The best TV crime series start with an exceptional author. Ann Cleeves wrote Burial of Ghosts long before Vera made her a household name. Lynda La Plante's Pure Evil predates Prime Suspect but carries the same forensic intelligence that made that TV unmissable. Val McDermid's Past Lying is from the writer who gave Wire in the Blood its blueprint - and who has been one of British crime fiction's most reliable pleasures for thirty years. Peter James's Roy Grace novels have filled Sunday night schedules for years and counting. These are writers who have earned their audiences the old-fashioned way: one outstanding book at a time.
TITLES: Val McDermid, 'Past Lying' + Peter James, 'Dead Man's Grip' + Ann Cleeves, 'Burial of Ghosts' + FREE Lynda La Plante, 'Pure Evil'

Every great crime series has a first book, and the first book is always worth hunting down. Knots & Crosses introduced a young Edinburgh detective named John Rebus and set in motion one of British crime fiction's most decorated careers. The Crossing Places planted Ruth Galloway on the Norfolk coast, where the archaeology runs as dark as the tides, while The Blackhouse carried Peter May's Lewis Trilogy to the Outer Hebrides, where menace seems to rise from the ground itself. The Lincoln Lawyer put Michael Connelly's Mickey Haller in the back of a car and unleashed him on the Los Angeles legal system. Four novels that changed what came after them and weeks of exceptional reading waiting on the other side of each.

TITLES: Michael Connelly, 'The Lincoln Lawyer' + Peter May, 'The Blackhouse' + Ian Rankin, 'Knots & Crosses' + FREE Elly Griffiths, 'Crossing Places'