Penguin Classics: Crime & Thriller

During a much-needed holiday, Maigret pulls a prank on colleague Janvier. When Maigret's holiday plans go awry, he and his wife spend their vacation in Paris, on the condition that he has nothing to do with work. However, a case involving the death of a doctor's wife intrigues Maigret and he assiduously follows its development in the papers. He cannot...

When Maigret becomes the accused, he must rely on his investigative skills to prove his innocence. For the first time in his career, Inspector Maigret receives a written summons to the Prefect's office, where he learns that he has been accused of assaulting a young woman. With his career and reputation on the line, Maigret must fight to prove his...

Maigret at the Coroner's sees Maigret grappling with the American justice system on a trip to Arizona. The FBI man was convinced, in short, that Maigret was a big shot in his own country but that here, in the United States, he was incapable of figuring out anything. The more Cole watched him thinking things over, the more it amused...

Maigret at Picratt's delves into the sordid world of Montmartre nightclubs in this new translation. Through the half-open door, Dr. Pasquier could be seen putting his overcoat back on and replacing his instruments in his bag. On the white goatskin rug at the foot of the untouched bed, a body was stretched out—black satin dress, chalk white arm, auburn hair....

Maigret and the Tramp by Georges Simenon follows Inspector Maigret as he investigates an attack on a Parisian tramp. When a tramp is recovered from the Seine after being badly beaten, Maigret must delve into the man's personal circumstances to figure out just who wanted to kill him.

An old acquaintance of Maigret's reappears on the streets of Paris, and the inspector finds himself caught up in her fate once more. Maigret's attitude came as a surprise to those who were working alongside him in Rue de la Ferme. Ever since the morning, there had been something unusual in the way that the inspector had been directing operations....

Maigret and the Saturday Caller introduces us to a tense encounter where Inspector Maigret finds himself face-to-face with a visitor who openly admits his intentions to commit murder. However, when this visitor goes missing, Maigret is left to worry that he himself may have become the victim. The story unfolds one evening when Maigret is followed home by a man...

Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses follows Maigret as he struggles to break through a victim's uncooperative family to uncover the truth behind a murder in book fifty-three of the series. Maigret is called to the home of the Lachaume family, where the eldest brother has been found shot dead. Upon his arrival, the family close ranks and claim to have...

Maigret and the Old People explores the intriguing investigation of a murder involving an esteemed official. Maigret is called to the home of Armand de Saint-Hilaire, a highly respected official who has been found shot dead in his study by his housekeeper. After interviewing everyone concerned, Maigret is at a loss regarding the identity of the perpetrator until he comes...

A new translation in the Penguin Maigret series – the inspector uncovers some poisonous family politics. The moon must have risen above the mist, which was now faintly incandescent, and, when Arlette stopped, he saw the pale shape of her face, with the wide line of her mouth... Then, still standing there in front of him, she said in a...

When a professional gambler is shot dead, all except Maigret suspect his mistress is to blame. Maigret is called to the home of professional gambler, Felix Nahour, who has been found shot dead by his chambermaid. Maigret is shocked to recognise a photo of the man's wife, who becomes the main suspect. All signs point to her guilt, but Maigret...

A gripping novel about the corrupt and avaricious world of politics, newly translated as part of the Maigret series. Was Maigret wrong? From one point of view, certainly, because he had nothing to gain but everything to lose in confronting as powerful and wily a man as Mascoulin. The latter, on his feet, was proffering his hand. In a flash,...

Maigret and the Man on the Bench draws Inspector Maigret into the poignant story of a man trapped in the monotony of everyday life. Were these yellow shoes part of the reason Maigret was so interested in this man? He would never admit it, but for years he too had longed to wear olive-green shoes. They were fashionable at the...

A homeless loner haunted by his past is found murdered in this murky tale. When a socially isolated vagrant is found dead in the condemned building where he had been sleeping in Les Halles, Paris, Maigret must delve into the victim's mysterious past to discover who could have killed him.

