20 best movies like Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar (2019)

Set in Stalin-era Soviet Union, a disgraced MGB agent is dispatched to investigate a series of child murders -- a case that begins to connect with the very top of party leadership.

Two women have been murdered within hours of one another near St. Pancras station, but in quite different ways. When a connection is made with two other murders which occurred months before, but also on the same day, DI Thorne realizes two serial killers may be at work in a macabre partnership

Buenos Aires in the 1980s. Detective Chavez, a family man and a tough cop, once again must solve a mysterious crime. To reveal the identity of the murderer, Chavez must clarify the enigma waiting in ambush to capture his own heart. Passion surprises even the most astute detective. What will triumph: law or desire?

A tight-knit team of FBI investigators, along with their District Attorney supervisor, is suddenly torn apart when they discover that one of their own teenage daughters has been brutally murdered.

A group of teachers must defend themselves from a gang of murderous kids when their school comes under siege after hours.

A sharp detective with a messy life, DCI Vera Stanhope patrols her “patch” of northeast England, pursuing the truth in cases of murder, kidnapping, and blackmail. Vera is obsessive about her work and faces the world with caustic wit, guile and courage.

Rachel Watson, devastated by her recent divorce, spends her daily commute fantasizing about the seemingly perfect couple who live in a house that her train passes every day, until one morning she sees something shocking happen there and becomes entangled in the mystery that unfolds.

An elite hitman returns to erase his past only to find that somebody has messed with his future.

After suffering a personal tragedy, and desperate for justice, Jacob Kanon, a veteran New York City police detective, embarks on the search for a twisted killer who is leaving a bloody trail of elaborate murders across Europe.

The hunt is on to find the murderer of a wealthy glamorous heiress who is found dead in her London townhouse. Based on the short story by Agatha Christie.

During an annual board of trustees meeting, one of the trustees dies. Miss Marple thinks he’s been poisoned after finding a chemical on him. She sets off to investigate at the ship where he had just come from. The fourth and final film from the Miss Marple series starring Margaret Rutherford as the quirky amateur detective.

Marcella is shocked to the core of her being when her husband Jason leaves her unexpectedly, confessing he no longer loves her. Heartbroken, Marcella returns to the Met’s Murder Squad. Ten years ago Marcella gave up her fast-tracked police career to marry and devote her life to her family. With the abrupt end to her marriage and isolated from her 13 year old daughter and 10 year old son, Marcella throws herself into work to stop herself from falling apart.

Witse returns to his hometown to find his niece's murderer. It doesn't take long before Witse gets in trouble with local police authorities. While conducting his investigation, old family issues are starting to surface.

Three friends head to the seafront for a drunken weekend, only to be imprisoned on the top floor of their holiday apartment by a malevolent paranormal force.

Case Histories is a British drama television series based on the Jackson Brodie detective novels by Kate Atkinson. It stars Jason Isaacs as Jackson Brodie.

A journalist investigates a series of murders that follows the discovery of an unpublished novel by Charles Dickens in the cellar of an old Thames-side-pub.

A murder opens up a bleak trail of long buried secrets and small town corruption for a worn out police detective and his squad.

Confusing realities surface in this paranoid film dealing with the fragile nature of a young woman (Anne Parillaud) recovering from rape and an apparent attempted suicide. In one reality, she is a killer destroyer of men. In another she is the new wife on a Jamaican honeymoon with her husband (William Baldwin), who is trying to help her recover. Which is real is the question as the story unfolds.

A short Arizona motorcycle cop gets his wish and is promoted to Homicide following the mysterious murder of a hermit. He is forced to confront his illusions about himself and those around him in order to solve the case, eventually returning to solitude in the desert.

Emily Boynton, stepmother to three children, blackmails the family lawyer into destroying a second will of her late husband that would have freed the children from her dominating influence. She takes herself, the children and her daughter-in-law on holiday to Europe and the Holy Land. At a dig, Emily is found dead and Hercule Poirot investigates.

