Showing results by publisher "Oakhill Publishing" in Crime Fiction

Imagine a drug that made your brain function to its full potential. A drug that allowed you pick up a foreign language in a single day. A drug that helped you process information so fast you could see patterns in the stock market. Just as his life is fading into mediocrity, Eddie Spinola comes across such a pill: MDT-48 - a sort of Viagra for the brain. But while its benefits materialise quickly, so do certain unwelcome side-effects.

In April 1956, at the height of the cold war, Khrushchev and Bulganin leaders of the Soviet Union are in Britain on an official visit. Chief Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard is assigned to be the official bodyguard and to spy on the Soviets. Soon after, a Royal Navy diver is found dead in a mutilated state in Portsmouth Harbour. Troy embarks on an investigation that takes him to the rotten heart of MI6, to the distant days of his childhood and into the dangerous arms of an old flame.

John Holderness, known to the women in his life as ‘Wilderness’, comes of age during World War II in Stepney, breaking in to houses with his grandfather. After the war, Wilderness is recruited as MI5’s resident ‘cat burglar’ and finds himself in Berlin, involved with schemes in the booming black market that put both him and his relationships in danger.

At Police Scotland HQ, Grace Macallan has pitched up in Counter Corruption. But the demons of her past are never far behind. Meanwhile, Edinburgh's gangland is in turmoil, with territory battles causing serious havoc. Into the war steps DI Janet Hadden. An ambitious risk-taker, she knows how to throw opponents off balance. When she's thwarted, Hadden seeks help from a notorious underworld fixer - only for Grace to start an investigation that threatens to uncover all Hadden's secrets.

Scarred by the troubles in Belfast, Billy Nelson returns to his loyalist roots following his discharge from army service. But an outbreak of gang violence forces Billy to move on to Edinburgh, where he muscles in on the capital's drug trade. As the balance of power tips, underworld rivalries between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Belfast spill onto the streets. With a spate of horrific incidents and a trail of victims, the pressure is mounting for Grace Macallan, new superintendent of the Crime & Counter Terrorism Directorate.

Grace Macallan is at breaking point, and a new investigation is testing her to the limit. An undercover officer is missing and a woman is washed up, traumatised and barely alive, on the shores of Berwickshire. As she untangles the woman's story, Grace is drawn into a cold-blooded criminal world headed by Pete Handyside, a notorious gangland boss who will fight hard and dirty to control his empire. But a traitor in his midst is intent upon betrayal, triggering an uncontrollable wave of violence. As she hones in on crucial evidence, Grace knows that one wrong move could end in tragedy.

A solitary tent is found to contain the body of a half-buried woman. She’s been stoned to death. There are lash marks across her back. One of her hands has been cut off. Two years earlier Internet reporter Henning Juul lost his son, Jonas, in a domestic fire. As he returns to work, physically and emotionally scarred, Henning struggles to escape this past and to be taken seriously again as a reporter.

Having shot someone in the chaos of 1963 Berlin, Joe Wilderness finds himself locked up, with little chance of escape. But an official pardon through his father-in-law, Burne-Jones, a senior agent at MI6, means he is free to go. His newest operation will take him back to Berlin, now the dividing line between the West and the Soviets. When the Russians started building the Berlin Wall in 1961, two 'Unfortunate Englishmen' were trapped on opposite sides. In 1965 there is a plan to exchange the prisoners on Berlin’s bridge of spies.

A nine-to-five job away from the frontline isn't all it's cracked up to be for Grace Macallan. So when she's sent to investigate a suicide at Glasgow's notorious Barlinnie prison, Grace gladly escapes her desk. The dead inmate is Tommy McMartin, heir to a ferocious criminal family - though his murder conviction for killing his gay lover saw him cast out. The investigation drags Grace into contact with old McMartin adversaries - but the dynasty is under threat, and as it topples, buried secrets are unearthed.

When a covert police operation in Northern Ireland goes badly wrong, Grace Macallan is reassigned to the newly formed Lothian & Borders Major Crime Team and forced to rebuild her career and her reputation. But when a brutal attack on a prostitute turns into a series of murders, the Major Crime Team is under pressure. The tabloid headlines are lurid, and the team badly needs a result. With a new life to build in a new city, a new boss as smooth as an 18-year-old malt and a high-profile lawyer as the chief suspect, Grace begins to wonder if telling the truth is always the right thing to do.