Maigret and the Lazy Burglar features Maigret's relentless pursuit of justice as he tracks down the murderer of a burglar he had known for thirty years. Set against a high-profile hunt for the latest criminal gang to hit Paris, Maigret is determined to uncover the truth behind the death of a quiet crook for whom he cannot help feeling affection...

Maigret and the Killer involves Inspector Maigret on a compelling investigation following the stabbing of a young man. When a tape recorder is discovered on the murder victim, Maigret sees it as a potentially crucial clue, which could lead him to the killer.

In the penultimate novel in the series, Maigret investigates a crime in Paris's seedy red light district. The body of a well-known Parisian restaurateur turns up on Avenue Junot in Montmartre, seemingly having been killed elsewhere. Inspector Maigret is on the case and soon discovers that the murder may be gang-related after a colleague working in the red-light district receives...

The discovery of a dismembered body leads Maigret into one of his strangest cases yet. When a man's headless body is pulled from the Canal Saint Martin, Maigret and his colleagues are puzzled. In a chance encounter at a local café, Maigret uncovers the truth behind this disturbing murder in an intriguing story of an estranged family, adulterous affairs, and...

When a man is found dead at home, Maigret must look past the seemingly good intentions of the victim's family to figure out just who the culprit is. A retired manufacturer has been shot dead by his own pistol, last seen alive by his son-in-law. In this seemingly motiveless murder, Inspector Maigret must rely on his famous intuition to discover...

A new translation of this devastating tale of a young woman whose new life in Paris is tragically cut short, part of the Maigret series. Maigret and the Dead Girl follows Maigret and fellow inspector Lognon as they clash in their investigations into the murder of an unknown young woman in Paris. Maigret endeavours to piece together the story of...

A new translation in the Penguin Maigret series: Madame Maigret's Friend sees Madame Maigret take the lead in this disturbing investigation. When he got to his door, he was surprised not to hear any noise in the kitchen and not to smell any food. He went in, crossed the dining room, where the table had not been laid, and at...

London Match by Len Deighton sees Bernard Samson becoming a pawn in a game played by the Kremlin in the final instalment of the Game, Set and Match trilogy. Long-suffering spy Bernard Samson has, against all the odds, enticed a Soviet agent to defect to London—but this proves to be the start of something even bigger. He learns that there...

The unnamed spy of The IPCRESS File uncovers a secret buried deep in a Nazi U-Boat. A sunken U-Boat has lain undisturbed on the Atlantic ocean floor since the Second World War—until now. Inside its rusting hull, among the corpses of top-rank Nazis, lie secrets people will kill to obtain. The sequel to Len Deighton's game-changing debut The IPCRESS File,...

Hope by Len Deighton immerses Bernard Samson in the complicated dissolution of the USSR in the second novel of the Faith, Hope, Charity trilogy. Bernard Samson makes his return to Berlin in this instalment of the classic spy trilogy, Faith, Hope, and Charity. In this narrative, Bernard is striving to readjust his life amidst uncertainties regarding his wife Fiona and...

Funeral in Berlin is a vintage spy thriller and part of The IPCRESS File series, where a Russian scientist defects to the West. The setting is the dark and dangerous Berlin of 1963. The anonymous hero of The IPCRESS File is tasked with arranging the defection of a leading Soviet scientist, orchestrated through an elaborate mock coffin. However, he quickly...

The first novel in the celebrated Faith, Hope and Charity trilogy finds Bernard Samson in rural Germany, trying to deliver a Russian defector to London Central. Bernard Samson returns to Berlin in the first novel in the classic spy trilogy, Faith, Hope and Charity. Bernard has known that he is not getting the full picture from London Central ever since...

The race is on to find a German agent, hiding somewhere in the maze of wartime Cairo. January 1942. Rommel's seemingly invincible Afrika Korps is at the gates of Egypt – perhaps soon to threaten Cairo itself. And Rommel has a spy in the city – a source so well-informed that the German commander knows in advance every movement of...

A gripping tale of espionage and deceit from the master of the spy novel, new to Penguin Modern Classics. After a routine security check by George Smiley, civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently kills himself. When Smiley finds Circus head Maston is trying to blame him for the man's death, he begins his own investigation, meeting with Fennan's widow to find...

