Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Mystery

An artist is found dead in a gallery with locked doors and windows. A television presenter is struck by lightning while indoors. Two seemingly impossible crimes that only Arthur Bryant and John May of the Met's Peculiar Crimes Unit might be able to solve. But Bryant has lost his nerve, and May is fighting to keep the unit from closure. Worse still, an unsolved mystery from the past has returned to haunt them...

Football manager Scott Manson needs a new job, but finding one in the star-studded world of international football isn't easy. A new position in Shanghai turns out to be part of an elaborate sting operation - and in Barcelona, he's not hired as a football manager but as a detective. Barca's star player is missing, and Scott has a month to track him down. As Scott follows the trail from Paris to Antigua, he encounters the rotten heart of the beautiful game....

Crowner John is summoned to investigate the murder of a tin miner. The victim worked for Devon's most powerful and successful mine owner, Walter Knapman. There seems, to be only one motive - to sabotage Walter's business. But the tinners have their own laws, and they are none too pleased at Crowner John's interference. How on earth can Crowner John sort all this out when his own life is in turmoil?

Exeter, 1195. When a prominent burgess and guild-master falls dead across his horse, Crowner John declines to hold an inquest as the man had been complaining of chest pains and shows no sign of injury. Events take a sinister turn, however, when a straw-doll is discovered hidden under the man's saddle, a spike driven through its heart....

A few days before the summer solstice, a 92-year-old woman is found burned to death in her home. On the same day, a man's mutilated corpse is discovered, his arms ripped from their sockets, with a tarot card depicting the Fool inserted in his mouth. When the victim is identified as someone for whom the police have been looking for almost a year, detectives Anderson and Costello find themselves caught up in a case where nothing is as it seems.

Two teenagers see a dead man rising from his grave. And if that's not alarming enough, one of them is killed in a hit and run accident. Soon it seems death is all around and Bryant and May must confront a group of latter-day bodysnatchers. More graves are desecrated, further deaths occur, and when Bryant is blindfolded and taken to a secret society, he realises that this case is more complex than even he had imagined.

A cottage on the coast on a windy evening. Under a pool of yellow light, two figures face each other across a kitchen table. A man and a cat. The story about to be related is so unusual yet so terrifyingly plausible that it demands to be told in a single sitting. The man clears his throat, and leans forward, expectant. 'Shall we begin?' says the cat….

Exeter, 1195. Renovations at the new school in Smythen Street are disrupted by the discovery of a partially mummified corpse - and Sir John de Wolfe, the county coroner is called to investigate. Richard de Revelle, founder of the school, immediately tries to blame Nicholas de Arundell, a young outlawed knight living rough on Dartmoor. As Sir John discovers, Nicholas has good reason to bear a grudge against the unscrupulous de Revelle. But is he really a killer?

The newspapers called it The Bad Place. A remote farm out on the Thames estuary, where six children were held captive for two weeks. Five of them got out alive. That was 20 years ago. Now adults, they meet up annually to hold a candlelit vigil for their friend who died. The only rule is that no-one can talk about what happened the night they escaped. But at this year's event, one of them witnesses a kidnapping. A young girl, Sammi, is bundled into a van in front of their eyes.

When the remains of a missing teenager are uncovered, DC Ruth Hunter presumes the 40-year-old murder is linked to a knife fight between South London gangs in the 1950s. However, as the investigation widens, Ruth and her impetuous partner DC Lucy Henry, discover a disturbing connection to the dark criminal past of a prominent knight of the realm. Narrowing down their investigation to an infamous South London club, Ruth begins to uncover a complex web of historic police corruption, brutal protection rackets and celebrity gangsters.

In August 1992 a young mother and her two small sons were brutally murdered in the woods behind their home. Her neighbour, Andrew Gyle, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment. Now, 23 years later, a macabre discovery throws new light on the case. Could there have been a shocking miscarriage of justice?

When a body is discovered in the harbour town of Axmouth, Sir John de Wolfe, the county coroner, is summoned to investigate. The manner of the young man's death is a matter of some dispute - but, as Sir John soon discovers, it was no accident. The victim did not drown, as the manor reeve alleges, but was strangled. In the ensuing investigation, Sir John is frustrated by what appears to be a conspiracy of silence among the seamen and townsfolk. Just what is the local population trying to hide?

It doesn't take Meredith Mitchell long to regret giving up her lovely Cotswold cottage in favour of living in London. In addition, the fact that her job gives a whole new meaning to the word "tedious" does little to improve her mood. What she needs is a holiday. So, when Alan Markby's sister wants a house-sitter, Meredith jumps at the chance. Alan himself is overloaded with work following the discovery of two bodies, one of which, at least, is a murder victim.

Following a series of murders which appear to be linked to a revival of heresy, some of the cathedral canons begin a crusade against this danger to the Church. When Sir John is accused of being too sympathetic to the heretics, the coroner finds himself having to seek sanctuary in order to save his own life. Can he survive long enough to unmask the real killer?

Walter has a rubbish job, so has Margaret. But when they meet through a dating agency, neither is who they seem. Margaret's married for a start, and Walter's encounter with her husband, Billy, leaves him black and blue. Billy's a dodgy accountant for politician and racketeer Pink Harrison, who is about to come unstuck.

Fall, 1947. New York City. Private Investigator Ida Davis has been called to New York by her old partner, Michael Talbot, to investigate a brutal killing spree in a Harlem flophouse that has left four people dead. But as they delve deeper into the case, Ida and Michael realize the murders are part of a larger conspiracy that stretches further than they ever could have imagined. Meanwhile, Ida’s childhood friend, Louis Armstrong, is at his lowest ebb.

London, 1716. Justice Geoffrey Dumont has been found dead at the base of St Paul’s cathedral, and a young male sex-worker, Sam Yates, has been taken into custody for the murder. Yates denies all charges, claiming he had received a message to meet the judge at the exact time of death. The young man is a friend of courtesan Belle St Clair, and she asks Flynt to investigate. As Sam endures the horrors of Newgate prison, they must do everything in their power to uncover the truth and save an innocent life, before the bodies begin to pile up.

Dr Thomas Bond, Police Surgeon, is still recovering from when Jack the Ripper haunted the streets of London - and a more malign enemy hid in his shadow. Bond and the others who worked on the gruesome case are still stalked by its legacies, both psychological and tangible. Now the bodies of children are being pulled from the Thames, and Bond is about to become inextricably linked with an uncanny, undying enemy.

For its own very good reasons, Scotland Yard sends Dover off to remote Creedshire to investigate the disappearance of a young housemaid, Juliet Rugg. Though there's every cause to assume that she has been murdered - she gave her favours freely and may even have stooped to a bit of blackmail - no body is to be found. Weighing in at 16 stone, she couldn't be hard to overlook. But where is she? And why should Dover, of all people, be called upon to find her? Or, for that matter, even bother to solve the damned case?

On Good Friday, the verger of St Albans cathedral was supposed to be preparing the Easter service. Instead he discovers a man lying dead, fallen from the famous 50-foot-high spire. Did he jump, or was he pushed? For DCI Maarten Jansen, it's a simple case of suspected suicide. Until a stranger, Willow, who witnessed the jump, prompts a deeper investigation into a long-buried past, involving a mental hospital, a pregnant woman and 50 years of silence. As Willow's own family history entwines with the case, Jansen starts to wonder how everything is connected.