Blog

Discover the best in WHSmith books & products with reviews and features below.

Filtered by CRIME & MYSTERY

Pheasants Nest

Kate Delaney has made the biggest mistake of her life. She picked the wrong guy to humiliate on a girls’ night out and now she is living every woman’s worst nightmare. Kate finds herself brutalised, bound and gagged in the back of a car being driven god knows where by a man whose name she doesn’t know, and she is petrified about what’s in store for her.

Day One

Marty told the reporters that she saw it happen. She saw the gunman enter the hall. She saw her mother die trying to protect them all. That’s the version of Day One Marty wishes was true. But strange inconsistencies in her story begin to surface. Details that don’t add up. Questions she can’t answer. The story ignites. Amidst the media frenzy, conspiracy theorists become obsessed with exposing what really happened. And at the epicentre of it all is a small community changed forever. Survivors crushed by guilt. Families torn in half. Outsiders consumed by the hunt for truth.

It Takes a Town

Everyone dies famous in a country town, but glamorous Vanessa Walton was a shining star. A celebrity since she was a child, Vanessa is back on the front page for all the wrong reasons; after a terrible storm she has been found dead at the bottom of her stairs. At first her death seems to be a simple accident, but anonymous letters are discovered that suggest otherwise – and when 16-year-old Jasmine Langridge claims it is murder, she suddenly disappears. As the police begin to investigate, secrets are exposed and friendships unravel.

Bone Lands

1911, on a winter’s night in arid New South Wales wool country, mounted trooper Augustus Hawkins discovers the bodies of three young people. They are scions of the richest family in the district, savagely murdered on a road that Hawkins should have been patrolling, had he not been busy bedding the local schoolteacher. Detectives arrive from Sydney and the disgraced Hawkins, a traumatised veteran of the Boer War, comes under fierce scrutiny.

A Calamity of Souls

Jack Lee is a white lawyer from Freeman County, Virginia, who has never done anything to push back against racism, until he decides to represent Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with brutally killing an elderly and wealthy white couple. Doubting his decision, Lee fears that his legal skills may not be enough to prevail in a case where the odds are already stacked against both him and his client. And he quickly finds himself out of his depth when he realizes that what is at stake is far greater than the outcome of a murder trial.

Joy Moody is Out of Time

On her twin daughters’ twenty-first birthday, Joy Moody – proprietor of Bonbeach’s premier laundromat – is found dead. Yet that is not the strangest thing happening behind the bright pink facade of Joyful Suds. For much of their lives, Joy has been telling Cassie and Andie one big, fat lie: that they are from the future, and that when they turn twenty-one they will travel back to the year 2050. What started as a colourful tale to explain how the girls came to live with her has now become a decade-long deception. Worse still, Joy has started to believe it herself.

Devil’s Kitchen

For years the firefighters of New York’s Engine 99 have rushed fearlessly into hot zones, saving countless lives and stopping devastating blazes in their tracks. They’ve also stolen millions from banks, jewellery stores and art galleries. With their inside knowledge and specialist equipment, they’ve become the most successful heist crew on the East Coast.

The School Run

For parents living in the beautiful coastal town of Pacific Pines, all their hopes and dreams are pinned on the outcome of the annual Gala Day hosted by St Ignatius Boys’ School. To be accepted into the prestigious institution, their sons must battle it out, facing rigorous rounds of physical and mental tests. Their parents will stop at nothing to ensure their sons succeed. But after one boy is struck down in a hit and run, the scandals, secrets and lies that entangle three mothers threaten to unravel their seemingly perfect lives . . .

The Fury

This is a tale of murder.
Or maybe that’s not quite true. At its heart, it’s a love story, isn’t it? One spring morning, reclusive ex-movie star Lana Farrar invites a small group of her closest friends for a weekend away, on her small private island, just off the coast of Mykonos. Beneath the surface, old friendships conceal violent passions and resentments. And in forty-eight hours, one of them will be dead.

