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

New Year dawns and something is rotten in Kingsleigh. With a body on the bypass and pet cats going missing, supermarket sleuths Ant and Bea have a new case. But juggling problems at work and home takes its toll and as they near the truth, more than one secret is going to come out.

Salford, 1983. Lorraine Quick is a single mum, a member of a band going nowhere fast and Personnel Officer at Salford's grim Memorial Hospital. A new General Manager position is being introduced, someone to steer the institution towards Margaret Thatcher's lofty vision for the NHS. Lorraine will be pivotal in selecting the successful candidate, thanks to her recent training in psychometric testing.

Bella Beckett is clearing out her mother Betty’s house when she finds a hidden diary. On the cover, two words are written: BURN THIS. According to the diary, thirty-five years earlier, Betty witnessed the murder of Bella’s childhood friend, Vicky. The diary is quickly dismissed by the police as fiction–Betty’s attempt at creative writing–but Bella is convinced they are wrong. As she uncovers a series of dark connections, it is clear Vicky’s killer is still at large. And they weren’t just someone familiar to Betty, but a person Bella herself knows well…

It's approaching Christmas in Rome and snow is falling in a way that only happens every 20 or 30 years. The city is soon paralyzed by an unseasonably icy grip, and in the dark corners of the Pantheon a grim and mysterious story begins to unfold.

Kim and Mia Timmers were just 11 years old when they were imprisoned in a local psychiatric institution, accused of murdering the man they believed to be responsible for the death of their family. Now, 10 years later, they are due for release. Detective Pieter Vos is given cause to reopen the case when the girls disappear. His investigation takes an unexpected turn when it becomes clear that someone is posing as Little Jo - Kim and Mia's other sister, who was killed along with their parents.

In the shadow of St Paul's, Arnold and Hakim are drawn into an investigation involving an old man and a newborn baby. London, December 2019. Two young boys, Habib and Loz, are trying their luck at selling knock-off 'essential oils'. But they are troubled by an encounter with an elderly customer and a young man with a blood-smeared face.

Irving Levy is a man with few roots and, now that he is terminally ill, is anxious to find anyone to whom he can leave his considerable property. When he learns that there may be more to the disappearance of his younger sister, who disappeared when she was a baby, he engages the services of Hakim and Arnold to investigate. Unwittingly in mortal danger, the private detectives and Levy enter the world of Barking Park Fair and the secrets its brightly coloured attractions conceal. Secrets that lead them back to the chaotic world of postwar Europe, where few people were what they seemed.

In a hidden studio in Rome, an art expert is found dead in front of one of the most beautiful paintings Nic Costa has ever seen - an unknown Caravaggio masterpiece. But before long, tragedy will strike Nic far closer to home. The main suspect's identity is known, but he remains untouchable, protected by a fleet of lawyers and a sinister cult known as the Ekstasists. If Costa can crack the reasons for the cult's existence, he may well stand a chance of nailing his wife's killer. But the mystery will take him right back to Caravaggio himself and the reasons he had to flee Rome.

In the gorgeous grounds of Rome's Villa Borghese park the glitterati of the movie world are gathered for a world premiere. A legendary Italian movie director has come out of retirement to create a blockbuster based on Dante's Inferno. But, as Nic Costa and his colleagues attempt to guard the precious collection of historic artifacts attached to the event, the premiere is disrupted by tragedy and a horrific murder. Is a disgruntled admirer of Dante taking his revenge on the cast of the movie?

The streets of East London teem with different languages, cultures and religions. Private investigators Lee Arnold and Mumtaz Hakim are well-versed in the community's tensions, the sad day-to-day reality that includes the desecration of graves at Plashet Jewish cemetery in East Ham. However, the destruction of these final resting places leads to a disturbing discovery—one of the damaged coffins does not contain human remains, but instead a sculpture of a man made of clay.

At Christmas 1975 a group of Californian students experiment with LSD. One of them, Michael Quinn kidnaps the son of an English professor. When he is released from jail twenty years later, a mysterious young English woman named Joni Lascelles begins to ask questions that will unravel the past.

When two bodies wash up on a river bank in the Balkans, Simo Subotic is called in to investigate. It soon becomes clear that their deaths were the result of torture not seen since the Bosnian War. Meanwhile, after a drug bust prematurely ends the Tour de Balkans, former Olympic cyclist Heather Bishop is in freefall after her journalist boyfriend Ryan Mackinnon goes missing. Her desperate search for him uncovers not only Ryan's dark past, but that of a region still reeling from the trauma of war.

Chicago, 1928. In the stifling summer heat, three disturbing events take place: a clique of city leaders is poisoned, a white gangster is found mutilated and a famous heiress vanishes without a trace. Detectives Michael Talbot and Ida Davis are hired to find the missing heiress, but it proves harder than expected, and so Ida must elicit the help of her friend Louis Armstrong. But will any of them find the answers they need in the capital of jazz, booze and corruption?

Sixteen-year-old Charlotte 'Charlie' Mackintosh is a loner whose father works for the company. He gives her Realer for her birthday - only to be murdered as she watches through her high-tech hood at home. Alone in a tense post-lockdown world, Charlie has to turn to Realer to find his killers. She’s soon trapped in a murderous conspiracy behind a system that’s steadily beginning to take over people’s lives. Charlie comes to understand that she can only hide from outside dangers for so long.

Bermondsey Priory, 1114. A young chaplain succumbs to the temptations of the flesh - and suffers a gruesome punishment. From that moment, the monastery is cursed and over the next five hundred years murder and treachery abound within its hallowed walls. A beautiful young bride found dead two days before her wedding. A ghostly figure that warns of impending doom. A plot to depose King Edward II.

When a young woman is attacked walking home from her local supermarket, Bea Jordan, a smart but unfulfilled checkout girl, is determined to investigate. Colleagues and customers become suspects; secrets are uncovered. While fear stalks the town, Bea finds an unlikely ally in Ant, the seemingly gormless new trainee, but risks losing the people she loves most as death comes close to home.

Before he became an assassin in London's underworld, Joe was a soldier in the British army. Outside his home in East London, a turf war is raging; Joe has no choice but to join the fight. It's the only way he can find out what happened to the woman he loved - the only way he can bring her killers to justice. Revenge drives him forward. Either they die, or he does. There's only one way to find out....

The town's psychic cat, Irene Peggledrip, is being visited by a band of malevolent spirits who all claim to be murderers. The stage is set for Hettie and Tilly to solve an old murder mystery, where all the cats involved appear to be dead. Will our feline sleuths finally lay the ghosts to rest? Can Molly Bloom’s new cafe survive the seance? And will the moving claw give up its secrets before the gravy congeals? Join Hettie and Tilly for another spirited adventure.

Outside the Hope & Glory pub, a man has been left to die. A victim of extraordinary violence, he will never walk or speak again. He remains in hospital, nameless, until criminal defence lawyer Sarah Kellerman walks onto his ward. Sarah barely recognises the man she once worked with. He was honourable and kind - what was he involved in? Who wanted him dead?

One February evening in northern England, a young woman is shot in the head and left in a coma. Eight months later she dies, thus becoming a welcome excuse to dispatch the odious Inspector Dover as far as possible from London. It soon appears that Isobel Slatcher could have been smothered in her hospital bed with a pillow. Now Dover may have two murderers to catch: one who pulled the trigger, the other the last visitor she had in her short lifetime. If, that is, the town’s warring Catholics and Protestants will only stop distracting him.