Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Crime Fiction

London, 1940. A woman lies dead in a bombed-out house. It looks like she's another tragic casualty of the Blitz, until police pathologist Aleck Northcote proves she was strangled and placed at the scene. But Northcote himself has something to hide. And when his past catches up with him, he, too, is murdered. Tewkesbury, 2020. Beneath the vast stone arches of Tewkesbury Abbey, a man has been fatally stabbed. He is Roddy March, an investigative journalist for a podcast series uncovering miscarriages of justice.

Nicole Jameson has always been proud of her husband, Ethan. He's built a successful career in finance, and his employers, the Harrisons, treat them like family. They're a firm who look after their own, and even gave a loan to the company chauffeur, Conrad, to fund his pilot licence. When the two men are returning from a business trip, the worst possible thing happens—their plane crashes into the sea. No survivors are expected to be found. Nicole is heartbroken, much like Conrad's wife, Ania. She never warmed to Nicole, but now they share a bond of grief.

Venice is a beautiful and mysterious city. Lucifer's Shadow combines two stories in the city, set centuries apart from one another, and both involving the shady but seductive characters of Venice. The stories involve an anonymous manuscript for a violin concerto, and run parallel, interweaving to lead listeners into a stunning double twisted ending.

May 1942. Thousands of American GIs are stationed across eastern England building airfields to bomb Germany. Cambridge is a 'liberty town'—a hot spot for 'Yanks' on leave. DI Eden Brooke is called to the aerodrome five miles east of the city when the remains of an airman, identified by his dog tag, are uncovered as workmen extend the runway. It's clear the victim has been buried for decades. Brooke discovers the base was used to train US pilots in the Great War—a quarter of a century earlier.

Cherry Magraw can never forget the date her mother and brother were killed–the night of her ninth birthday. When her father was jailed for their murders, she lost everyone she loved. Twenty years later, Cherry is a freelance journalist investigating domestic abuse and the secret world of the family courts, when she gets a letter from her father–still in prison for the killings–which contains a startling request.

Chief of the Intelligence Department Sir Leonard Wallace - bearing always the hallmark of coolness and wit - is up to his earlobes in trouble. Summoned by the Viceroy of India, he makes a rapid flight to India to investigate the mysterious death of British officer Major Elliot and the theft of some very important dispatches.

When a seventeen-year-old Moldovan boy is found dead on Hampstead Heath, the case falls to DCI Karen Shields and her overstretched team. Karen knows she needs a result. What she doesn't know is that her new case is tied inextricably to a much larger web of gang warfare and organised crime which infiltrates almost every aspect of London society.

Ruth and Simon’s romantic break is shattered by the news that their daughter, Heather, on holiday in Cornwall, has disappeared. The loss is more than they can bear and they separate. In time Ruth remarries and has a second daughter, Beatrice. Then Beatrice goes missing. While DI Grayson leads the search for Beatrice, DS Helen Walker re-examines what happened to Heather years before.

In the South African veld poaching gangs are resorting to extreme levels of violence to hunt down valuable rhino horns. Battling to defend the dwindling rhino population, a veteran anti-apartheid freedom fighter is forced to break his lifetime loyalty to the ANC as he confronts corruption at the very highest level.

1964. A hoard of the finest Scotch whisky ever made–the legendary Dalziel Double Proof–goes missing. 2023. Albie, youngest son of the wealthy Dalziel family, vanishes. His desperate mother turns to Robbie Gould, a disgraced reporter with a reputation as a 'psychic crimebuster'. Broke and unemployed, Gould is in no position to turn down the job. He throws himself into a twisted chain of criminals, bent cops and Japanese gangsters, but when someone fires a shotgun through his door, he realises he doesn't need supernatural powers to see how deadly the situation has become.

In the most remote spot of the hills surrounding Loch Tay, a woman’s remains were found. She had lay there a while, but any evidence of who she was had long gone–or never existed. Crime podcaster Cal Lovett seeks to put ‘Hillside Jane’ to rest, but is he merely running from his own troubles? With the wife of his sister’s alleged killer missing and a sense that any chance he had of getting justice for Margot is slipping from his grasp, Cal is at a crossroads.

Three young ladies are thrown into raging waters, seemingly pushed by an invisible hand. Six years later, when a famous actor is flung from his window, eye witnesses agree: it was as if he was shoved from behind by an unseen murderer, imitating the inexplicable death of a young lady in the same house over fifty years earlier. Renowned sleuth Dr Alan Twist and his partner Inspector Hurst go to the eerie landscape of Dartmoor to investigate. But invisible killers are hard to bring to justice…

Summer. A dark, brooding season of oppressive heat and thunderstorms, and Flotsam yearns for fresh air and a sea breeze. But business is brisk in Baker Street and becomes even brisker when a lady who purports to be a spiritualist brings Sherlock Holmes a mysterious message from the dead. The legendary detective has no time for mediums, yet the message proves remarkably prescient when, later the same day, he is consulted about the Last Will and Testament of the deceased armaments tycoon, Erasmus Belladonna.

Heavily pregnant yet still running her flower shop in Keswick, Simmy Brown agrees to deliver an unusual bouquet to remote Eskdale. There she encounters three generations of women—and the next day, one of them is brutally murdered.

Venice, 1954. Rosy Gilchrist thinks luck may be on her side. Her boss at the British Museum has chosen her to travel to Venice to track down a rare edition of Horace's Odes for their collection. Things soon take a drastic downward spiral. A wealthy recluse offers a million-pound reward for anyone who can find the treasure. Soon Rosy finds herself in a race against time as her rivals will do anything for money. Even murder.

It’s 1961, and the white heat of the Space Race is making the Cold War even colder. The age of global surveillance dawns. Secret Agent Richard Knox has been hung out to dry by someone in MI5, and he needs to find the traitor in their midst. Meanwhile in a closed city outside Leningrad, top Soviet Scientist Irina Valera discovers the secret to sending messages through space, a technology that could change the world. But an accident forces her to flee.

Kit Pelham is a professional fan, interviewer, host of the podcast The First Cult is the Deepest, and occasional obituary writer. Except this time the obituary is for her friend, maverick podcaster Wolf Tyler, who is murdered in his shed during a live broadcast, moments before revealing a huge secret about the cult TV show Vixens from the Void. Kit and her group of friends and fellow superfans soon realise Wolf had discovered something about the disappearance of Lily Sparkes, an extra on Vixens from the Void, back in 1986. And it was a secret worth killing for.

Jacob Taylor is driving home from a roadside bar and sees a young woman walking barefoot, covered in blood. Desperate, she asks if she can stay with him just for one night. Next morning, local sheriffs burst in, search the place and arrest him, finding blood and DNA all over the place. She’s missing, presumed kidnapped, with two dead in her wake. The following night, two cops enter his cell with a mind to kill him and stage it as suicide. He manages to fight them off and escape, determined to clear his name and discover the dark truth hiding in his seemingly peaceful town.

Avril Benham’s quiet life in her Kent cottage shatters when she discovers a break-in, a murder down the street, and the return of a dark figure from her past—Rena Hargreaves. Haunted by secrets she thought were buried, Avril is pulled into a deadly game of revenge and betrayal. With the police closing in and Rena hell-bent on vengeance, Avril must confront the twisted truths of her own past before she becomes the next victim…

A haunted room. An unbroken seal. A murder victim whose very identity is an enigma. And then, a second death in a house surrounded by untrodden snow. Both crimes defy reason—but master detective Dr. Alan Twist reveals that even the most baffling mysteries have rational explanations.