We’ve handpicked the following crime novels from recommendations by Leeds Readers. Money back if you don’t enjoy them 🙂

Ian Rankin – Saints of the Shadow Bible Rebus is back on the force, albeit with a demotion and a chip on his shoulder. A 30-year-old case is being reopened, and Rebus’s team from back then is suspected of foul play. With Malcolm Fox as the investigating officer, are the past and present about to collide in a shocking and murderous fashion? And does Rebus have anything to hide? His old colleagues called themselves ‘the Saints’, and swore a bond on something called ‘the Shadow Bible’. Times have changed and the crimes of the past may not stay hidden much longer, especially with a referendum on Scottish independence just around the corner. Who are the saints and who are the sinners? And can the one ever become the other?

David Hewson – The House of Dolls Anneliese Vos, 16-year-old daughter of Amsterdam detective, Pieter Vos, disappeared 3 years ago in mysterious circumstances. Her distraught father’s desperate search reveals nothing and he leaves the police force. One day, while Vos is wasting time at the Rijksmuseum staring at a doll’s house that seems to be connected to the case, Laura Bakker, a misfit trainee detective, visits him. She tells him that Katja Prins, daughter of a local politician, has gone missing in similar circumstances. Vos finds himself drawn back into the life of a detective.

Belinda Bauer – Rubbernecker Patrick has been on the outside all his life. Thoughtful, but different, and infuriating even to his own mother, his life changes when he follows an obsession with death to study anatomy at university. When he uncovers a crime that everybody else was too close to see, he proves finally that he has been right all along: nothing is exactly as it seems, and that there have been many more lies closer to home

Harry Bingham – The strange death of Fiona Griffiths –When DC Fiona Griffiths says ‘yes’ to her policeman boyfriend, it’s an affirmation that she wants finally to put her psychological breakdown behind her. She still can’t resist the challenge of an undercover policing course. Finding it easy to assume a new identity, she comes top of the class. So when an ingenious payroll fraud starts to look like the tip of a huge criminal iceberg, she’s selected to infiltrate the fraudsters’ operation. Posing as a meek former payroll clerk forced to work as a cleaner, she hopes the criminals will try to recruit her – knowing that if they discover her real identity, she’s dead.

Luke Delaney – The Keeper – Different to most cops, DI Sean Corrigan’s no psychic, but his own dark past enables him to see a crime through the eyes of the offender. He understands what drives a person to commit murder, rape, arson – but sometimes his gift seems more like a burden. When the body of a brutally murdered woman is found in the woods, Corrigan and his team are on the case, yet it’s not the act of a one-time offender. They’re on the trail of someone who has been taking women from their homes and keeping them captive before disposing of their bodies

James Oswald – The hangman’s song –The body of a man is founding hanging in an empty house. To the Edinburgh police force this appears to be a simple suicide case. Days later another body is found. The body is hanging from an identical rope and the noose has been tied using the same knot. Then a third body is found. As McLean digs deeper he descends into a world where the lines of reality are blurred and that the most irrational answers become the only explanations

Andrea Camilleri – Angelica’s Smile – When members of Vigata’s elite are targeted in a series of perfectly executed burglaries, Inspector Montalbano reluctantly takes the case. It soon becomes clear however that more links these privileged few than simply their lost possessions. It isn’t long too before Montalbano finds himself taken with one of the victims, the captivatingly beautiful young Angelica. But as the detective’s attraction grows – until he can think of little else – a series of strange, anonymous letters claiming responsibility for the thefts begin to arrive.

 Susanna Gregory – Death of a scholar In 1358 the physician Matthew Bartholomew returns to Cambridge to learn his sister is in mourning after the unexpected death of her husband, Oswald. Aware that his son had no interest in the cloth trade that made his fortune, Oswald left the business to his widow, but a spate of burglaries in the town distracts Matthew from supporting Edith in her grief and keeping the peace between her and her wayward son. As well as the theft of irreplaceable items from Michaelhouse, which threatens its very survival, a new foundation, Winwick Hall, is causing consternation amongst Matthew’s colleagues

Robert Galbraith – The cuckoo’s calling  Galbraith =J.K. Rowling’s pseudonym. This gripping, elegant mystery is steeped in the atmosphere of London. A war veteran wounded both physically& psychologically,  Strike’s life is in disarray but the case he is working on gives him a lifeline, despite coming at a personal cost

M. C. Beaton – Death of a policeman Local police stations all over the Scottish Highlands are threatened with closure and this presents an opportunity for DCI Blair, who would love nothing more than to get rid of Sergeant Hamish Macbeth. Blair suggests that Cyril Sessions, a keen young police officer, visit the town of Lochdubh to monitor exactly what Hamish does. On hearing of Blair’s plans Hamish is fully prepared to ensure young Cyril returns back to hq with a full report, but before he can do that, Cyril is found dead and Hamish very quickly becomes the prime suspect for his murder.