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The Hanging Valley

Peter Robinson · back to the book

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24 books with the same feel

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Telling Tales

Ann Cleeves · 413 pages

"It has been ten years since Jeanie Long was charged with the murder of fifteen-year-old Abigail Mantel. Now residents of the East Yorkshire village of Elvet are disturbed to hear of new evidence proving Jeanie's innocence. Abigail's killer is still at large. For one young woman, Emma Bennett, the revelation brings back haunting memories of her vibrant best friend--and of that fearful winter's day

Cold CaseSmall Town SecretsDetective FictionDetective Protagonist
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The Preacher

Camilla Lackberg · 419 pages

The discovery of two murder victims who were killed twenty years earlier is complicated by the body of a third, recent victim at the same location, a case that compels detective Patrik Hedstrom to investigate a feuding clan of misfits, religious fanatics, and criminals.

Cold CaseSmall Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective Fiction
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Not in the Flesh

Ruth Rendell · 303 pages

A new Chief Inspector Wexford mystery from the author who Time magazine has called "the best mystery writer in the English-speaking world." When the truffle-hunting dog starts to dig furiously, his master's first reaction is delight at the size of the clump the dog has unearthed: at the going rate, this one truffle might be worth several hundred pounds. Then the dirt falls away to reveal not a pre

Cold CaseDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistLaw Enforcement
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In the Clearing

Robert Dugoni · 355 pages

"Detective Tracy Crosswhite has a skill, and a soft spot, for tackling unsolved crimes. Having lost her own sister to murder at a young age, Tracy has dedicated her career to bringing justice and closure to the families and friends of victims of crime. So when Jenny, a former police academy classmate and protégé, asks Tracy to help solve a cold case that involves the suspicious suicide of a Native

Small Town SecretsCold CaseDetective FictionDetective Protagonist
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The Nature of the Beast

Louise Penny · 448 pages

"Hardly a day goes by when nine year old Laurent Lepage doesn't cry wolf. From alien invasions, to walking trees, to winged beasts in the woods, to dinosaurs spotted in the village of Three Pines, his tales are so extraordinary no one can possibly believe him. Including Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache, who now live in the little Quebec village. But when the boy disappears, the villagers are faced w

Small Town SecretsDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistLaw Enforcement
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The Dark Lake

Sarah Bailey · 384 pages

The lead homicide investigator in a rural town, Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock is deeply unnerved when a high school classmate is found strangled, her body floating in a lake. And not just any classmate, but Rosalind Ryan, whose beauty and inscrutability exerted a magnetic pull on Smithson High School, first during Rosalind's student years and then again when she returned to teach drama. As mu

Small Town SecretsDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistCold Case
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Help the Poor Struggler

Martha Grimes · 225 pages

Cold CaseDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistLaw Enforcement
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Wash This Blood Clean from My Hand

Fred Vargas · 400 pages

"Between 1943 and 2003 nine people have been stabbed to death with a most unusual weapon: a trident. In each case, arrests were made, suspects confessed their crimes and were sentenced to life in prison. One slightly worrying detail: the presumed murderers lost conciousness during the nights of the crimes and have no recollection of them." -- Cover.

Cold CaseDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistLaw Enforcement
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On Beulah Height

Reginald Hill · 440 pages

Cold CaseSmall Town SecretsDetective FictionLaw Enforcement
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The Return

Hakan Nesser · 256 pages

Cold CaseDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistLaw Enforcement
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Snow White Must Die

Nele Neuhaus · 491 pages

On a rainy November day police detectives Pia Kirchhoff and Oliver von Bodenstein are summoned to a mysterious traffic accident: a woman has fallen from a pedestrian bridge onto a car driving underneath. According to a witness, the woman may have been pushed. The investigation leads Pia and Oliver to a small village, and the home of the victim, Rita Cramer. On a September evening eleven years earl

Cold CaseSmall Town SecretsDetective FictionDetective Protagonist
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A Noble Radiance: (Brunetti 7)

Donna Leon · 277 pages

During renovations to a deserted farmhouse, workers discover a grave. The signet ring found nearby reignites an infamous kidnapping case involving one of Venice's oldest aristocratic families.