The Tilt

A man runs for his life in a forest. A woman plans sabotage. A body is unearthed. Newly-minted homicide detective Nell Buchanan returns to her home town, annoyed at being assigned a decades-old murder – a ‘file and forget’. But this is no ordinary cold case, as the discovery of more bodies triggers a chain of escalating events in the present day. As Nell starts to join the pieces together, she begins to question how well she truly knows those closest to her. Could her own family be implicated in the crimes?

A Shadow at the Door

After a brutal attack and the breakdown of her marriage, life has taught former TV star Remi Lucan that it’s safer to not rely on anyone. Instead, she’s buried herself in Hobart, transforming her dilapidated sandstone house back to its former splendour, and it has been her proudest achievement. Better than her short-lived acting career. Definitely better than being a smile-on-command trophy wife. But when she runs out of money, her wealthy ex-husband tries to force the sale of the property and Remi realises her only option is to lower her defences and take in tenants.

Foul Play

Superstar footballer Luca Bruni is being blackmailed for a night of lust he swears he didn’t participate in…except the ransom photo denies that. A media darling on and off the field, he has powerful charisma, a perfect home life he’ll do anything to protect, and more money than he knows what to do with. He’s determined to defy the extortion racket.

Reacher: Bad Luck and Trouble

You do not mess with Jack Reacher. He is as close to untraceable as a person can get. A loner comfortable in his anonymity and solitude. So when a member of his old Army unit finds a way to contact him, he knows this has to be serious.

The Night Tide

A secluded, peaceful and diverse waterside community faces turmoil as corporate greed threatens to undo generations of heritage and tradition. Tensions mount as the community’s way of life is threatened. Meanwhile, in the city, Dominic Cochrane is at a crossroads. He is made redundant and retreats to the quiet Sydney bay.

The Seven

Yuwonderie’s seven founding families have lorded it over their district for a century, growing ever more rich and powerful. But now—in startling circumstances—one of their own is found dead in a ditch and homicide detectives Ivan Lucic and Nell Buchanan are sent to investigate. Could the murder be connected to the execution of the victim’s friend thirty years ago—another member of The Seven—or even to the long-forgotten story of a servant girl on the brink of the Great War?

Resurrection Walk

Defence attorney Mickey Haller has agreed to represent a woman who is in prison for killing her husband, a sheriff’s deputy, and Haller enlists his half-brother, retired LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, as investigator. Even after four years in prison, his new client maintains her innocence. Reviewing the case, Bosch sees something that doesn’t add up and senses the sheriff’s department close ranks as he pursues the truth.

The Year of the Locust

If, like Kane, you’re a Denied Access Area spy for the CIA, then boundaries have no meaning. Your function is to go in, do whatever is required, and get out again – by whatever means necessary. You know when to run, when to hide – and when to shoot. But some places don’t play by the rules. Some places are too dangerous, even for a man of Kane’s experience. The badlands where the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet are such a place – a place where violence is the only way to survive.

Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect

When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn’t pan out.

The Secret

1992. Two strangers bring a hospital patient a list of names. They ask him for one more, but it’s a question the patient can’t answer. Minutes later he is dispatched through the 12th floor window. His death generates some unexpected attention. That attention comes from the Secretary of Defence, who brings in an inter-agency task force to investigate. Jack Reacher, recently demoted from Major to Captain, is assigned as the Army’s representative.

The Running Grave: Cormoran Strike Bk 7

Private Detective Cormoran Strike is contacted by a worried father whose son, Will, has gone to join a religious cult in the depths of the Norfolk countryside. The Universal Humanitarian Church is, on the surface, a peaceable organisation that campaigns for a better world. Yet Strike discovers that beneath the surface there are deeply sinister undertones, and unexplained deaths.

Darling Girls

For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. Rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother on an idyllic farming estate, they were given an elusive second chance of a happy family life. But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. And when a body is discovered under the home they grew up in, the foster sisters find themselves thrust into the spotlight as key witnesses. Or are they prime suspects?

The Last Devil To Die

An old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing. As the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.

