deadly
violence and arson, imperiling everyone connected with the case.
“Whishaw
nicely pulls off the dynamics of small-town life while maintaining
suspense. Maisie Dobbs and Phryne Fisher
fans will be pleased.” - Publisher’s Weekly.
“Excellent.” - Toronto Star
Virologist Dr. Rachel Bisette sees visions of a Kachina and remembers the plane crash that killed her parents and the Dine medicine woman who saved her life. Rachel is investigating a new and lethal hantavirus spreading through the Four Corners, and believes the Kachina is calling her to join the…
Ron Burley has a rule against messing around with married women, but lovely Lavender has convinced him to break it. Their steamy affair sets someone off, but it isn’t Lavender’s clueless husband—it’s Marta, Burley’s clingy childhood friend and ex-lover.