Cold CaseDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmospheric
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The Remorseful Day

Colin Dexter · 388 pages

"For a year, the murder of Mrs. Yvonne Harrison at her home in Oxfordshire had baffled the Thames Valley CID. The manner of her death--her naked handcuffed body left lying in bed--matched her reputation as a women of adventuresome sexual tastes. The case seemed perfect for Inspector Morse. So why has he refused to become involved--even after anonymous hints of new evidence, even after a fresh murd

Cold CaseDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistLaw Enforcement
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The Fallen Man

Tony Hillerman · 320 pages

Human bones lie on a ledge under the peak of Ship Rock mountain, the remains of a murder victim undisturbed for more than a decade. Three hundred miles across the Navajo reservation, a harmless old canyon guide is felled by a sniper's bullet. Joe Leaphorn, recently retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, believes the shooter and the skeleton are somehow connected and recalls a chilling puzzle he wa

Cold CaseDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmospheric
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Robert B. Parker's The Devil Wins

Reed Farrel Coleman · 342 pages

In the wake of a huge storm, three bodies are discovered in the rubble of an abandoned factory building in an industrial part of Paradise known as The Swap. One body, a man's, wrapped in a blue tarp, is only hours old. But found within feet of that body are the skeletal remains of two teenage girls who had gone missing during a Fourth of July celebration twenty-five years earlier. Not only does th

Cold CaseDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistLaw Enforcement
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The Killings at Badger's Drift

Caroline Graham · 264 pages

Badger's Drift is an ideal English village, complete with vicar, bumbling local doctor, and kindly spinster with a nice line in homemade cookies. But when the spinster dies suddenly, her best friend kicks up an unseemly fuss, loud enough to attract the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby. And when Barnaby and his eager-beaver deputy start poking around, they uncover a swamp of ugly

Small Town SecretsDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistLaw Enforcement
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Faithful Place

Tana French · 448 pages

Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was a nineteen-year-old kid with a dream of escaping hisi family’s cramped flat on Faithful Place and running away to London with his girl, Rosie Daly. But on the night they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn’t show. Frank took it for granted that she’d dumped him-probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went

Cold CaseDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionLaw Enforcement
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Don't Look Back

Karin Fossum · 292 pages

Small Town SecretsDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmospheric
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Dry Bones in the Valley

Tom Bouman · 288 pages

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionAtmospheric
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Rupture

Ragnar Jonasson · 272 pages

Cold CaseDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmospheric
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Redemption

David Baldacci · 496 pages

Cold CaseDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistLaw Enforcement
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Dark of the Moon

John Sandford · 392 pages

Virgil Flowers-tall, lean, late thirties, three times divorced, hair way too long for a cop's-had kicked around for a while before joining the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. First, it was the army and the military police, then the police in St. Paul, and finally Lucas Davenport had brought him into the BCA, promising him, "We'll only give you the hard stuff."He'd been doing the hard st

Small Town SecretsDetective ProtagonistDetective FictionSmall Town
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Holding

Graham Norton · 300 pages

"From Graham Norton, the BAFTA-award-winning Irish television host and author of the "sparkling and impish" (Daily Mail) memoirs The Life and Loves of a He Devil and So Me, comes a charming debut novel set in an idyllic Irish village where a bumbling investigator has to sort through decades of gossip and secrets to solve a mysterious crime. The remote Irish village of Duneen has known little drama

Cold CaseSmall Town SecretsDetective FictionLaw Enforcement
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The Snowman

Jo Nesbo · 550 pages

"In Oslo, after the first snow of the season has fallen, a woman disappears, and a sinister snowman is left in her wake. As irascible detective Harry Hole realizes that this is only one of multiple disappearances, he begins to think a serial killer may be at work--and may be drawing in Hole personally and intentionally"--

Cold CaseDetective FictionDetective ProtagonistAtmospheric
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