John Harvey

A retired cop returns to the mean streets of Nottingham on a murder case that resurrects a haunted past in this "elegantly told tale" (Independent, UK). When Frank Elder's ex-wife calls him for a favor, he can't say no. Her friend Jennie's sister Claire has gone missing in Nottingham, and she wants him to look into it. Suddenly, he's back on the job...and back in the city where his life fell apart. Elder uncovers sexual secrets of Claire's that...

The discovery of the body of a young woman who disappeared thirty years prior during the British miners' strike brings Charlie Resnick out of virtual retirement to assist in the murder investigation, forcing him to confront his past.

A man found bloodied in the street is the newest victim of a brutal crime spree Although the cop who finds the man in Alfreton Road describes him as "absolutely stark bollock naked," that is not quite true-he is wearing a sock. The naked man is flabby, middle-aged, and bleeding heavily, in no shape to be sprinting down the street at three in the morning. After the ER doctors patch up his stab wound, the man tells the police he was attacked by a prostitute....

When a 17-year-old Moldovan boy is found dead on Hampstead Heath, the case falls to DCI Karen Shields and her overstretched Homicide & Serious Crime Unit. Karen knows she needs a result. What she doesn't know is that her new case is tied inextricably to a much larger web of gang warfare and organized crime which infiltrates almost every aspect of London society. Several hundred miles away in Cornwall, Detective Inspector Trevor Cordon is stirred from...

In the depths of his Cornish hideaway, retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder's solitary life is disturbed by a call from his ex-wife, telling him his seventeen-year-old daughter, Katherine, is running wild, unbalanced by the abduction and rape he feels he should have prevented. Meanwhile, in the heart of London, the takedown of a violent criminal goes badly, and Detective Sergeant Maddy Birch is uneasy about the reasons why, an uneasiness that is...

A scalpel-wielding maniac terrorizes a hospital staff Karen Archer understands that women who date doctors should expect tardiness. The last time she invited Tim Fletcher over, he arrived from the emergency room exhausted, and barely had time to say hello before he passed out on her bed. Tonight her patience has run out. After a bottle of wine and too much television, she gives up on Fletcher and leaves the house to find her own fun-but instead she...

Two months after she disappears, a six-year-old child is found dead Raymond Cooke is looking for revenge, not corpses. It's been six weeks since the gang of four young punks attacked him, since the one with the knife slit open his belly and left him to die on the street. After that Raymond bought a knife of his own, and has spent his nights lurking in Nottingham's worst pubs, hoping for a chance at vengeance. Instead, walking home one night, he encounters...

Ruth and Simon's romantic break is shattered by the news that their daughter, Heather, on holiday in Cornwall, has disappeared. The loss is more than they can bear and they separate. In time, Ruth remarries and has a second daughter, Beatrice. Then Beatrice goes missing. While DI Grayson leads the search for Beatrice, DS Helen Walker re-examines what happened to Heather years before.

A collection of short stories from a master of British crime fiction features tales of ex-cops and private investigators who wade through broken families, revenge, prostitution, drugs, and corruption in their search for justice.