FREE/BARGAIN — Mystery, Suspense & Thrillers

[sufue]

A year and a half later, The Pudding Lane Plot is £0.99 again in the UK. The link below is still good for Kindle UK, and here's the link for Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-pudding-lane-plot

Originally Posted by sufue

The Pudding Lane Plot is the fifteenth and most recent (Aug, 2022) in Susanna Gregory's Thomas Chaloner series. It's £0.99 today at Kindle UK. I like Gregory's other main series, her Matthew Bartholomew series, a teeny bit more, but both are pretty good, and certainly worth £0.99 IMO...

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09HX72XXK

[sufue]

A Grave Robbery is the ninth and most recent (2024) in Deanna Raybourn's Veronica Speedwell series. It's on sale at Kindle UK for £1.99 and at Kobo UK for £2.99, but discountable, which brings it down to £1.97 with a VIP membership. Not quite sure how that's working, since the VIP thing usually only takes off 10%, but I'm not complaining...

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0C7THND3S
Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/a-grave-robbery

Spoiler:

Veronica and Stoker discover that not all fairy tales have happy endings, and some end in murder, in this latest historical mystery from New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award–nominated author Deanna Raybourn.

Lord Rosemorran has purchased a wax figure of a beautiful reclining woman and asks Stoker to incorporate a clockwork mechanism to give the Rosemorran Collection its own Sleeping Beauty in the style of Madame Tussaud’s. But when Stoker goes to cut the mannequin open to insert the mechanism, he makes a gruesome discovery: this is no wax figure. The mannequin is the beautifully preserved body of a young woman who was once very much alive. But who would do such a dreadful thing, and why?

Sleuthing out the answer to this question sets Veronica and Stoker on their wildest adventure yet. From the underground laboratories of scientists experimenting with electricity to resurrect the dead in the vein of Frankenstein to the traveling show where Stoker once toured as an attraction, the gaslit atmosphere of London in October is the perfect setting for this investigation into the unknown. Through it all, the intrepid pair is always one step behind the latest villain—a man who has killed once and will stop at nothing to recover the body of the woman he loved. Will they unmask him in time to save his next victim? Or will they become the latest figures to be immortalized in his collection of horrors?

[sufue]

All the Devils Are Here is £0.99 again at Kindle and Kobo UK. Be careful - there was a different version, with a different cover, on sale a while back, that does not appear as previously purchased on the web page of this newer version, so check carefully before you buy!

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09PYYBD1D
Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/all...ls-are-here-10

Originally Posted by sufue

All the Devils Are Here is the latest (2020) in Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series, which I love - and apparently so do the critics, since every previous title in the series has been nominated for and/or won at least one award, and most for multiple awards. It was briefly £0.99 at Kindle UK a while back, but if you missed that, it has now dropped to $4.99 at Kindle US, as part of the Daily Deal today, matched at Kobo US. This is not a great sale price, but considering that it has been sitting at $14.99 since publication, and considering the popularity of the series, I thought I'd post it.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0841FHN4C/
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/all...ils-are-here-7

[sufue]

Silent Partner is the fourth in Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware series. It's £2.99 in the UK right now, which is a bit much for decades old backlist IMO, but it doesn't go on sale very often, so...

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002TZ3DF8
Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/sil...-series-book-4

Spoiler:

Dr Sharon Ransom is the most beautiful woman in the room; she's also the most troubled. So when former lover, psychologist Alex Delaware, bumps into her at a lavish LA cocktail party, though still attracted to her, fear of reviving unhappy memories prevents him from offering the help she seems so desperate for.

Hours later, Sharon's body is discovered with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Tortured by guilt, Alex wants answers. As his investigation begins, dark memories of his past with Sharon emerge, and a present full of madness, murder and sexual violence unfolds.

[SomeSteve]

A Perfect Spy by John le Carré is $1.99 at Amazon US and Kobo US.

https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Spy-N.../dp/B004XFZ4EU

https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/a-perfect-spy-2

[sufue]

The Professional is near the end of the Spenser series by Robert B Parker. That is, it's near the end of the books written by Parker himself, although there have been a number of continuation titles by other authors, some of them pretty good IMO. In any case, The Professional is £2.99 in the UK right now, and although it has been cheaper in the past, it has been many years...

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B002WEPFAC
Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the...nser-mystery-2

Spoiler:

Private eye Spenser has never had any difficulty handling women. But when four stunningly beautiful trophy wives hire him to protect them against a blackmailer threatening to expose their infidelities, even he must admit that they look like trouble.

Tracking down Gary Eisenhower, the blackmailer and serial adulterer, isn't too difficult - but almost in spite of himself Spenser finds that he quite likes the guy. Certainly the women, with their loose purse-strings and looser morals, and their loveless marriages to rich, powerful, corrupt men, are hard to feel sorry for.

But a killing soon changes the complexion of the case, and draws Spenser into the world of Boston's moneyed aristocracy: a world of corruption, vice and murder. As the bodies start to pile up, Spenser must decide which of his friends he can trust.

[sufue]

The Last Remains is $1.99 now in the US. First time I've seen it this low here.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B7NG4HFV
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-last-remains-2

Originally Posted by sufue

The Last Remains is the 15th and most recent (2023) in the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths. It's £0.99 at Kindle UK today as part of today's Daily Deal, and it's matched at Kobo UK. Which may be important since it was pubbed in Jan 2023, so not sure about downloading/format switching with the new Kindle issues - I haven't been following that all that closely. But, giving the Kobo UK link here too...

Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09R6J6KFM
Kobo UK: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/the-last-remains

[sufue]

The Lantern's Dance is the eighteenth and most recent (2024) in Laurie R King's Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series. It's $2.99 in the US right now.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C56RRQPT
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-lantern-s-dance-1

Spoiler:

After their recent adventures in Transylvania, Russell and Holmes look forward to spending time with Holmes’ son, the famous artist Damian Adler, and his family. But when they arrive at Damian’s house, they discover that the Adlers have fled from a mysterious threat.

Holmes rushes after Damian while Russell, slowed down by a recent injury, stays behind to search the empty house. In Damian’s studio, she discovers four crates packed with memorabilia related to Holmes’ granduncle, the artist Horace Vernet. It’s an odd mix of treasures and clutter, including a tarnished silver lamp with a rotating shade: an antique yet sophisticated form of zoetrope, fitted with strips of paper whose images dance with the lantern’s spin.

In the same crate is an old journal written in a nearly impenetrable code. Intrigued, Russell sets about deciphering the intricate cryptograph, slowly realizing that each entry is built around an image—the first of which is a child, bundled into a carriage by an abductor, watching her mother recede from view.

Russell is troubled, then entranced, but each entry she decodes brings more questions. Who is the young Indian woman who created this elaborate puzzle? What does she have to do with Damian, or the Vernets—or the threat hovering over the house?

The secrets of the past appear to be reaching into the present. And it seems increasingly urgent that Russell figure out how the journal and lantern are related to Damian—and possibly to Sherlock Holmes himself.

Could there be things about his own history that even the master detective does not perceive?

[sufue]

The third book in Dana Cameron's Emma Fielding series, Past Malice, is $0.99 right now in the US.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000VYX98A
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/past-malice

Spoiler:

What bones are buried in the shadows of the past?

Asked to join in a dig at the site of the eighteenth–century Chandler House, archaeologist Emma Fielding and her student crew have descended upon Stone Harbor, Massachusetts. But certain residents of the tiny coastal community are none too happy about Emma's arrival -- especially when her excavation uncovers a pair of freshly slain corpses. There are dark forces at play in this dangerously divided town, where a distrust of strangers wars with a desire for tourist dollars. And when a young local's life is snuffed out, Emma is determined to get to the twisted roots of the strange secrets buried in this killing ground. But a mystery that lies among the tumbled ruins of a once grand manor could change Stone Harbor forever. And for some murderous someone, one more death -- Emma's -- would be a small price to pay to keep it hidden.

[sufue]

Three books in Carolyn Hart's Henrietta O’Dwyer Collins (Henrie O) series are on sale right now in the US.

Death on the River Walk, #5, $1.99
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000PDZG24
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/dea...the-river-walk

Resort to Murder, #6, $0.99
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000PDZG56
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/resort-to-murder-2

Set Sail for Murder, #7, $0.99
Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000PDZFWK
Kobo US: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/set-sail-for-murder

[GA Russell]

QED, Queen's Experiments in Detection

15 short stories by Ellery Queen

$1.99

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00Z8POC3S

[sufue]

A Body on the Beach by PF Ford is today's free Joffe book. It's the first in Ford's West Wales mystery series.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJGCRDQC
Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BJGCRDQC

Spoiler:

Detective Norman is out of retirement and back on the beat in a rainy Welsh seaside town. Llangwelli might be short on sunshine, but it’s certainly not short on murders . . . Norman is a bit old-fashioned, but he’s also willing to learn from his band of misfit recruits.

He’s asked to mentor a team of misfits in a sleepy Welsh seaside town. But training has barely begun when a woman’s body washes up on the beach at Llangwelli.

It turns out to be local woman Kimberley Lawrence. Missing for over a week, but her husband didn’t report her disappearance.

The team’s investigation hits a brick wall — no one will talk, and every suspect seems to have an alibi.

Then the discovery of a missing shoe turns the case on its head.

It’s going to take all Detective Norman’s experience to whip his band of inexperienced misfits into shape to catch a killer.

[sufue]

A whole bunch of books in the Bradecote and Catchpoll series by Sarah Hawkswood are recent price drops at Kindle UK. All are £1.99 each unless otherwise indicated...

• Servant of Death, #1: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01MYTU2FR
• Hostage to Fortune, #4: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07R4BD6HT
• Vale of Tears, #5: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07R4BCXW7
• River of Sins, #7: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B089Y4WDJ7
• Blood Runs Thicker, #8: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08GP3C513
• Too Good to Hang, #11: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BN2S5MRY
• Litany of Lies, #12, £2.99: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CSQHK2S2

[GA Russell]

5 Detective Novels Magazine
Fall, 1952

includes

The Long Night
by William Campbell Gault

$1.99

https://www.radioarchives.com/5_Dete...2_p/re1114.htm

[sufue]

Today's Joffe free book is Operation Lightning Bolt, which is the first in the Kim Maxwell WWII historical mystery series by Hilary Green.

Kindle US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BBHBFVMK
Kindle UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BBHBFVMK

Spoiler:

Hampshire, 1943.

Kim Maxwell has been languishing in the ‘cooler’ in what she sees as punishment for getting caught — and tortured — by the Nazis, before being freed by Resistance fighters and smuggled back into England. Now she is sent for by the head of SOE. This is her chance to prove herself.

A fellow agent has been found murdered. It would seem that Lilian Harvey heard something she shouldn’t have and that her murder was a warning. Setting out to uncover the culprit, Kim spots a strange zigzag pattern on the wall above the bed where the body was found, which Lilian drew using her own blood as she lay dying.

Before Kim knows it, she uncovers evidence that there exists a dark society working in the shadows and she realizes the Nazis are not England’s only enemy.

When she meets the mysterious yet captivating Roland, aka Red Fox, they embark on a mission to solve the murder — all the while being drawn to each other and further into trouble.

But in order to expose this dangerous web of deceit, Kim must go back into the heart of occupied France — and into the hands of the enemy . . .