Martha Grimes

"In the latest series outing, The Knowledge, the Scotland Yard detective nearly meets his match in a Baker Street Irregulars-like gang of kids and a homicide case that reaches into east Africa. Robbie Parsons is one of London's finest, a black cab driver who knows every street, every theater, every landmark in the city by heart. In his backseat is a man with a gun in his hand--a man who brazenly committed a crime in front of the Artemis Club, a rarefied...

"At Vertigo 42, a bar high above London's financial district, Richard Jury meets Tom Williamson - a friend of a friend who is convinced his wife, Tess, was murdered 17 years ago. Tess's death was ruled accidental - a fall caused by vertigo - but Jury agrees to re-examine the case. A young girl's fatal fall at a children's party 22 years ago at Tom and Tess's home may be connected. After an elegantly dressed woman falls from a tower near a pub that...

"The dog came back."
"This is a joke, right?"
"No, it isn't…So do you want to hear the rest of it?" Dumbly, Jury nodded.
The rest of it is told by Harry Johnson, who sits down by Richard Jury in the tavern, The Old Wine Shades. Over three successive nights, Harry spins out this story of a good friend of his whose wife and son (and dog) disappeared one day when they were Surrey. No trace, no clue, no lead...

Maud Chadwick sits at the end of the pier, watching the party across the water. Sometimes she is joined by Sheriff Sam DeGheyn, who finds her quiet company a refuge from the problems of his own marriage and from his increasing professional concerns. For the town's sleepy atmosphere is deceptive: three local women have been murdered and Sam suspects the wrong man has been convicted and that the real killer is readying himself to strike again.