London, 1849. As a cholera epidemic draws nearer, Joshua Jeavons, engineer, is working on his great drain plan for the capital. When the deaths begin, he works even more furiously, driven by the vision of a reborn London freed of rotting sewers. Then his beautiful young wife, Isobella, disappears, and Joshua must turn his attention to even more perplexing matters. His search for the answers to the mysteries that surround him leads from glittering Haymarket cafes to London's murky underworld.

Spring 1941: After 10 years spying for the Americans, Wolfgang Stahl disappears during a Berlin air raid. The Germans think he's dead. The British know he's not. But where is he? MI6 convince US Intelligence that Stahl will head for London, and so Captain Cal Cormack, a shy American 'aristocrat', is teamed with Chief Inspector Stilton, fat, 50, and convivial, and between them they scour London.

In the shadowy hallway of clockmaker Johannes Carver's house a policeman is found murdered, the arrow-tipped minute hand of a monumental antique clock embedded in his neck. For Dr Gideon Fell this is the only case that has ever really frightened him, and before he can solve it he must find answers to some seemingly impossible questions. Why was Calvin Boscombe standing near the corpse with a silencer on his gun? Who locked the attic door? And what has become of the 16th-century death-watch?

New York City is under attack. Millions may die. But the enemy's weapons are invisible, undetectable and creating terror at lightning speed. Now, there's nothing to stand in their way.... A Hiroshima survivor turned criminal mastermind. A pharma industry riddled with corruption. A Libyan entrepreneur coerced by threats to his family. A New York cop falling for an elusive beauty. A visitor to Tokyo from the mountains of Afghanistan. One terrible desire for revenge connects them all.

It is 1958. Newly promoted Chief Superintendent Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard is on a Continental trip with his older brother, Rod, who is taking the entire family on 'the Grand Tour' for his 51st birthday. After a concert in Vienna, Frederick Troy is approached by an old friend - Soviet spy Guy Burgess, who says something extraordinary: 'I want to come home.' MI5 send an agent to debrief Burgess - but the man is gunned down yards from the embassy, and Troy finds himself a suspect. As he fights to prove his innocence, Troy finds that Burgess is not the only ghost who returns to haunt him.

Turner Raines is Mr Heartbreak. Everybody leaves him. They walk out, they run away...they die. When his oldest friend, Mel Kissing, dies with an ice pick through his skull, Raines picks up the thread and sets out to ask 'who?' and 'why?' But this is America in 1969, and one death is just a drop in the ocean. The Vietnam War is ripping the country to pieces, the Woodstock Festival is in full swing and Norman Mailer is standing as candidate for mayor of New York.

Christopher Kent, worth a quarter of a million pounds yet not a penny in his pocket, stands hungrily in Piccadilly one snowy morning looking up at the huge hotel when a piece of card bearing a number floats down to him. He enters the hotel and is served with breakfast, giving the waiter the room number to charge. Then an unlucky chance compels him to go up to room 707....

When three-year-old Olivia disappears, her mother, Maggie, refuses to leave the cottage, staring out at the turbulent sea and praying it didn’t claim her daughter’s life. Another mother watches proudly as her daughter starts school. Jennifer has loved Hailey for five years, but the child is suddenly moody, and there’s a niggling worry that Jennifer cannot shake off. Time is running out for Maggie and also for Jennifer and Hailey.

Minutes after Sophie Kohl confesses to her diplomat husband that she had an affair while they were in Cairo, he is shot and killed. Stan Bertolli, a Cairo-based CIA agent’s heart skips a beat when he hears the only woman he ever loved calling to ask why her husband has been assassinated. Jibril Aziz, an American analyst knows all about a covert operation rejected by the CIA. So when it seems someone has obtained a copy of the blueprints, Jibril knows the danger it represents....

It was supposed to be a final celebration for six British graduates, the perfect French getaway - until Severine arrived. Her beauty captivates them, and in the summer heat, tension simmers and years of jealousy and longing rise to the surface. Then Severine disappears. A decade later, her body is found - and for Kate Channing, the discovery brings up unwelcome memories. As police suspicion mounts against the friends, Kate becomes desperate to resolve her shifting understanding of that time.