Val McDermid

CID isn't what it used to be. It's a been a bad week for acting Detective Inspector Logan McRae. Every time his unit turns up to anything interesting, DCI Steel's Major Investigation Team waltzes in and takes over, leaving CID with all the dull and horrible jobs. Like dealing with Mrs Black - who hates her neighbour, the police, and everyone else. Or identifying the homeless man who drank himself to death behind some bins. Or tracking down the wife...

Acid Row - a no-man's land where angry, alienated youth controls the streets. Sophie Morrison, a young doctor, is trapped at the centre of a terrifying siege with a known paedophile. Young Amy is missing and the mob want retribution, no matter what.

When Robbie Bishop, star midfielder for the Bradfield Vics, is poisoned by a rare and deadly toxin. Robbie was adored, so the public want answers - but the answers aren't coming, and trails are running cold. Then a bomb explodes in the football stadium, causing massive casualties - and another man dies from poisoning.

It's summer in the Granite City, but even the sunshine can't improve the mood at Grampian Police Headquarters. Aberdeen's growing Polish community is under attack from a serial offender who leaves mutilated victims to be discovered on building sites - eyes gouged out and the sockets burned.

Reluctantly, Kate Brannigan agrees to go undercover in an attempt to help out a friend, but soon finds her own life at risk. This is the fifth in Val McDermid's Manchester-based crime series featuring her tough-talking, kick-boxing private eye.

'Muna's fortunes changed for the better on the day that Mr and Mrs Songoli's younger son failed to come home from school.' Before then her bedroom was a dark windowless cellar, her activities confined to cooking and cleaning. She'd grown used to being maltreated by the Songoli family; to being a slave. She's never been outside, doesn't know how to read or write, and cannot speak English. At least that's what the Songolis believe. But Muna is far cleverer...

Someone's leaving little knots of bones outside Detective Inspector Logan McRae's house, but he's got more pressing things to worry about. Rival drug gangs are fighting over product and territory; two teenage lovers are missing; someone's crippling Asian immigrants; and Logan's been lumbered with an ambitious new Detective Sergeant, a mountain of paperwork, and the unwelcome attention of his superiors and the local crime boss.

As a massive storm batters the Scottish coast, Gordon Smith's home is falling into the North Sea. But the crumbling headland has revealed what he's got buried in his garden: human remains. With the storm still raging, it's too dangerous to retrieve the bodies and waves are devouring the evidence. Which means no one knows how many people Smith's already killed and how many more he'll kill if he can't be stopped. The media are baying for blood, the...

Guilt and grief have driven a wedge between long time crime-fighting partners psychologist Tony Hill and ex-DCI Carol Jordan. But just because they're not talking doesn't mean the killing stops. Someone is killing women. Women who bear a disturbing resemblance to Carol Jordan. And when the evidence begins to point in a disturbing direction, thinking the unthinkable seems the only possible answer. Cornered by events, Tony and Carol are forced to fight...