Le Carré exposes the ugly face of international relations in this spy thriller, new to Penguin Modern Classics. West Germany, a simmering cauldron of radical protests, has produced a new danger to Britain—Karfeld, the menacing leader of the opposition. At the same time, Leo Harting, a Second Secretary in the British Embassy, has gone missing—along with more than forty Confidential...

An unnamed spy is entangled in Paris's seedy underworld in a rollercoaster Cold War thriller. An Expensive Place to Die transports readers to Paris in the 1960s, a city that caters to every taste, especially at the private 'clinic' run by the enigmatic Monsieur Datt on Avenue Foch. This clinic supplies psychedelic drugs and sexual favours to the city's elite,...

A Murder of Quality is Le Carré's ingenious mystery, featuring his most famous recurring character, George Smiley. Stella Rode has twice disturbed the ancient cloisters of Carne School—firstly by being the wrong sort, with her doyleys and china ducks, and secondly by being murdered. George Smiley, who has his own connection with the school, is asked by an old Service...

A novel of tremendous political relevance, A Most Wanted Man was adapted into a critically-acclaimed film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and is new to Penguin Modern Classics. A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night. He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse round his neck. He...

Three seasonal stories set in Paris at Christmas, from the celebrated creator of Inspector Maigret. It is Christmas in Paris, but beneath the sparkling lights and glittering decorations lie sinister deeds and dark secrets. In the short story that lends its title to the volume, A Maigret Christmas, the Inspector receives two unexpected visitors on Christmas Day, who lead him...

A gritty, hilarious detective novel from Harlem's master crime writer. A golden Cadillac big enough to cross the ocean has been seen sailing along the streets of Harlem. A hit-and-run victim's been hit so hard she got embedded in the wall of a convent. A shootout with three heistmen dressed as cops has left an important politician in a coma—and...

A high-octane story from the great Eric Ambler, of a journalist on the run in the south of France. Lucia Bernardi was last seen driving a car at top speed away from a villa—and the body of her murdered Iraqi lover—in Switzerland. Now, disgraced journalist Piet Maas has been sent to find her in the south of France. When he...

A new translation of this novel set in a tranquil town on the Dutch coast, part of the Maigret series. A Crime in Holland presents a scene reminiscent of a picture-book town, with everything in its place, like ornaments on the mantlepiece of a careful housewife. 'Just take a look,' Duclos said in an undertone, pointing to the scene all...

The story of two friends whose dubious relationship spans West Berlin in the 1960s through the Cold War to the age of present-day terrorism is new to Penguin Modern Classics. The friends of the title are Ted Mundy, a British soldier's son born in 1947 in a newly independent Pakistan, and Sasha, the refugee son of an East German Lutheran...

46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946 He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension praeternatural.

Ambler's electrifying Istanbul-set thriller from 1962, and the basis for the classic film Topkapi. Arthur Abdel Simpson is a failed journalist and soon-to-be failed thief, embittered by memories of his unhappy childhood in England and eking out a living in Athens. When he spots a newly arrived tourist at the airport, he offers his services as a private driver and...

The first novel in the Bernard Samson series is a dazzling return to Deighton’s world of Cold War espionage. Embattled agent Bernard Samson is used to being passed over for promotion as his younger, more ambitious colleagues—including his own wife Fiona—rise up the ranks of MI6. When a valued agent in East Berlin warns the British of a mole at...

In this classic novel—adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film in 2011 and new to Penguin Modern Classics—George Smiley faces his greatest challenge yet. George Smiley, who is a troubled man of infinite compassion, is also a single-mindedly ruthless adversary as a spy. The scene which he enters is a Cold War landscape of moles and lamplighters, scalp-hunters and pavement artists,...

A Perfect Spy by John le Carré is widely considered a masterpiece of the spy genre and a cornerstone of contemporary British literature, now proudly featured in Penguin Modern Classics. Le Carré's eleventh novel tells the intricate tale of Magnus Pym, a high-ranking diplomat who mysteriously disappears, sending shockwaves through the intelligence community. The novel follows Magnus Pym's sudden disappearance,...

