Doyle and Acton Scotland Yard Mysteries

First-year detective Kathleen Doyle is a plucky Irish redhead of humble origins and modest means. Chief Inspector Michael Acton is her antithesis: a British lord turned cop. He's tall, handsome, and enigmatic - to a fault. He also has a knack for solving London's most high-profile crimes. Acton selects Doyle out of the newbie squad to partner with him on a series of investigations because she always knows when someone is lying - a trait that comes in handy when interviewing suspects and witnesses.

Despite their investigative prowess, Scotland Yard's Chief Inspector Michael Sinclair, Lord Acton, and rookie detective Kathleen Doyle stir more than a few feathers at CID Headquarters when their relationship comes to light. But office politics quickly become trivial when a rash of underworld murders shatters London's normally austere façade. With a growing list of successfully solved cases to her name, the ever-dauntless Doyle shakes off the gossip and sets out to investigate the escalating turf war.

Chief Inspector Acton and Detective Sergeant Kathleen Doyle know firsthand how the administration of justice can often follow a labyrinthine path. As they pursue a self-appointed judge, jury, and executioner, Acton's own questionable methods may prove his undoing.

In this, the fourth installment of the Doyle and Acton mystery series, Detective Sergeant Doyle realizes that several apparently unrelated murders are actually "containment" murders - murders to contain an ominous scandal that could reach into the highest levels of Scotland Yard's CID. In the process of tracking down the killers, however, she comes to the unsettling conclusion that Chief Inspector Acton has committed a containment murder or two of his own.

Things are a bit grim at Scotland Yard this Christmas. On the heels of a nasty corruption scandal, the CID must now contend with a killer who is murdering pregnant women, so as to steal their babies. Chief Inspector Acton doesn't want Doyle anywhere near this case, of course, but she can't shake the feeling that there is more to his concern than his usual over-protectiveness - and more to this case than the usual psycho-killer.

It seemed a little strange that Detective Sergeant Kathleen Doyle wound up being the ranking officer on this particular homicide scene. It was true that DCI Acton was off somewhere, testifying, and DI Williams was chasing down witnesses on the latest Santeria murder, but Doyle couldn't shake the feeling that she was being manipulated by one or both of them. But to what end? 

It was a bit puzzling, that Chief Inspector Acton hadn’t mentioned the body they’d discovered in the burnt-out church, even though he must have known that Doyle would find it of great interest. Was the arsonist caught up in her own fire, or was there a deeper, more sinister tale told by the blackened rubble?

This holiday trip to Dublin had been very hard on Doyle’s husband - although he was making a monumental effort to disguise this fact - and unless she very much missed her guess, it was all somehow connected to the grisly murder on the station house steps. That, and an African cabdriver who wore a jaunty tam-o’-shanter. 

Doyle was back at Scotland Yard after taking maternity leave, and the powers-that-be had decided they’d ease her way by assigning her to assist DS Isabella Munoz, which was a fate only slightly worse than death. Annoying, it was, that she had to answer to Munoz; not to mention that Munoz wasn’t given many high-quality homicide assignments in the first place.

This homicide case featured aristocrats as far as the eye could see, between the Russians and the Spaniards, and Acton, of course, who was supposedly investigating the others, but seemed a little too deferential for Doyle's taste. Why wasn't her husband moving in on the killer?

A shocking death at St. Michael's Church pitches Detective Sergeant Kathleen Doyle into a confusing case - one where the motive for the crime is not at all clear and only becomes less so as the investigation unearths a massive criminal enterprise. Why was the murder of such a famous man necessary? And why does Doyle have the sense that the killer had to steel himself to commit the crime?

Detective Sergeant Kathleen Doyle was investigating a tip she’d received about doctors who were being assaulted at a London free clinic, but - strangely enough - none of the volunteers was willing to give her a statement. Instead, her only witness offered a fanciful tale about supernatural evildoers - which was nonsense, of course; it was clearly an attempt to shift the blame to the appropriate cultural bogeyman.

Detective Sergeant Kathleen Doyle has been called in to assist with a few unsound-mind murders lately - murders committed by a person who appears to be mentally unhinged. This type of murder is always a concern for Scotland Yard, since it raises the possibility that there’s a serial killer on the loose. And it doesn’t help matters that the weather is so very cold and miserable - small wonder that these killers have gone off the deep end.

The detectives called it “graveyard love”, and it happened more than you’d think; a spurned lover would rather murder his beloved than allow her to walk away. This case seemed no different than the usual—a murder-suicide by someone who couldn’t bear such a rejection. Doyle thought it was a bit odd, though, that the perpetrator worked for an armed transport company; you’d think he’d have been vetted. And it was an interesting coincidence that the female victim had a connection to the Public Accounts investigation—the one that was giving Chief Inspector Acton such fits.

The much-anticipated homicide trial for the fentanyl murders was going forward, but Doyle couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d overlooked an important suspect, along the way. It may have been because Acton was being more secretive than his usual and was taking great pains to keep his wedded wife away from the trial and away from the evidence that would be presented.

This case was a strange one; Detective Sergeant Kathleen Doyle was investigating what appeared to be an "admonishment" murder—a lower-level player in a turf war had been murdered to serve as a warning by a rival gang.

It seemed as though Doyle was slated to have a busman’s holiday, here in Dublin, and wasn’t it just her luck to stumble across a corpse in the St. Brigid’s School orchard. Stranger still, it looked to be a ritualistic revenge-murder, which—come to think of it—was exactly what they’d stumbled across the last time they’d visited Doyle’s home town. Who would have guessed that nasty revenge-murders were thick on the ground, here—save Acton, of course, since such a thing was usually his specialty. . .