Based on the 2000 book of the same name by Emmanuel Carrère, it is inspired by the real-life story of Jean-Claude Romand. L'Adversaire's protagonist Jean-Marc Faure (Auteuil) pursues an imaginary career as a doctor of medicine in a plot more closely based on Romand's life and Carrère's book than was Laurent Cantet's 2001 film L'Emploi du Temps. The film was nominated for a Palme d'Or at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.

A millionaire past his prime and his young wife arrive in Kenya circa 1940 to find that the other affluent British expatriates are living large as the homefront gears up for war. They are busy swapping partners, doing drugs, and attending lavish parties and horse races. She begins a torrid affair with one of the bon vivants, and her husband finds out and confronts them. The husband and wife decide to break up peacefully, but the bon vivant is murdered and all the evidence points to the husband.

This drama follows Inspector Kurt Wallander – a middle-aged everyman – as he struggles against a rising tide of violence in the apparently sleepy backwaters in and around Ystad in Skane, southern Sweden. Based on the international best-selling books by Henning Mankell.

A man receives a mysterious e-mail appearing to be from his wife, who was murdered years earlier. As he frantically tries to find out whether she's alive, he finds himself being implicated in her death.

The adventures of Miss Jane Marple, an elderly spinster living in the quiet little village of St Mary Mead. During her many visits to friends and relatives in other villages, Miss Marple often stumbles upon mysterious murders which she helps solve. Although the police are sometimes reluctant to accept Miss Marple's help, her reputation and unparalleled powers of observation eventually win them over.

Charles Dobbs is a British secret agent investigating the apparent suicide of Foreign Office official Samuel Fennan. Dobbs suspects that Fennan's wife, Elsa, a survivor of a Nazi Germany extermination camp, might have some clues, but other officials want Dobbs to drop the case. So Dobbs hires a retiring inspector, Mendel, to quietly make inquiries. Dobbs isn't at all sure as there are a number of anomalies that simply can't be explained away. Dobbs is also having trouble at home with his errant wife, whom he very much loves, having frequent affairs. He's also pleased to see an old friend, Dieter Frey, who he recruited after the war. With the assistance of a colleague and a retired policeman, Dobbs tries to piece together just who is the spy and who in fact assassinated Fennan.

A retired ex-cop and private detective gets mixed up in murder when he is asked to deliver blackmail money and walks into a 20 year old case involving the mysterious disappearance of an actress' former husband.

In 1949 composer Roman Strauss is executed for the vicious murder of his wife Margaret with a pair of scissors. In 1990s Los Angeles a mute amnesiac woman shows up at an orphanage and private eye Mike Church is called in to investigate. Under hypnosis both the woman and Church seem to have a strange link back to the Strauss murder.

Police Inspector Renko tries to solve the case of three bodies found in Moscow's Gorky Park but finds his attempts to solve the crime impeded by his superiors. Working on his own, Renko seeks out more information and stumbles across a conspiracy involving the highest levels of the government.

When a prostitute is found dead in a Los Angeles skyscraper occupied by a large Japanese corporation, detectives John Conner and Web Smith are called in to investigate. Although Conner has previous experience working in Japan, cultural differences make their progress difficult until a security disc showing the murder turns up. Close scrutiny proves the disc has been doctored, and the detectives realize they're dealing with a cover-up as well.

Crime drama set in the 1960s about an old-school detective trying to come to terms with a time when the lines between the police and criminals have become blurred.

In the absence of Behzat Ç., a superintendent named Himmet gets replaced as the president of the murder Bureau. When the murder of minister of Interior makes a big impact, Himmet decides to take advantage of it and he makes his team help the fight against terrorism bureau.

Veteran homicide cop Ferman (Şener Şen) and his hot-headed partner İdris (Cem Yılmaz) team up with rookie cop and anthropology major Hasan (Okan Yalabık) to investigate the murder of a young woman. The suspects include her conservative family, who might have killed her for honor, her drug-dealing boyfriend and aged billionaire Battal (Çetin Tekindor) who had taken the victim as his second wife.