In A Murder of Quality by John le Carré, readers are drawn into a gripping mystery that reveals the dark underbelly of a prestigious British public school. When Stella Rode, the wife of a respected teacher at the exclusive Carne School, is brutally murdered, George Smiley is called upon to investigate. What appears to be a straightforward case soon unravels...

The Constant Gardener by John le Carré is a masterfully crafted tale of love, loss, and the quest for justice, set against a backdrop of political intrigue and corporate corruption. This gripping narrative begins with the brutal murder of Tessa Quayle, a passionate and determined humanitarian, on the remote shores of Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya. The enigmatic circumstances surrounding...

The third and final novel of John le Carré's acclaimed 'Karla Trilogy', Smiley's People, published in Penguin Modern Classics for the first time, transports readers into the intricate world of espionage and Cold War intrigue. When a former agent is found murdered, George Smiley, retired but ever-observant, finds himself pulled back into the shadowy operations of the Secret Service. Despite...

George Smiley becomes tangled in a case of suicide and espionage in le Carré's first novel. After a routine security check by George Smiley, civil servant Samuel Fennan apparently kills himself. When Smiley finds that Circus head Maston is trying to blame him for the man's death, he begins his own investigation, meeting with Fennan's widow to find out what...

The international bestseller by China's foremost thriller writer Decoded tells the story of Rong Jinzhwen, one of the great code-breakers in the world. A mathematical genius, Jinzhen is recruited to the cryptography department of China's secret services, Unit 701, where he is assigned the task of breaking the elusive 'Code Purple'. Jinzhen rises through the ranks to eventually become China's...

A handpicked selection of novels featuring Simenon's legendary literary detective, Inspector Maigret, with striking new covers. It is Christmas in Paris, but beneath the sparkling lights and glittering decorations lie sinister deeds and dark secrets. In the short story that lends its title to the volume, the Inspector receives two unexpected visitors on Christmas Day, who lead him on the...

An omnibus comprising Raymond Chandler's three Philip Marlowe novels, The Lady in the Lake, The High Window and The Little Sister.

A superb murder mystery set in the snowy wastes of ancient northern China. Judge Dee is again in relentless pursuit of evil in one of van Gulik's most strange, atmospheric, and ingenious murder mysteries. Set in a remote, freezing part of China, the novel twists together a girl's disappearance, the theft of some jewels, and a horrifying beheading. And, just...

A riveting thriller about an ordinary man's quest for extraordinary vengeance. Charlie Heller is a CIA cryptographer, a quiet man in a back-room job. He's not a spy, let alone an assassin. But when his beloved fiancée is murdered by terrorists and his employers refuse to pursue her killers, Heller decides to take matters into his own hands. Pursuing the...

Essential reading for mystery fans: the first masterpiece by the doyenne of American noir. Sailor, former henchman and trouble-accruing gangster, travels from Chicago to Santa Fe, New Mexico, looking for revenge and for money. But it's hard to make a dishonest buck when everything seems to be against him. It is Fiesta, it is hot, thousands of people are crowding...

As we publish all of le Carré's work for the first time, the Smiley Collection offers a special look for the books featuring John le Carré's most iconic character – George Smiley. The Cold War is over and Ned has been demoted to the training academy. He asks his old mentor, George Smiley, to address his passing-out class. There are...

No writer chronicles the battles of misfits, underdogs and renegades like Elmore Leonard ... Valdez is Coming is a stunning tale of morality and justice in which a simple, honest man is transformed into a killer - and begins a long journey of revenge against those who scarred his soul for ever. Elmore Leonard's Western novels stand as some of...

Tough guy Jack Ryan goes looking for a missing lowlife and finds himself in a whole lot of trouble... Motor city process server and ex-thug Jack Ryan is very good at finding people - especially people who don't want to be found. Now he's being offered large bucks to locate a lost lowlife named Robert Leary, a.k.a. Bobby Lear. But...

