The water room

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Barry Maitland

When one of three elderly sisters, great-granddaughters of Karl Marx, is found dead in her Jerusalem Lane house, Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla and Detective Chief Inspector Brock investigate. An atmospheric police procedural-the first in the acclaimed Brock and Kolla mysteries.Jerusalem Lane is a little piece of Dickensian London untouched by development, its inhabitants mainly refugees from pre-war central Europe. But could elderly Meredith Winterbottom really have been killed for the politics of another age?As Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla and Detective Chief Inspector Brock delve into the lane's eccentric melting pot, past and present interlink in unexpected ways. What connects Mrs. Rosenfeldt and Adam Kowalski to a smooth property developer and an American academic? And what is Meredith's son Terry up to? Not to mention the dottily Marxist sisters... Is this a recipe for murder?

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Georges Simenon

Madame Maigret telephones to alert her husband that a frightened young man has called at their home and will wait there to see Maigret at his midday meal. When Maigret returns home, he is annoyed to discover that his mysterious guest has left, and more disturbed that one of his prized revolvers has gone with him. Monsieur Maigret is dismayed - but hardly surprised - when a corpse turns up in a railway trunk, shot by his own gun. His search for the elusive and unidentified visitor sends Maigret across the channel to London to investigate one murder... and prevent another.

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Deborah Crombie

A week's holiday in a luxurious Yorkshire time-share is just what Scotland Yard's Superintendent Duncan Kincaid needs. But the discovery of a body floating in the whirlpool bath ends Kincaid's vacation before it's begun. One of his new acquaintances at Followdale House is dead; another is a killer. Despite a distinct lack of cooperation from the local constabulary, Kincaid's keen sense of duty won't allow him to ignore the heinous crime, impelling him to send for his enthusiastic young assistant, Sergeant Gemma James. But the stakes are raised dramatically when a second murder occurs, and Kincaid and James find themselves in a determined hunt for a fiendish felon who enjoys homicide a bit too much.

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Martha Grimes

As Richard Jury and Melrose Plant of Scotland Yard investigate the murder of Simon Lean, they're led to a London pub, the Five Bells and Bladebone where the "shady lady named Sadie" might have been of help if she hadn't been murdered first.