In the middle of this amusing thriller is a relationship between two different types of females, one is a well know British author and the other is a sex-crazed French teen. The two get into some relationship trouble while living together in this film of psychological imagery and an erotic exploration of the female body.

Mourning the accidental death of his wife and having just moved to New York with his young son, laconic police psychologist Cal Jamison is reluctantly drawn into a series of grisly, ritualistic murders involving the immolation of two youths.

In late 1940s Los Angeles, Easy Rawlins is an unemployed black World War II veteran with few job prospects. At a bar, Easy meets DeWitt Albright, a mysterious white man looking for someone to investigate the disappearance of a missing white woman named Daphne Monet, who he suspects is hiding out in one of the city's black jazz clubs. Strapped for money and facing house payments, Easy takes the job, but soon finds himself in over his head.

In war torn Calcutta during the 1940's, Byomkesh Bakshy, fresh out of college, pits himself against an evil genius who is out to destroy the world.

A cop, investigating the mysterious death of a filmstar, meets a sex-worker, while he faces some personal problems psychologically. The mystery connects these people in a way, that ultimately changes their lives.

A murdered hotel millionaire's son finds himself tangled up in a game of seduction and murder after a raunchy night with three beautiful women.

A private investigator helps a former flame solve the murder of her wealthy grandfather, who lived in a sprawling estate surrounded by his idiosyncratic family.

Detective Inspector Richard Poole is transferred to Sainte Marie, an island in the Caribbean. Totally unsuited to the Caribbean way of life, Richard hates the sun, sea and sand and isn't used to the Sainte Marie style of policing. Working with the exotic Camille each week Richard investigates intricate and intriguing murders.

A law firm brings in its 'fixer' to remedy the situation after a lawyer has a breakdown while representing a chemical company that he knows is guilty in a multi-billion dollar class action suit.

Will Graham, a former London crime boss who has left his former life to live as a recluse in the forest. Haunted by the blood of those he has murdered, Will wishes never to return. But when his brother commits suicide, following a sexual assault at the hands of a volatile car dealer, Will returns to London to discover the cause of his brother's death and administer justice to those responsible.

A recently released ex-con gets involved in a fake kidnapping scheme that turns very real.

Lee Blanchard and Bucky Bleichert are former boxers-turned-cops in 1940s Los Angeles and, when an aspiring young actress turns up dead, Blanchard and Bleichert must grapple with corruption, narcissism, stag films and family madness as they pursue the killer.

Dan Merrick comes out from a shattering car accident with amnesia. He finds that he is married to Judith who is trying to help him start his life again. He keeps getting flashbacks about events and places that he can't remember. He meets pet shop owner and part time private detective Gus Klein who is supposedly done some work for him prior to the accident. Klein helps Merrick to find out more...

Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.

A tough police detective escapes from custody after being framed and arrested for the murder of his ex-wife, and must now find the real killer and prove his innocence.

FBI agent Joel Campbell, burnt-out and shell-shocked after years spent chasing serial killers, flees L.A. to begin a new life for himself in Chicago. But five months later, Joel's best laid plans are abruptly cut short when his new hometown becomes the setting for some particularly gruesome murders--murders that could only have been committed by one man: David Allen Griffin. One of Joel's most elusive and cunning nemeses, Griffin has followed his former pursuer to Chicago in order to play a sadistic game of cat and mouse. Taunting Joel with photographs of his intended victims and leaving his crime scenes meticulously free of clues in order to keep the police at bay, Griffin derives as much pleasure out of watching Joel react to every movement as watching his victims die. But when Griffin moves into Joel's inner circle, Joel must quickly find some way to stop him before someone close to him becomes the next one to die.

At the height of the Spanish Inquisition, high-ranking noblemen begin dropping like flies, with alarming frequency and unexplained violence. But can local 16th-century sheriff Ruy de Mendoza (Christopher Lambert) discern who's responsible when no one wants to cooperate? After all, before Mendoza can even identify the bodies, the crime scenes are mysteriously cleared -- and the villagers pretend the murders never happened.