Detroit comes to the Holy Land as a mixed bag of gangsters arrive looking for revenge Al Rosen was doing just fine, hiding out in Israel - until he decided to play Good Samaritan and rescue some elderly tourists from a hotel fire. Now his picture's been published in the press, and the guys he's been hiding from know exactly...

A nail-biting, tough-talking classic western from the author of GET SHORTY and JACKIE BROWN. In Last Stand at Sabre River, a Civil War veteran returns home to find a Yankee's private army living on his land, while another enemy waits to strike... Paul Cable has fought - and lost - for the Confederacy but when he returns home he finds...

A classic Western from one of the masters of the genre. A remote stage-coach station is closing down and a small group of travellers are thrown together on the last wagon out- the mysterious Doctor Favor and his wife, a traumatised girl, a brutal stranger called Braden, the station manager, the sharp-eyed young narrator and John Russell, known simply as...

A brilliant story of revenge and counter-revenge in Atlantic City After being shot by a mugger, Lt Vincent Mora is convalescing in Puerto Rico. There he meets Iris, a beautiful young woman who is bored and frustrated, looking for excitement and a new life. Then she is offered a job as a 'hostess' at a casino in Atlantic city by...

'As gritty and hard-driving a thriller as you'll find . . . The action never stops, the language sings and stings' Washington Post Clement Mansell knows how easy it is to get away with murder. The crazed killer is back on the Detroit streets—thanks to some nifty courtroom moves by his lawyer—and this time he's feeling invincible enough to execute...

A rollicking tale of the 1970s Detroit criminal underworld from legendary crime writer Elmore Leonard. Swag follows 'The Ten Golden Rules for Successful Armed Robbery'. If rigidly adhered to, these rules will catapult two trainee robbers—Frank and Stick—into Detroit's criminal elite. But for how long can they maintain the Rules' austere discipline as the lurid, fun temptations pile up?

Three previously unpublished stories by the master of tense set-ups. These three stories—Picket Line, 'Chick Killer', and 'Ice Man'—show Elmore Leonard at his most terse and harsh, able to conjure up a sense of profound unease and injustice in just a few words. The main story Picket Line describes a tense stand-off between migrant workers in Texas, police, and labour...

A lean and mean thriller about one man and the Mob from the crime laureate INDEPENDENT The last time Florida motel owner George Moran was in the Dominican Republic, he was in a uniform and people were shooting at him. Years later, he's back looking for a girl he lost—and finding one he'd be better off without. Mary de Boya...

From the bestselling author of Get Shorty and Jackie Brown, a thriller spiced with blackmail and revenge. Detroit businessman Harry Mitchell is a self-made man, happily married for over twenty-two years and a pillar of the community. But then he slips – he meets a young 'model' and begins an affair. One night he arrives at his girlfriend's apartment and...

A cult crime classic about pool-playing, hard drinking and a search for a meaningful life. Jack Levitt—teenaged orphan and small-time criminal—lives off his wits, dividing his time between the pool halls, bars, and brothels of Portland, Oregon. Billy Lancing is a young black runaway and pool hustler who falls into Jack's orbit. After a messed-up heist lands Jack at reform...

From America's top writer of hardboiled crime, the novel that became Tarantino's hit film Jackie Brown. An air hostess doing the Caribbean-Florida run, Jackie also uses her job to shift large amounts of hot money. The Feds are closing in on her, and the highly dysfunctional arms-dealers she works for are not getting any more functional. It would involve huge...

A rip-roaring caper novel by bestselling crime author Elmore Leonard. Mickey is bored and angry with her life as a housewife in suburban Detroit, trapped with her dreary, golf-obsessed husband. Then she is kidnapped by a deeply unimpressive criminal gang who want to trade her for a huge ransom from her—as it turns out—crooked husband. But what if she doesn't...

A biting psychological thriller from the bestselling author of Tokyo Express, now available in English for the first time. Onizuka Kumako is a fierce woman—tall, beautiful, and not afraid to speak her mind. In Tokyo bars, she seduces customers and commits petty crime, using her connections to the local yakuza to get by. When she meets Shirakawa Fukutaro, a rich...

