Best of
Mystery

1992

Primal Fear


William Diehl - 1992
    Vail is certain to lose, but Vail uses his unorthodox ways to good advantage when choosing his legal team—a tight group of men and women who must uncover the extraordinary truth behind the archbishop's slaughter. They do, in a heart-stopping climax unparalleled for the surprise it springs on the reader...

The Black Echo


Michael Connelly - 1992
    This one is personal...because the murdered man was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who had fought side by side with him in a hellish underground war. Now Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam. From a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit. Pitted against enemies inside his own department and forced to make the agonizing choice between justice and vengeance, Bosch goes on the hunt for a killer whose true face will shock him.

The General's Daughter


Nelson DeMille - 1992
    She is the pride of Fort Hadley until, one morning, her body is found, naked and bound, on the firing range.Paul Brenner is a member of the Army's elite undercover investigative unit and the man in charge of this politically explosive case. Teamed with rape specialist Cynthia Sunhill, with whom he once had a tempestuous, doomed affair, Brenner is about to learn just how many people were sexually, emotionally, and dangerously involved with the Army's "golden girl." And how the neatly pressed uniforms and honor codes of the military hide a corruption as rank as Ann Campbell's shocking secret life.

Clockers


Richard Price - 1992
    His beat is a rough New Jersey neighborhood where the drug murders blur together, until the day Victor Dunham — a twenty-year-old with a steady job and a clean record — confesses to a shooting outside a fast-food joint. It doesn't take long for Rocco's attention to turn to Victor's brother, a street-corner crack dealer named Strike who seems a more likely suspect for the crime. At once an intense mystery, and a revealing study of two men on opposite sides of an unwinnable war, Clockers is a stunningly well-rendered chronicle of modern life on the streets.

The Benediction of Brother Cadfael


Ellis Peters - 1992
    17,500 first printing.

The Pelican Brief


John Grisham - 1992
    In a seedy D.C. porno house a patron is swiftly garroted to death... The next day America learns that two of its Supreme Court justices have been assassinated. And in New Orleans, a young law student prepares a legal brief... To Darby Shaw it was no more than a legal shot in the dark, a brilliant guess. To the Washington establishment it was political dynamite. Suddenly Darby is witness to a murder -- a murder intended for her. Going underground, she finds there is only one person she can trust -- an ambitious reporter after a newsbreak hotter than Watergate -- to help her piece together the deadly puzzle. Somewhere between the bayous of  Louisiana and the White House's inner sanctums, a violent cover-up is being engineered. For someone has read Darby's brief. Someone who will stop at nothing to destroy the evidence of an unthinkable crime.

Blood Test / When The Bough Breaks / Over The Edge


Jonathan Kellerman - 1992
    

I'll Be Seeing You / Remember Me / Let Me Call You Sweetheart


Mary Higgins Clark - 1992
    This new one contains three of her most popular novels, each netting over 500,000 copies in hardcover and over 1.5 million in paperback. Let Me Call You Sweetheart is about a plastic surgeon who is more dangerous with a scalpel than he should be! I'll Be Seeing You is about a TV reporter who gets involved with an unethical fertility clinic, and Remember Me is a modern-day ghost tale.

Leaphorn & Chee: Skinwalkers / A Thief of Time / Talking God


Tony Hillerman - 1992
    25,000 first printing. $25,000 ad/promo.

The Third Cadfael Omnibus


Ellis Peters - 1992
    Cadfael senses the young man's innocence and sets out to solve yet another tangle of human passions where love plays its inevitable part.The Devil's Novice: The Benedictine monastery at Shrewsbury finds its new novice Meriet Aspley a disturbing presence. Meek and bidable by day, his sleep is rent with nightmares so violent as to earn him the nickname of Devil's Novice. Can Meriet be involved in the nearby disappearance of a superior prelate? As events take a sinister turn, it falls to Brother Cadfael to detect the truth behind the young man's predicament.Dead Man's Ransom: In the battle of Lincoln, the sherrif of Shropshire is captured and the King himself taken prisoner by his enemies. Nothing more natural than that an exchange of prisoners should take place. But before this can be completed, one captive is murdered. And to Brother Cadfael, who notices the evidence of unnatural death, falls the task of gathering enough clues to prove it.