Ripper

Gemma Guillory has lived in Rainier her entire life. She knows the tiny town’s ins and outs like the back of her hand, the people like they are her family, their quirks as if they were her own. She knows her once-charming town is now remembered for one reason, and one reason only. That three innocent people died. That the last stop on the Rainier Ripper’s trail of death seventeen years ago was her innocuous little teashop. She knows that the consequences of catching the Ripper still haunt her police officer husband and their marriage to this day and that some of her neighbours are desperate – desperate enough to welcome a dark tourism company keen to cash in on Rainier’s reputation as the murder town.

Cross Down

With the country in chaos and corruption on all sides, there’s only one person to turn to. When a series of military-style attacks erupt across the United States, Detective John Sampson is called in to investigate. The attacks are untraceable, with patterns too random to decipher, leaving Sampson struggling to find a link amongst the carnage.

The Bullet that Missed

It is an ordinary Thursday and things should finally be returning to normal. Except trouble is never far away where the Thursday Murder Club is concerned. A decade-old cold case leads them to a local news legend and a murder with no body and no answers.

Judgement Day

Detective Jillian Basset is just back from maternity leave, struggling with new motherhood as she tackles the biggest case of her career. As her work and home lives get messier and messier, though, something’s going to give.

Home

Someone has broken into Zoe’s flat. A man she thought she’d never have to see again. They call him the Hand of God. He knows about her job in the cafe, her life in Dublin, her ex-girlfriend, even the knife she’s hidden under the mattress.

How to Kill a Client

Gavin Jones is dead at thirty-nine. As an in-house lawyer who controlled millions of dollars in fees per year, he was legal firm Howard Greene’s biggest client and wielded that power with manipulative contempt. But he saved his worst behaviour for women, at work and at home.

Wild Card

One foggy morning on the banks of the Murray River, a body is found in a burnt-out area of grassland. The heavily tattooed victim, who has suffered two bullet wounds to the head, is identified as Freddie Jones, a bikie from Moama. Detective Sergeant Zoe Mayer is on the case, alongside her trusty service dog, Harry. Although Zoe is determined to track down the murderer, she finds herself stonewalled at every turn-by Freddie’s family, his associates and even the local police. But then a second body is discovered, and soon all bets are off.

The Summer Party

The drowning town holds a secret that someone is prepared to murder for, and as the floodwaters cut Gloster off from the world the three young police officers begin to understand that it’s not just them left stranded. Somewhere out there in the floodwaters is a killer. And he needs them dead.

Headland

The drowning town holds a secret that someone is prepared to murder for, and as the floodwaters cut Gloster off from the world the three young police officers begin to understand that it’s not just them left stranded. Somewhere out there in the floodwaters is a killer. And he needs them dead.

The Soulmate

Before the woman went over the cliff, Pippa and Gabe were happy. They had the kind of marriage that everyone envies, as well as two sweet young daughters, a supportive family, and a picturesque cliff-side home – which would have been idyllic had the tall beachside cliffs not become so popular among those wishing to end their lives.

Desert Star

A year has passed since LAPD detective Renée Ballard quit the force in the face of misogyny, demoralisation and endless red tape. Yet after the chief of police himself tells her she can write her ticket within the department, Ballard takes back her badge, leaving ‘the Late Show’ to rebuild the cold case unit at the elite Robbery-Homicide Division.

No Plan B

Gerrardsville, Colorado. One tragic event. Two witnesses. Two conflicting accounts. One witness sees a woman throw herself in front of a bus – clearly suicide. The other witness is Jack Reacher. And he sees what really happened – a man in grey hoodie and jeans, swift and silent as a shadow, pushed the victim to her death, before grabbing her bag and sauntering away.

Long Shadows

Memory man FBI agent, Amos Decker, returns in this action-packed thriller to investigate the mysterious and brutal murder of a federal judge and her bodyguard at her home in an exclusive, gated community in Florida.

Exiles

At a busy festival site on a warm spring night, a baby lies alone in her pram, her mother vanishing into the crowds.

The Rising Tide

Fifty years ago, a group of teenagers spent a weekend on Holy Island, forging a bond that has lasted a lifetime. Now, they still return every five years to celebrate their friendship, and remember the friend they lost to the rising waters of the causeway at the first reunion.