Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Thriller & Suspense

A sweltering summer spells bad news for the private detective business. Thieves and philanderers take the month off and the only swingers in town are the ones to be found on the 19th hole of the Royal Hoo Golf Course. The civilized reputation of the 'Hoo' is in trouble, however. Shocking allegations of cheating have been directed at one of its leading members, Chris Porphyry. When Chris turns to Joe Sixsmith, PI, he's more than willing to help - well, he hasn't got any other clients.

When a hotelier announces that he will be converting Springwood Hall into a smart country hotel, his plan is greeted with a chorus of local disapproval, led by the fearsome Hope Mapple, head of the Society for the Preservation of Historical Bamford. So the grand opening, to which all are invited, promises to be a lively affair, particularly since Hope is planning a disruptive protest "streak". However, Hope is to be unwittingly upstaged by the discovery of a recently murdered body on the premises.

In England’s silent-film industry, Randolph Fflytte is king. Mary Russell is dispatched to investigate the criminal activities that surround Fflytte’s movie studio, but nothing seems amiss until the company starts rehearsals in Lisbon. There the 13 blonde-haired, blue-eyed actresses whom Mary is bemusedly chaperoning meet the swarm of real buccaneers Fflytte has recruited to provide authenticity. As movie make-believe becomes true terror, Russell and Holmes themselves may experience a final fade-out.

Italy, 1351. English knight Gerard Fox and the resourceful Willa have come through a death-defying journey across war-torn Europe. Now looking towards their future together, they must first find a way to reconcile with their difficult pasts. In a small village between Florence and Siena, Fox and Willa are caught up in a deadly ambush. After rescuing the enigmatic woman who is the target of the attack, they take refuge in her opulent villa and learn her heartbreaking story—a tale of loss, deception... and a burning desire for freedom.

The death of a child and what seems to be a murderous puppet make a perfect case for Bryant and May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit. As John May and his team interrogate the suspects, Arthur Bryant heads into the secret world of illusions and stagecraft. As a second impossible death occurs, the detectives uncover forgotten museums and London eccentrics. The stage is set for a race against time with a surprising twist...

1294 BC: The fragile accord between the Hittite and Egyptian empires is crumbling. The ancient world braces itself for war on an unprecedented scale. Prince Hattu, the greatest of the Hittite generals, suffers dreams of terrible consequences–conjured by the Goddess Ishtar. But Hattu refuses to accept her prophecies, adamant that there is one last chance for peace. This fragile hope lies in the borderlands of the east, where the two rival empires touch. Hattu gathers a chosen band and sets out for this distant, blistering desert land, determined and defiant.

Arthur Bryant, John May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit is on the trail of an enigma: Mr Fox. His identity is false, and his links to society are invisible. Their search takes them into the vast labyrinth of the Underground, a subterranean world full of legends and ghost stations. Edging closer to what lies beneath the city, are Bryant and May about to uncover something truly bizarre?

On a winter night outside a nightclub in London, four strangers meet for the first time at 4:00 a.m. A few weeks later a body is found inside a willow tree on Hampstead Heath. The Peculiar Crimes Unit is called in to investigate. When another victim seemingly commits suicide, it becomes clear that in the London night is a killer who knows what people fear most. As they explore a night city where all the normal rules are upended, Bryant and May are drawn deeper into a case that involves murder, arson, kidnap, blackmail, bats and the psychological effects of loneliness on Londoners.

When a teenage boy steps out of the shadows of Gallowstree Lane and asks a passer-by for help, it’s already too late. His life is bleeding out on the London street. The murder threatens to derail Operation Perseus, a covert police investigation into the Eardsley Bluds, an organised criminal network. Detective Kieran Shaw can’t and won’t allow that to happen. But 15-year-old Ryan has other ideas. He’s witnessed the death of his best friend, and now he wants someone to pay....