Final Atonement


Steve Neil Johnson - 1992
    Gruff, weary, gay Brooklyn Homicide cop Doug Orlando is facing his most shocking case: Rabbi Avraham Rabowitz lay in a pool of his own blood, a prayer shawl stuffed down his throat, and his beard shaved off. The question for Detective Orlando isn't who hated the right wing religious sect leader-Rabowitz had been the open enemy of blacks, gays, pro-choice women, even fellow Jews. In a case that moves from the depths of the ghetto to the high-rise office of a real estate glamour-boy tycoon, the suspects come in every color and shade of belief. And unless Orlando can defuse a ticking time bomb of tension by nailing the killer, the melting pot of the city is going to melt down....

Driving Force


Dick Francis - 1992
    Transporting racehorses is big business for ex-jockey Freddie Croft. But when one of his drivers breaks a cardinal rule--never pick up a hitchhiker--the results are fatal. Now strange nighttime stalkers and unseen conspirators are weaving a web of deceit and danger that Freddie might never escape.

Caravan


Dorothy Gilman - 1992
    Concealing her dangerous beauty beneath the faded robes of an Arab boy, she embarks on the adventure of her life, harassed by vicious nomads, slave traders and the envious witch doctor, Isa. Only a handful of carnival magic tricks stand between her and oblivion. Then she discovers an inner magic so mysteriously compelling that the desert people call her a sorceress. With it she will secure her freedom and discover the love of her life....

Ellis Peters' Shropshire


Ellis Peters - 1992
    In this evocative book, the author takes us into the heart of the county which has been so much a part of her and her writing. Here she vividly describes the Roman Road on the flank of the Long Mountain with its grand stormy view of the river below that she walked so often while writing The Heaven Tree and its sequels. She tells of her connections with the town of Shrewsbury, the setting of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul featured in the Brother Cadfael novels. She traces the history of the country through its border castles, Georgian country houses and old Elizabethan town houses, old monasteries and the modern office blocks of a newly-created town and in doing so recounts her personal connection with the county of her birth, from her childhood spent near Coalbrookdale to her later years in Madeley, Telford.

Dead Folks' Blues


Steven Womack - 1992
    It's just his luck that the first person to waltz into his Nashville office is Rachel Fletcher, the woman who stole—then broke—his heart in college. Now the man she married is in big trouble, and Rachel wants Harry to forget about yesterday and make sure her husband lives to see tomorrow.

Murder On The Orient Express And Then There Were None By Agatha Christie: Curriculum Unit


Center for Learning Network - 1992
    Teacher curriculum unit.

Compelling Evidence


Steve Martini - 1992
    Now, Potter's wife is accused of his murder -- and Paul is thrust back into the big time, as he uncovers secrets that may end his career -- and his life.

All Fall Down


Carlene Thompson - 1992
    Well aware of the rumors behind her back, Blaine Avery is focused on managing her late husband's finances and raising her adolescent stepdaughter...until her serene woodland property yields a gruesome discovery.For the second time in six months, Sheriff Logan Quint has been called out to the Avery place, where another corpse has been found. This time, it belongs to a teenage girl who had everything to live for. But if Rosie Van Zandt didn't kill herself...who did?As the once sleepy town reels from the rash of so-called suicides, Blaine regrets the day she ever came home. Only Logan is willing to accept her innocence-or her suspicions. For Blaine is desperate to clear her name, and dead certain somebody intends to destroy it. Somebody who calls her in the dead of night, taunting her with the childhood rhyme: Ring around the rosy, a pocket full of posey, ashes, ashes, we...All Fall Down

Three Winners: Dead Cert: Nerve: For Kicks


Dick Francis - 1992
    "Nerve" is about an ambitious young jockey who finds himself facing the same evil forces that have already driven a fellow jockey to suicide and "For Kicks" is a racing spy story.

A Thousand Bridges


Michael McKinney - 1992
    So, when Katherine Furay shows up at P.I. McDonald Clay's doorstep five years later to say her daughter had been a witness and that the murder wasn't ordinary at all, Mac suddenly finds himself in far over his head. The last thing Clay needed was a cause, and he wasn't looking for reasons to live. He just wanted to be left alone to grieve for his dead partner and girlfriend Patty Sheevers, brutally murdered the last time Clay had adopted a "cause." But Katherine Furay was Sheevers's best friend, and now she needs Clay's help, so he finds himself torn between responsibilities to the living and continuing a numbing, uninvolved self-indulgence. To his surprise he discovers he does have some good qualities left. He starts out investigating Tommy Lovett, the owner of a local pool hall in the north Florida city of Palmetto Bay, and winds up going head-to-head with a powerful gubernatorial candidate. In the process, he fights to regain his self-respect and to save the people he loves. For Clay, the question moves from simply who committed murder to "Do you know what your government is doing?"

