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

When hordes of 18-year-olds descend on the Mornington Peninsula to celebrate the end of exams, a brutal bashing attracts political attention. The victim is connected, and now DI Hal Challis is facing interference from on high. Newly embarked on a relationship with his Sergeant, Ellen Destry, Challis doesn't need the brass looking over his shoulder. Then a bludgeoned corpse is found outside town, and it's clear something much darker than adolescent craziness is going down.

When a man is arrested for a long-unsolved murder, Detective Bridgette Cash is tasked with closing the investigation. But powerful forces are determined to secure a conviction, and as Bridgette uncovers evidence pointing to the man’s innocence, she realizes the real killer is still out there. With her life and career on the line, Bridgette races against the clock to unravel a web of lies and corruption. Can she expose the shocking truth before it’s too late?

One Thursday morning, Lexie Parker dashes to the shop for biscuits, leaving Bella in the safe care of the other mums in the playgroup. Six minutes later, Bella is gone. Police and media descend on the tiny village of Merrigang on the edge of Canberra. Locals unite to search the dense bushland. But as the investigation continues, relationships start to fracture, online hate messages target Lexie and the community is engulfed by fear.

The job's a classic jewel heist: quick, clean and simple. Except for one thing. Wyatt prefers to work alone, but this job belongs to Eddie Oberin and his very smart ex-wife, Lydia. She has the inside information; Wyatt has the planning genius and meticulous preparation. What could possibly go wrong? Plenty. But when you cross Wyatt, you don't walk away.

Sergeant Nick Chester has dodged the Geordie gangsters he once feared, is out of hiding and looking forward to a quiet life. But gold fever is creating ill feeling between prospectors, and a new threat lurks in the form of trigger-happy Americans preparing for Doomsday by building a bolthole at the top of the South Island. As tensions simmer in the Wakamarina valley, Nick finds himself working on a cold-case murder and investigating a scandal-plagued religious sect. When local and international events reach fever pitch, Chester finds himself up against an evil that knows no borders.

Cato Kwong is back. Back in Boom Town and back on a real case – the unsolved mystery of a missing fifteen-year-old girl. But it's midsummer in the city of millionaires and it's not just the heat that stinks.

John Bailey has a history of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The veteran war reporter has been kidnapped and tortured - twice. Finally he’s living something that resembles a normal life. But all that changes when a terrorist murders a woman in front of Bailey in London. The mastermind behind the attack is Mustafa al-Baghdadi - number one on the FBI’s most wanted list - and the man who tortured Bailey in Fallujah a decade ago.

Investigative journalist John Bailey will risk everything to get to the truth, so being kicked when he’s down comes with the territory. Having lost the one woman who was always there to pick him up, the former war correspondent is doing his best to turn his life around without her. He has a new job. He’s given up the drink. He even has a dog. But then Federal Police raid his home with a warrant granting them unprecedented powers to take anything they want.

In self-exile on the remote island of Tasmania, Taylor Bridges is the only ranger of an isolated national park, its town slowly drowning beneath the rising waters of the new dam project. Still struggling with the guilt of losing his daughter, Claire, Taylor is a chronic sleepwalker. So, when another little girl goes missing in his park a year to the day of his own child’s unsolved disappearance, Taylor’s sense of redemption finds him wading in over his head to find her.

Some people just work better alone. Wyatt’s one of them. He’s been getting by on nice quiet little burglaries - one-man jobs - when he gets wind of something bigger. A corporate crook, notorious Ponzi schemer, set to face court and certain jail time. He’s about to skip bail the old-fashioned way: on a luxury yacht with a million dollars in cash. Wyatt thinks it sounds like something he should get into. He’s not alone.

Trainee private investigator Lee Southern finds himself drawn into a web of danger and deceit as he investigates a series of bribery attempts targeting a wealthy entrepreneur. Under the expert tutelage of retiring PI Frank Swann, Lee uses all of his developing skills, instincts and cunning to get to the heart of a sordid mystery. As Lee delves deeper into the case and questions the intentions of those he's working for, he finds himself the target of increasingly ominous threats and several attempts on his life.

Magpie Beach is a quiet seaside town – full of small-town prejudices and small-town cliques. Meg, Rosemary and Lily are all outsiders. Meg and Lily because they came to Magpie Beach to escape their former lives, Rosemary because her upbringing was the subject of much local gossip and upturned noses. The three women come together as friends, partly because their homes are so close together on the outskirts of town – and partly because their neighbors treat them with such suspicion. When Jessie Else goes missing – it's easy to see why this small band of outcasts are first on the list of suspect.

In taut and stylish prose, The Passenger Seat examines how men learn and perform masculinity. Rejecting easy answers, it keeps our eyes trained on the vanishing point where vulnerability edges into violence, alienation into aggression.

Battered war correspondent John Bailey is a man living on the edge. He’s haunted by nightmares of being kidnapped and tortured in Iraq, and he’s drinking too much to drown the memories. As he battles to get his life back together, a story breaks that will force him back into the spotlight—and into the crosshairs of a deadly international player.

The Heads was once a small village on the NSW north coast. Now it's a large village with a lot of action below the surface. A shipment of coke, a crime squad investigation and a drug overdose keeps the local sergeant pretty busy. Someone is preying on the women of The Heads. And what does the discovery of buried roosters in the forest mean to a young boy traumatised by the death of his mother? Will Sergeant William Jarrett uncover what is really going on or will it all remain hidden?

Volunteering his services as a pilot to fly renowned international peace advocate Egon Kisch between Fremantle and Melbourne, Rowland is unaware how hard Australia's new attorney general will fight to keep the 'raging reporter' off Australian soil. Add a disgraced minister, an unidentified corpse and an old flame who will not be denied and once again, Rowland Sinclair stands against the unthinkable, with an artist, a poet and a brazen sculptress by his side.

New to the force, detective Bridgette Cash faces her first murder case when a young woman's body is found in the forest. Convinced it's the work of a serial killer, she must navigate skeptical superiors and scant evidence to uncover the truth. As the clock ticks and the pressure mounts, she scrambles to gather clues and catch the perpetrator before they strike again.

Bridgette’s much-needed vacation takes a chilling turn when psychopath Alex Hellyer escapes prison, determined to settle old scores. Cut off from the world in a remote lodge, Bridgette becomes the unwitting target of Hellyer’s rampage. With limited resources and no backup, she has to rely on her wits to survive a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Em has lived a quiet life with her complicated mother and is now looking for love and a potential escape from her small hometown. When a masked man kidnaps her in the dark of night, though, she is drawn into a terrifying world. Jodie has been trying to forget a troubling time in her life, pouring her trauma into her work and out of her mind. Until one night her daughter is kidnapped and Jodie is dragged back into the violence. As Em and Jodie race into the darkness, the agony of the past rushes up to meet them. It will take all their devotion and courage to escape this night alive.

The calling card of the killer known as ‘The Jeweller' is as elegant as it is gruesome: a pair of ring fingers, separated from their owners, encircled by a band of wire, and delivered directly to Senior Detective Joe Capello. When the Jeweller taunts Joe and his team into meeting him in the diseased grounds of Barren Park, the consequences of that evening will have permanent repercussions for everyone involved. And for Joe, it gets personal.