When a six-week-old baby is stolen from outside a village shop, Detective Inspector Costello quickly surmises there's more to this case than meets the eye. As she questions those involved, she uncovers evidence that this was no impulsive act as the police initially assumed, but something cold, logical, meticulously planned. Who has taken Baby Sholto, and why? Colin Anderson meanwhile is on the Cold Case Unit, reviewing the unsolved rape of a young mother back in 1996. Convinced this wasn't the first - or last - time the attacker struck, Anderson looks for a pattern. But when he does find a connection, it reaches back into his own past....

It sends a shiver down Detective Superintendent Alan Markby's spine when he hears that a rambler has stumbled across human bones in Stovey Woods in the heart of the Cotswolds. Twenty-two years earlier, as a fresh-faced young inspector, he had a rare failure, in the hunt for a brutal serial rapist preying on local women. After the third rape, the attacker went to ground, never to be heard of again.

He’s the Man With No Name and the owner of No Alibis, a mystery bookshop in Belfast. But when a detective agency next door goes bust, the agency’s clients start calling into his shop asking him to solve their cases. It’s not as if there’s any danger involved. It’s an easy way to sell books to his gullible customers and Alison, the beautiful girl in the jewellery shop across the road, will surely be impressed. Except she’s not – because she can see the bigger picture.

Eli Amiram is Mossad’s star spy runner and the man responsible for bringing unparalleled intelligence to the Israeli agency. Now, he’s leading an audacious operation in the UK that feeds his ambition but threatens his conscience. The British and the Americans have intel Mossad desperately needs.To force MI6 and the CIA into sharing their priceless information, Eli and his maverick colleague Rafi undertake a risky mission to trick their allies: faking a terrorist plot on British soil.

The members of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit are on the case again when a dog walker is found dead. The method of the death is odd...the killer had no way in - or out - and the dog is nowhere to be seen. But the 'hows' and 'whys' of the murder are not the only mysteries, and it seems very likely that the killer is preparing to strike again.

DI Shona Oliver’s past and present collide when James McGowan, her ex-classmate–now a famous actor–comes to the area to make a Robert Burns biopic. Shona is tasked with keeping him safe during filming on an isolated island in the Solway Firth, and her job is made much harder when a dead man wearing James’s coat is found on the beach in suspicious circumstances. It seems someone wanted James out of the picture.

London, 1867. As Inspector Ben Ross of Scotland Yard walks homeward one Saturday night, the fog that swirls around him is like a living beast. After it has lifted a woman lies murdered in Green Park. Allegra Benedict was the beautiful Italian wife of an art dealer. As Ben begins his investigation, his wife Lizzie looks into Allegra's private life and uncovers more than one reason why someone might want her dead...

Three times Detective Chief Inspector Pascoe has wrongly accused dead-pan joker Franny Roote. This time he's determined to leave no gravestone unturned as he tries to prove that the ex-con and aspiring academic is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. But over his investigation looms the huge form of Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel.

Michael North is a hero, with a bullet in the brain to prove it. A bullet which has rewired his neural pathways and heightened his sense of intuition. A bullet which is driving him mad. Working for an extra-governmental agency called The Board, North knows one thing for sure. He is very good at killing very bad guys. But what happens when a hero is ordered to kill a good woman rather than a bad man? Because it turns out that rising political star, Honor Jones, MP, can't stop asking the right questions about the wrong people....

The Peculiar Crimes Unit has solved many extraordinary cases over the years, but some were hushed up and hidden away. Until now. Arthur Bryant remembers these lost cases as if they were yesterday. Here, then, is the truth about the Covent Garden opera diva and the 17th reindeer, the body that falls from the Tate Gallery, the ordinary London street corner where strange accidents keep occurring, the consul’s son discovered buried in the unit’s basement, the corpse pulled from a swamp of Chinese dinners....

November, 1957: Six teenage girls walk in the churning Derbyshire mists. Their voices carrying across the fields, they follow the old train tracks into the dark tunnel of the Cutting. Only five appear on the other side. October, 2014: a dying mother, feverishly fixated on a friend from her childhood, makes a plea: 'Find Valerie.' Mina's elderly mother had never discussed her childhood with her daughter before. So who was Valerie? Where does her obsession spring from? DC Connie Childs is partnered up with new arrival to Bampton, Peter Dahl.