The Tony Hillerman Audio Collection: Skinwalkers / Talking God


Tony Hillerman - 1992
    Like any great mystery writer, he is able to give us insights into the sensibilities of his characters, and Tony Hillerman has spent years getting to know the Navajo people. On this recording he reads two of his most poplar novels.The characters of Officer Jim Chee and Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn are united for the first time in Skinwalkers. Here they attempt to solve three murders that occured hundreds of miles apart and encouter the magic of the Navajo witches, of "Skinwalkers."In Talking God, Washington politics and protest lead Chee and Leaphorn to cases of grave robbing and to a body that was found stripped of all identification.Navajo country--about which little is known and much is imagined--makes a wonderful location for mystery. And no one capture the flavor like Tony Hillerman.

The Good Friday Murder


Lee Harris - 1992
    At a town meeting, Christine volunteers to investigate a forty-year-old murder case long since closed. Now she'll move heaven and earth to exonerate a pair of retarded savant twins, now senior citizens, of their mother's murder on Good Friday in 1950.

The Deep End


Chris Crutcher - 1992
    Reprint. PW. K. LJ.

Body English


S.J. Rozan - 1992
    It first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, December 1992, Vol. 37, No. 12. It was also featured in the anthologies Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense ed. Linda Landrigan (2006) and Women of Mystery II, ed. Cynthia Manson (1994).

Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes: A Comprehensive Bibliography


Robert Adey - 1992
    

Victorian Tales of Mystery and Detection: An Oxford Anthology


Michael CoxL.T. Meade - 1992
    Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, J.S. LeFanu, and a host of others pioneered a genre of fiction that remains among the most popular today. Now, in Victorian Tales of Mystery and Detection, Michael Cox provides a sampling of the finest detective stories written from the 1840s to the early twentieth century. Here readers will find a vast array of detectives and villains, and a multitude of murder methods and motives. In Edgar Allen Poe's "The Purloined Letter," the identity of the robber is known from the start--it is the surreptitious retrieval of the letter that is the mystery. In M. McDonnell Bodkin's "Murder By Proxy," a gentleman is shot in the head at close range, by a murderer who was not even in the same room. Charles Dickens's "Hunted Down" portrays a murderer who was slowly poisoning his very own nieces for their insurance money. And in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost Special," a train and its passengers vanish in thin air. In addition, Cox (who is rapidly becoming one of the foremost experts on Victorian popular fiction) arranges the stories in chronological order so that readers can follow the genre as it develops over time. For instance, in Conan Doyle's "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" we see an example of the many Sherlock Holmes escapades that popularized and came to typify the detective story for the Victorian public. And in the progression of the stories, we witness the evolution of the investigator from Poe's brilliant and eccentric Chevalier C. August Dupin, to Doyle's scientific Sherlock Holmes, into Robert Barr's cavalier Valmont (a possible model for Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot). Including well-known stories by famous authors, as well as little known gems reprinted for the first time, Victorian Tales of Mystery and Detection not only offers hours of enjoyment and escape for all lovers of crime fiction, but also brings alive the society, language, the sights, and sounds of the Victorian age.Contents:The purloined letter by Edgar Allan PoeThe murdered cousin by J.S. Le FanuHunted down by Charles DickensLevison's victim by Mary Elizabeth BraddonThe mystery at number seven by Mrs Henry WoodThe going out of Alessandro Pozzone by Richard DowlingWho killed Zebedee? by Wilkie CollinsA circumstantial puzzle by R.E. FrancillonThe mystery of Essex stairs by Sir Gilbert CampbellThe adventure of the blue carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan DoyleThe great ruby robbery by Grant AllenThe sapient monkey by Headon HillCheating the gallows by Israel ZangwillDrawn daggers by C.L. PirkisThe greenstone god and the stockbroker by Fergus HumeThe arrest of Captain Vandaleur by L.T. Meade and Robert EustaceThe accusing shadow by Harry BlythThe ivy cottage mystery by Arthur MorrisonThe Azteck opal by Rodrigues OttolenguiThe long arm by Mary E. WilkinsThe case of Euphemia Raphash by M.P. ShielThe tin box by Herbert KeenMurder by proxy by M. McDonnell BodkinThe duchess of Wiltshire's diamonds by Guy BoothbyThe story of the Spaniards, Hammersmith by E. and H. HeronThe lost special by Sir Arthur Conan DoyleThe banknote forger by C.J. Cutcliffe HyneA warning in red by Victor L. Whitechurch and E. ConwayThe Fenchurch Street mystery by Baroness OrczyThe green spider by Sax RohmerThe clue of the silver spoons by Robert Barr

Murder Abroad: Death in Berlin, Death in Cyprus, Death in Kenya


M.M. Kaye - 1992
    Death in Kenya: Although the Mau Mau terrorist uprising is now over, when Victoria Caryll joins her family in ther beautiful Rift Valley estate, she finds the horrors continue.