A masterful novel about the injustices of the prison system and the humanity that flourishes despite it, by the author of the acclaimed Harlem Detective series. Thrill-seeking white teenager Jimmy Monroe is serving a twenty-year sentence for robbery. The penitentiary is a place where terror and chaos reign, where corrupt guards inflict casual and insidious violence, where men isolated from...

Two great novels featuring hard-boiled Californian detective Philip Marlowe. Raymond Chandler created the fast-talking, trouble-seeking Californian private eye Philip Marlowe for his first great novel, The Big Sleep, in 1939. Marlowe's entanglement with the Sternwood family—alongside an attendant cast of colourful underworld figures—forms the backdrop to a story reflecting all the tarnished glitter of the great American Dream. The hard-boiled...

A darkly comic thriller following a cynical LA gumshoe who makes the catastrophic mistake of helping a 14-year-old find her dog... Serendipity Dahlquist is a headstrong roller-blading teenager living in LA who has lost her dog. She asks private investigator Leo Bloodworth to help her find the missing pet. In what proves to have been a moment of madness, Bloodworth...

An endlessly ingenious battle across Japan between dogged detective Akechi Kogoro and the many-faced thief Gold Mask. A frenzied test of wits between ace detective Akechi Kogoro and the seemingly superhuman and fiendishly clever villain known only as Gold Mask, this is one of Edogawa Rampo's most enjoyable and witty novels. The anonymous fiend, lurking imperturbably behind his glittering mask,...

Game Without Rules features two secret agents living in the English countryside who try—and fail—to live a quiet life in these hugely enjoyable crime stories. Behrens and Calder are two secret agents residing in the peaceful English countryside, desperately seeking a quiet life. However, despite their best efforts, they find themselves repeatedly obliged to confront and eliminate a host of...

A memory loss mystery set in wartime New York Who stole George Matthews' life? 'Doctor, I think I'm losing my mind...' When a wealthy young man turns up at respected psychiatrist Dr George Matthews' office uttering these words, it changes his safe existence forever. Suddenly Matthews finds himself dragged into a strange, surreal world where nothing is certain. And when...

An intricate, puzzle-like murder mystery set in Imperial China, featuring the indefatigable Judge Dee. The Chinese Gold Murders invites you into a world where Judge Dee is about to step into the shoes of a dead man... Most people would refuse the job of Magistrate at the lonely port town of Peng-lai—especially as the last occupant of the post has...

One of the classic works by the master of Japanese detective fiction. A super-criminal— as deadly as she is beautiful— wagers all in an epic battle with a master detective, Akechi Kogoro. No trick is too elaborate, no disguise too fantastic as the two perfectly matched antagonists take turns to outwit each other. Experience the gripping tale of cunning and...

Maigret goes to London on the trail of a young man on the run. When Maigret's prized gun goes missing, he must travel to London on the trail of a troubled young man on the run. Maigret's Revolver is a wonderful picture of both London and Paris and one of Simenon's most ingenious and satisfying stories.

One of Inspector Maigret's strangest and most compelling cases. The discovery of a dismembered body in the Canal Saint Martin leads Maigret into a tangled, baffling case involving a taciturn bistro-owner and a mysterious inheritance. This is a matchless description of a harsh, grim part of Paris a long way from the tourist trail, and a perfect example of Maigret's...

A handpicked selection of novels featuring Simenon's legendary literary detective, Inspector Maigret, with striking new covers. The last time Maigret went home to the village of his birth was for his father's funeral. Now an anonymous note predicting a crime during All Souls' Day mass draws him back there. Before long, the prediction has become a brutal reality – and...

A thrilling crime classic, from the bestselling author of Tokyo Express Tokyo, 1960. As the first rays of morning light hit the rails at Kamata Station, a man's body is found on the tracks. With only two leads—a distinctive accent and a single word, 'kameda'—Senior Inspector Imanishi Eitaro is called in to solve the puzzle. Setting aside his beloved bonsai...