Showing results by author "Judy M Ford" in All Categories

The police are called when a young man is found dead in the garden of his family home. It looks like an all-too-familiar story of depression and despair, but when DCI Anna Davenport starts asking questions, a few things don’t quite add up. Short-staffed and with an important court case looming, she calls on her trusted assistant DI Andy Lepage to help to untangle the mystery.

Six months on from the murders of Kenny Hughes and Harry Whittle, their families are still waiting to hear when the killers will be brought to trial. The end of the COVID-19 lockdown and the re-opening of Crown Courts offers hope, but summer turns to Autumn and Christmas approaches with no end to their ordeal in sight.

Veteran Detective DCI Jonah Porter is frustrated at being sent home from work to sit out the COVID-19 lockdown at home. To occupy his mind - and give him some peace from his complaints - his friend, Bernie, suggests that he writes his memoirs. So Jonah delves deep into the past to revisit his very first murder investigation: a case from 1982, when Margaret Thatcher was still fighting the unions and the Greenham Common women were campaigning to stop cruise missiles being based on UK soil.

When Gavin’s son, Kenneth, followed him into the Police Service, neither of them thought that he would make the headlines (or the statistics) as a valiant officer killed in the course of his duty. However, only days before Christmas, a routine raid on a cannabis farm turns into tragedy when Kenny is mown down by a fast-moving motor vehicle while attempting to arrest one of the gang.

A man lies dead in the Fellows’ Garden at Lichfield College. He’s been seen working there, but he’s not on the payroll. What motivated him to weed the beds and mow the lawns? And who stabbed him in the back and left him to die? When Geology Fellow Martin Riess happens upon this grisly scene, it is only natural that he should call on his old colleague Bernie and her ex-police friends to help with disentangling this complex puzzle. And it’s not long before the official police inquiry is calling on their services too, when this case turns out to have its roots deep in the past.

Three young Muslim students are attacked in the street by an assailant on a motorbike who sprays them with acid. What is the motive for this unprovoked assault? Is it a religious hate crime or something more personal? Is the aggressor a lone wolf with a personality disorder or part of an extremist organisation? While doctors strive to save the women from death and disfigurement, the police mobilize to hunt down the perpetrator of this hideous crime. Will they succeed? And will the unknown villain strike again?

When the bursar of Lichfield College is found strangled in an Oxford hotel, detective chief inspector Jonah Porter rapidly concludes that the killer is one of the nine college staff attending a meeting there, but who is the most likely suspect? Is it mathematics fellow, Tom Carrington, who found the body? Or was it the Master, who was the last to see him alive? Was the bursar blackmailing one of his colleagues? Or could it be a crime of passion committed by his former mistress?

Are you ready to make your family the most important part of your every day? Best selling author Judy Ford delivers practical wisdom and advice for building strong, healthy families, speaking to every family member about how they can contribute to this important goal. Whether yours is a traditional or nontraditional family, Ford's prescription will sustain families with such vital tools as love and laughter.

A serial killer appears to be targeting female students, strangling them and then discarding their bodies alongside the trash. Women in Liverpool's multi-ethnic student community fear for their lives as the police race to catch the perpetrator and prevent more deaths. But what is the murderer's motive—pure misogyny, or something more complicated? What do the chess pieces left lying next to the victims' bodies mean? Does the principal suspects interest in computer gaming have a bearing on the case?

Following the sudden disappearance of his wife, a police investigation soon starts to focus on eminent surgeon Leonard Martineau. Were they the devoted couple that they appeared to his colleagues? Or was one of her friends right to suggest that she was afraid of him? Is the next-door neighbour imagining things when she reports having seen him digging a grave in his back garden? Is her sister’s antipathy towards Leonard justified? Or is she just resentful and jealous of her sister’s marriage?