Three Complete Jacqueline Kirby Mysteries


Elizabeth Peters - 1992
    Jacqueline Kirby is fascinated by the assembled guests at an English country mansion who have assumed the dress and lifestyle of Richard III's court, until someone decides to recreate his historic crimes.

Bootlegger's Daughter


Margaret Maron - 1992
    Known for her knowledge of the region's past and popular with the locals, Deb is asked by 18-year-old Gayle Whitehead to investigate the unsolved murder of her mother Janie, who died when Gayle was an infant. While visiting the owner of the property where Janie's body was found, Deb learns of Janie's more-than-promiscuous past. Piecing together lost clues and buried secrets Deb is introduced to Janie's darker side, but it's not until another murder occurs that she uncovers the truth.

Mercy


Echo Heron - 1992
    With little sanity left in her packed days, and with only the sanctuary of a cramped linen closed to sustain her, Cat is slowly losing her patience and her mind. That is, until an intriguing police detective investigating the brutal beating of a celebrated artist brings a ray of hope into Cat's frantic and lonely existence. Before romance, however, comes the care of the patients who pull her back from burnout to compassion:CROSS—the famous young artist whose psychopath boyfriend nearly kills her. He tries again, only to have Catalina get in his way CORKY—the All American teen from a happy family, except Corky has attempted suicide and will do it again before telling anyone the nightmarish truth behind itPROFESSOR DEAN—a victim of AIDS whose gentle courage and love of life bring the fight home to CatSTELLA—95 years old and full of piss and vinegar, but her determination to keep a 45 year old bloody tragedy hidden is slowly beginning to waneWALKER—A San Francisco bartender and father of the precocious 8 year-old Zoe, is dying from cancer. He refuses to let go until he finds the answers to what his life was all about

The Rumpole Collection: First and Second Rumpole Omnibus


John Mortimer - 1992
    

Six Stories by Agatha Christie


Agatha Christie - 1992
    Content: Premessa. Introduzione. The Cornish Mystery. Wasps' Nest. The Case of the Discontented Soldier. Strange Jest. Village Murder. Exercises for students followed each story.Collected by Pina Spelta

New Stories from the South 1992: The Year's Best


Shannon Ravenel - 1992
    Seventeen stories by Alison Baker, Larry Brown, Mary Ward Brown, James Lee Burke, Robert Olen Butler, Nanci Kincaid, Patricia Lear, Dan Leone, Reginald McKnight, Karen Minton, Elizabeth Seydel Morgan, Robert Morgan, Susan Perabo, Padgett Powell, Lee Smith, Peter Taylor, Abraham Verghese.

Sharp Practice


Frederick Forsyth - 1992
    Here are three more stories from Forsyth's No Comebacks collection: Sharp Practice, The Emperor and There Are Some Days.

The Mystery Of The Magic Circle; And, The Mystery Of The Scar Faced Beggar; And, The Mystery Of The Blazing Cliffs


M.V. Carey - 1992
    

The Car Theft Kidnapping (The/Invincible Abdullah ; Vol 2)


Haji U. Hutchinson - 1992
    2 - Abdullah has just returned to England from Pakistan. The adventure begins again when he discovers a strange letter waiting for him. It's a race against time to find a hidden workshop and free one last hostage of the car theft kidnapping.

Harmony


Susan Taylor Chehak - 1992
    As Clodine tells of her upbringing, courtship, and marriage, her narrative circles ever closer to the troubling secret and shocking death that stand at its center. It is a tale of passion and domestic violence – and their incalculable consequences. No one knows exactly when Lilly Duke, wife of a convicted killer, arrived to seek refuge in a cabin on the shore of Harmony Lake, but her arrival changes Clodine's life forever. At first Lilly finds no friends except Clodine – and Clodine's wayward husband, Galen. But after her child's body is found drifting on the lake, the town crowds to Lilly's aid. Still, no one can explain what Lilly was doing when her baby crept out of the cabin. The answer to this question leads to the shattering climax of this unforgettable novel.

