Books like Dead Beat by Val McDermid

Two young lovers, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, form a private detective agency and are hired to locate a missing woman named Jane Finn, whose disappearance threatens post‑war Britain.

Miss Marple finds herself in the Caribbean, where a mysterious old soldier hints at a strange coincidence that could spark adventure.

In April 1988, private investigator Kinsey Millhone is drawn into a decades‑old kidnapping mystery when a college dropout claims he uncovered the victim’s burial site and seeks her help to identify the killers.

The engaging and sassy owner of Botswana's only detective agency, Precious Ramotswe, expands her business to include car repair and a beauty pageant, but her sense of justice remains unshaken by scandal and deceit, as in THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY and TEARS OF THE GIRAFFE.

When Lorna Kepler’s bizarre death leaves detectives with no lead, her grieving mother Janice turns to Kinsey Millhone, who must confront a case that threatens to unravel the quiet streets of California’s fictional Santa Teresa.

Retired mid‑wife Agatha Raisin moves to the Cotswolds, enters a local quiche contest, but when the judge is found poisoned, she becomes the prime suspect and must solve the mystery herself.

From McDermid's webpage: "Four in the morning, mid-December, and snow is smothering St Andrews. Student Alex Gilbey and his three best friends are staggering home from a party when they stumble upon the body of a young woman. Rosie Duff has been raped, stabbed and left for dead in the ancient Pictish cemetery. And the only suspects are the four young students stained with her blood. Twenty-five years later, Fife police mount a cold case review. Among the unsolved murders they’re examining is that of Rosie Duff. But someone else has their own idea of how justice should be done. One of the original quartet dies in a suspicious house fire. Soon after, a second is killed in what looks like a burglary gone sour. But Alex fears the worst. Someone is taking revenge for Rosie Duff. He has to find out who it is before he becomes the next victim. And it might just save his life if he can uncover who really killed Rosie all those years ago."

Detective Chief Inspector Carol Jordan returns to Bradfield after a violent assault, only to find psychologist Dr. Tony Hill on the scene as a new post at a high‑security mental hospital. When a prostitute is found murdered in a pattern echoing a previous case, Jordan must rely on Hill to unravel a chilling serial killer that may be hiding within the force.

A British clinical psychologist pursues a serial killer crossing into the Netherlands and Belgium, while a police officer infiltrates a ruthless drug and human trafficking ring in Berlin.

Kate Brannigan, a spirited Manchester private investigator, tackles the strange disappearance of conservatories while navigating crooked land deals, mortgage scams, and murder plots.

Tony Hill, criminal profiler and hero of TV's Wire in the Blood, is back in a terrifying psychological thriller from bestselling author Val McDermidA city is mourning. Bradfield Victoria's star midfielder has been murdered, bizarrely poisoned in an apparently motiveless killing. Then a bomb blast rips through the football stadium. Dozens lie dead, many more injured. Is it a terrorist attack or a vendetta against the Vics? Or something even more sinister? As he lies in a hospital bed, psychologist and profiler Dr Tony Hill struggles to make sense of the fragments of information he manages to gather. But his customary ally, DCI Carol Jordan, is being pushed to the margins of the investigation by intelligence services determined to prove themselves indispensable. It wouldn't be so bad if Tony and Carol could agree about who they're looking for. But even their relationship has its dislocations and dark places. Beneath the Bleeding sets Tony and Carol at odds as they have never been before, forcing them to ask questions of themselves they would never have imagined possible.

Former reporter Tess Monaghan returns to Baltimore as a private investigator, pursuing a murder linked to a disgraced tycoon, a covert hacker, and the city's dark underside.

Private investigator Tess Monaghan is hired to protect star Selene Waites on the set of the troubled TV series *Mann of Steel* in Baltimore, but soon a murder threatens to unravel the production and her city.

Detective V.I. Warshawski coaches her alma‑mater’s girls’ basketball team, only to become embroiled in a mystery at the multinational retailer By‑Smart when a teenage grandson vanishes with a prized document, sending her on a perilous Chicago road to uncover dark secrets.

San Francisco detective Sharon McCone must locate her missing boyfriend while orchestrating a $2 million ransom for a kidnapped researcher, upping the stakes in this hard‑boiled mystery.