Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Fred Vargas

Three-times winner of the CWA International Dagger for Crime Fiction 
 
Commissaire Adamsberg has left Paris for a police conference in London, accompanied by anglophile Commandant Danglard and Estalere, a young sergeant. The city offers a welcome change of scenery until a gruesome discovery is made - just outside the gates of Highgate Cemetery a pile of shoes, all containing severed feet, is found. 
 
Returning to Paris, the three men are then confronted with the violent killing and dismemberment of a wealthy, elderly man. Both the dead man's son and gardener have motives for murder, but soon another candidate for the killing emerges. As Adamsberg investigates the links between these two unsettling crimes, he puts himself at terrible risk.

An Uncertain Place

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: each presumed murderer lost consciousness during the night of the crime and has no recollection of it. 
 
Commissaire Adamsberg is convinced all the murders are the work of one person, the terrifying Judge Fulgence. Years before, Adamsberg's own brother had been the principal suspect in a similar case and avoided prison only thanks to Adamsberg's help. 
 
History repeats itself when Adamsberg, who is temporarily based in Quebec for a training mission, is accused of having savagely murdered a young woman he had met. In order to prove his innocence, Adamsberg must go on the run from the Canadian police and find Judge Fulgence. 
 
Winner of the 2007 Duncan Lawrie International Dagger for The Three Evangelists.

Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand

On the outskirts of Paris, two men have been found with their throats cut. In Normandy, two stags have been killed and their hearts cut out. Meanwhile a seventy-five-year-old nurse who has murdered several of her patients has escaped from prison. Is there a connection between the three cases? 
 
In this mystery, Commissaire Adamsberg is pitted against nemeses past and present: Ariane Lagarde, France's foremost pathologist and Adamsberg's enemy since they argued over a case twenty-three years earlier, and Louis Veyrenc, a new recruit with a grudge, who has been assigned the job of protecting the Commissaire's ex-girlfriend. As the different strands of Vargas's compelling story begin to intertwine, events move towards a gripping climax... 
 
 
Shortlisted for the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger.

This Night's Foul Work

** Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month ** 
 
The exhilarating new Inspector Adamsberg novel from France's multi-million-copy bestselling crime fiction star 
 
**A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020** 
 
'Adamsberg is one of my favourite detectives... I so enjoyed This Poison Will Remain' ANN CLEEVES 
 
 
After three elderly men are bitten by spiders, everyone assumes that their deaths are tragic accidents. 
 
But at police headquarters in Paris, Inspector Adamsberg begins to suspect that the case is far more complex than first appears. 
 
It isn't long before Adamsberg is investigating a series of rumours and allegations that take him to the south of France. Decades ago, at La Miséricorde orphanage, shocking events took place involving the same species of spider: the recluse. 
 
For Adamsberg, these haunting crimes hold the key to proving that the three men were targeted by an ingenious serial killer. His team, however, is not convinced. He must put his reputation on the line to trace the murderer before the death toll rises... 
_______________________ 
 
PRAISE FOR THIS POISON WILL REMAIN: 
 
'Absorbing... Full of twists and spiced with Vargas's characteristic wit and style' PETER ROBINSON 
 
'Vargas is an addictive writer whose surreal touches create a curiously solid world' INDEPENDENT 
 
'Vargas's books are...cunning, corkscrew murder mysteries' A.J. FINN

This Poison Will Remain

*Featured in The Times top ten crime novels of the decade* 
 
THE NEW INSPECTOR ADAMSBERG NOVEL 
 
Shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger 2017 
 
A woman is found dead in her bath. The murder has been disguised as a suicide and a strange symbol is discovered at the scene. 
 
Then the symbol is observed near a second victim, who ten years earlier had also taken part in a doomed expedition to Iceland. 
 
How are these deaths, and rumours of an Icelandic demon, linked to a secretive local society? And what does the mysterious sign mean? Commissaire Adamsberg is about to find out.

A Climate of Fear

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