Congregation: A Suspense Novel


Virginia Stem Owens - 1992
    Then comes the sudden news of the sale and imminent demolition of their historic church building. But nothing prepares the members of St. Barnabas for the apparent suicide attempt that leaves the rector's two children dead and his wife, Cassie, comatose.Anyone who's ever been in a church that has problems will appreciate this novel on a level beyond the mystery, even as the strange twists of life and death at St. Barnabas unravel through the eyes of several members of the congregation.

Secrets


Katharine Marlowe - 1992
    Struggling to recover from the trauma of her husband's death, Emma Bellamy was shaken anew when her friends and family began receiving vicious letters signed by her--letters that she swore she hadn't written--letters that revealed horrible truths about the people in her life.WILLARD --He'd turned Emma into a bestselling author, but the price he'd exacted almost destroyed her.JANET --She'd always accused Emma of stealing her father's affection, and she would stop at nothing to hurt her.RICHARD --Although the lawyer found himself hopelessly attracted to Emma, he feared she was going insane.Terrified by what she might discover, Emma desperately searched for answers to the secrets that haunted her life and threatened everything she loved.

And Justice for One: A novel of revenge


John Clarkson - 1992
    After the burial – on a whiskey-soaked night on the town – Jack’s brother disappears. When his brother is found comatose on the edge of death, Devlin resolves to avenge the wrong – no matter what it takes, no matter where the trail leads, even if he has to descend into the lawless underworld of New York City after-hours clubs where violence reigns, sex and drugs rule the night, and corruption kills. AND JUSTICE FOR ONE tells a dark, violent story set in 1980’s New York during a time when lawlessness and corruption pulsed intently under the city’s civilized veneer. Those times and places are gone now, but today’s readers can experience them in this intense, thoroughly-researched novel. This is the second edition of the acclaimed debut novel in the Jack Devlin “One” series, re-edited by the author, John Clarkson. The New York Times said AND JUSTICE FOR ONE "Packs a savage punch". Kirkus Reviews called it, "Dark, sexy, tough, and fast." Amazon reviewers called it: “The best action novel I have ever read!”, “Well-written, hot, furious, fun.”, “A helluva a good read, loaded with action.”If you missed AND JUSTICE FOR ONE the first time around, don’t miss it this time!Author's Note This novel was first published in 1992. I don't remember exactly when I began writing it. I do remember the two events that inspired the story. The first event occurred in 1976 when I visited an after-hours club in downtown Manhattan. The second event came in 1979. A six-year-old boy named Etan Patz disappeared on a spring morning in New York's SoHo district, igniting the worst fears of parents around the country. It happened during a two-block walk to his school bus stop. Somewhere in the back of my mind those two events brewed for years. What if someone you loved vanished? What would you do to find them? And what if it turned out that the mysterious, hidden world of after-hours clubs had something to do with the disappearance? At some point in the late eighties, those two events became the inspiration for my first novel. I hardly remember writing it. My sense is that it came out in a sudden rush. And selling it to a publisher happened quite fast. I landed an agent, George Wieser, very quickly. And it seems like George sold it to Crown with in a few weeks. Thank you, George! I do remember spending a very long time editing the book under the guidance of Peter St. John Ginna. He was patient with me. He made it a much better book. I still appreciate his efforts. In the original author's note, I also thanked my wife Ellen for her patience. A good deal of the research for And Justice for One started at four in the morning. All these years later Ellen is still patient with me, but more importantly,she still loves me, and I her. The others I thanked in the first edition were "the people who made it possible for me to enter the world of after-hours clubs, particularly a friend named Tommy Burns. When I asked how I should acknowledge him in the first edition, he said use T.B., 'Bartender to the Stars.'" Tommy rarely took anything very seriously. Obviously, all the after-hours clubs described in this book no longer exist. But all of them except for one which is a composite of three clubs, existed very much as described. It was a wild time in NYC. A time before cell phones and the internet and Uber. A time long gone. So, what prompted me to re-publish And Justice for One? Since its publication in 1992, I have persisted in writing crime thrillers, despite about a ten-year break after the first five. All five of those novels are out of print, but readers often ask me how they can get them. This is an attempt to make that easier. It has also provided me with the opportunity to polish the book. Nothing substantive, but lots of nips and tucks. This new edition is still what I consider a raw, rather impetuous novel from an unformed writer just starting out. Maybe that's the best kind. Hope you enjoy it.

Gertrude, the Bulldog Detective


Eileen Christelow - 1992
    Dog annoys her friends with her snooping and eavesdropping, until she stumbles upon a real crime and must use her investigative skills to solve the case.