Showing results by author "Stephen Leather" in All Categories

"We’re professional soldiers,” said Shepherd. “We fight for queen and country. There’s a hell of a difference between us and mercenaries.” Spider Shepherd and the rest of his men are called upon to stop a bunch of South African mercenaries who have disobeyed orders and plundered diamond fields in Sierra Leone from reaching the Liberian border.

Carolyn Castle is one of the most famous faces in the UK - a soap opera star known to millions. But when she witnesses a gangland killing, she has to ask herself if her fame could be the death of her. The killer is charismatic gangster Warwick Richards. A man more than capable of killing again to protect his secret. But does he know that Carolyn saw him commit murder?

As a psychologist for the Los Angeles police department, Jamie Beaverbrook has seen it all. Or so he thinks until the night a full moon brings out the crazies, including Terry Ferriman. Trouble is, Terry isn’t exactly crazy. But how else can the police explain finding the girl in an alley off Sunset, crouched over a man’s lifeless body, her mouth smeared with blood? After an interview that is unsettling at best, the good doctor decides to dig deeper into Terry’s story. What he discovers is that a world he previously imagined to exist only in horror movies is actually flourishing in the shadows of L.A. Vampires are real....

Dan 'Spider' Shepherd was standing on the flight deck of an RAF Hercules C-130, leaning on the back of the pilot's seat and anxiously scanning the horizon ahead of them in the first faint light of dawn. Spider Shepherd and his patrol mates are heading back to Cyprus when an urgent situation arises, and they are pressed into action. A sensitive operation planned by HQ, they are sent into the Arabian desert to take on a group of dangerous terrorists.

New York City. With a population of almost 19 million people, it’s easy to remain anonymous - even if you’re a serial killer, torturing and murdering beautiful young women. The killer has another victim right now, locked in a basement somewhere in the city. For NYPD detectives Turner and Marcinko, it’s their job to sift through those 19 million and narrow their list to the one before it’s too late. And they’re sure they have the right man in their sights.

"Dan 'Spider' Shepherd shifted position slightly, trying to ease the pressure from the rocks beneath him and the ammo belt pressing into his chest. He lay prone, scanning the terrain through his sniper scope." After the Taliban unleash an attack on a military checkpoint, Spider Shepherd suspects foul play. He was too late to stop the attack, but he’s determined to find out how they knew where to strike. With the help of a local boy named Karim, he decides to investigate.

It’s been a long time since Jack Nightingale has taken confession. But repenting for his sins is not the only reason he has come to visit Father O’Grady - he needs him to perform an exorcism. Billy has been possessed by Bakka, a powerful demon who is Satan’s most loyal servant, and Jack must race to save the boy, and the world, from succumbing to the greatest evil imaginable.

Crimes are rare in Singapore, but when there's one that has the police baffled, it is Inspector Zhang that they turn to. From locked-room mysteries to murders disguised as suicide, Inspector Zhang is able to draw on his experience as a detective along with tricks he has learned from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. See if you can solve the crimes before the Inspector - the clues are there!

Dan Shepherd stared at the canvas ceiling above his bed as the dawn light slowly strengthened. His tent was pitched on the edge of the airfield outside Sarajevo in Bosnia. 1995, and Dan 'Spider' Shepherd is on active service as a paratrooper in war-torn Sarajevo. Frustrated by the army, when he is tasked with accompanying an SAS patrol in the area, he realises that the SAS is where he belongs.

"The bosun explained that E & E was so important to the regiment that every badged soldier and officer must do an E & E every couple of years.... It was the ultimate test: You were good, or you were caught." The final hurdle in the SAS selection process - the E & E exercise. The aim is to evade capture and to resist interrogation when finally caught. So when Spider Shepherd is captured, he doesn’t immediately think anything is wrong.

In the middle of the night, two young infants start screaming in their bedroom as the temperature drops, the baby mobiles spin wildly and the room is filled with an aura of fear, panic and dread.... Jack Nightingale is called to investigate these spooky goings on in the house of occult-metal rock star Jimmy Deadman and his health-crazed supermodel wife, Mary Madison. To try to work out what’s going on and save the poor children from the haunting, he must delve into the history of the town and the house itself and discover the meaning of two mysterious occultist lockets gifted to the babies on the day of their baptism.

Somewhere along Route 74, Jack Nightingale takes a wrong turn, ending up at a nightmarish convention for serial killers. When things start getting out of hand, Nightingale has to step in to stop more blood being shed.

Finally with some time off, Jack Nightingale decides to take a scenic tour of some haunted sites on the American East coast. But when a strange doll is dumped in the road in front of him, what was meant to be a break for rest and relaxation turns into a battle for life and death; the doll is powerful, murderous and evil. And Nightingale may have unwittingly made himself its next target....

Jack Nightingale is now living permanently in the US, and Joshua Wainwright has a job for him. Billionaire David Warner is being plagued by a ghost, and Nightingale must get rid of it or he won’t close his business deal with Wainwright. So it is a stay in a haunted mansion for Jack, surrounded by scared or hostile staff and dealing with an obnoxious client. Even under pressure of time, Jack’s first concern is with the welfare of the ghost.

The Wentworth Asylum, once used to house thousands of people, now lies abandoned. People insist it is inhabited by an ex-inmate who now chops down those who enter with her ax. After two teenagers turn up dead in the asylum, a television crew head to the asylum in the hopes of catching footage of the haunting. And to ensure their safety, Jack Nightingale is sent with them. But is it merely an ax-wielding murderer which awaits them?

South London gangster Perry Smith doesn’t scare easily, but when four of his associates are brutally ripped apart by a demon called Amy, he calls in Jack Nightingale. Nightingale thinks it’s a wind-up - the gang contacted the demon via an iPad app whilst on holiday. But before he knows it, he’s on his way to Fuengirola, with his assistant, Jenny McLean, to send Amy back to where she came from.

Employed by wealthy widow Vivienne Creswell to find out more about her husband’s death, Jack Nightingale finds himself in Florida. Dan Creswell’s body was found in his third floor apartment, ripped to shreds and with the footprints of a giant cat found at the scene. But he couldn’t have been killed by a cat...right?

Tarot cards predict the future, right? Trust Jack Nightingale to find a pack that can change that future...and of course he 'borrows' a card and signs a Latin contract he can’t read in his own blood. Can Jack and his longtime assistant Jenny McLean thwart the cards and destroy his and dozens of other contracts? Would anyone put money on a demon triumphing when Nightingale is on a mission?

Jack Nightingale was always happier dealing with criminal cases or even divorce than he was with matters of the supernatural. So when a client came with a simple request to uncover the meaning behind her father's last words, he was happy enough to take the case. Little did he know that the investigation would lead him to one of the vilest demons to ever walk through the gates of Hell.

Jack Nightingale - lives in the shadows, fights in the dark. Ex-cop turned private eye Jack Nightingale is used to dealing with tricky situations. He's faced down the powers of hell a couple of times, too. In this new short story, he's called in to help a policeman who's lying at death's door. The doctors can't work out what's wrong. But the dying man's colleagues swear blind that he was cursed by a gypsy during the Dale Farm clearance. And Nightingale could be his only hope.