Showing results by narrator "Colin Mace" in All Categories

Whilst visiting a former SAS comrade in Italy, a distracted Ben nearly runs over a young boy - and unwittingly walks into his deadliest mission yet. Ben's involvement with the boy's family runs deeper as he witnesses their brutal murder at a gallery robbery. A seemingly worthless Goya sketch was the principal target in the bloodbath heist. Now it's up to Ben to find out the truth behind the elusive painting.

Only one man can foil a plot set to change the course of history.... Ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope is enjoying life at Le Val, the facility in Northern France where he trains others in the dangerous art of hostage rescue, until a chance incident forces him to take on the role of bodyguard to the Swiss billionaire Maximilian Steiner. The victim of a recent abduction attempt, Steiner believes that a neo-Nazi terror group are bent on seizing a prized document from his personal collection.

On the face of it, representing a widow in an accidental death case should be routine. Sergeant Maynard, a Royal Air Force policeman, died in a simple motorcycle accident. The problem is, Mrs Maynard insists her husband was murdered. Sceptical at first, Charles realises she could be right; something much more frightening is happening at the airbase.

London, 1968: The psychopathic Kray twins have ruled London’s underworld for years, aided by their government connections, bent coppers, and extreme violence. Now, finally, Superintendent “Nipper” Read’s taskforce has a chance to take them down. The catch: Read needs barrister Charles Holborne to testify against them, while the Krays have evidence against him which would end his career and send him to prison. Caught in the middle, and with his pregnant partner’s life and his career at stake, this time Holborne has no choices left.

Incarceration has a long and inglorious history, from dungeons in the bowels of castles to oppressive penal colonies in Australia. Karen Farrington brings this history up to the 21st century, exploring some of the world's worst prisons, from Alcatraz to Pollsmoor, and the unending battles that rage between convicts and warders. Inside the prison walls, gangs rule, guards devise sadistic punishments, and newcomers suffer abuse at the hands of experienced tormentors.

Christopher Berry-Dee offers case studies in some of the most infamous mass killings of the past 50 years, from school massacres to workplace killings, hate crimes to familicides. In doing so, he demonstrates, chillingly, that such murders are almost impossible to predict, and therefore almost impossible to prevent.

The Earl of Essenburg, Steven Hargraves, is dead. Assassinated by an unknown assailant, his death plunges the earldom into a bloody civil war. Rival siblings of the murdered lord have vied for control of the region for three long years. Frederick, the rightful heir to his father’s title, lies ensconced in Bode Castle, held under siege by his younger sister Catherine’s army.

The Hundred Years War still rages on and the French army thirsts for Thomas Blackstone's blood. Blackstone battles to strengthen Edwards III's claim to the throne and confronts the might of the French army. But, when his friend turns assassin, Blackstone is faced with an impossible choice: to save the English prince or sacrifice his son. Will he abandon his sworn oath to protect the future King of England? Or will he protect his family at the cost of the nation?

They say blood is thicker than water. They never mention alcohol. Ex special forces soldier Alex Abbott has a lead on the killer of his dead brother. If only he can stay off the booze long enough to hunt it down. But the skeletons in Abbott's closet are mounting up faster than the bodies in their bags, and Abbott needs to get his focus back if he's going to get his revenge. His pursuit takes him to the North of England, where Abbott infiltrates a local gang, forced to carry out jobs to maintain his cover.

Vakov Fukasawa used to be a Reaper: a bio-enhanced soldier fighting for the Harmony, against a brutal invading empire. He's still fighting now, on a different battlefield: taking on stormtech. To make him a perfect soldier, Harmony injected him with the DNA of an extinct alien race, altering his body chemistry and leaving him permanently addicted to adrenaline and aggression. But although they meant to create soldiers, at the same time Harmony created a new drug market that has millions hopelessly addicted to their own body chemistry.  

A brand new novella set in the engrossing world of The Demon Cycle from bestselling fantasy author Peter V. Brett. Humanity has been brought to the brink of extinction. Each night, the world is overrun by demons. Bloodthirsty creatures of nightmare that have been hunting the surface for over 300 years. A scant few hamlets and half-starved city-states are all that remain of a once proud civilization, and it is only by hiding behind wards, ancient symbols with the power to repel the demons, that they survive.

When 12-year-old Valentina fails to return from a visit to her father in Moscow, alarm bells start ringing. Her rich and powerful family know there's one man they can depend on to bring her back safe: former SAS major Ben Hope. But what starts off as an apparently straightforward case of parental child abduction quickly takes on more sinister dimensions as Ben travels to Moscow and starts to investigate the whereabouts of Valentina and her father, Yuri, a man with a hidden past not even his ex-wife knows about. 

Ex-special forces soldier Alex Abbott escaped the Middle East under a cloud and now lives hand-to-mouth in Singapore. Scraping a living as a gun for hire and estranged from his family, Abbott is haunted by ghosts of the past, drinking to dull the pain. Life's tough, but there is one upside - at least he's not in Baghdad. That's about to change. When a job goes badly wrong, Abbott's in hot water. Next he learns that his military son, Nathan, is missing in Iraq. Knowing something is wrong, needing to find his son and desperate for redemption, Abbott has no choice but to go back.

The reverberations from Fred West's crimes continue to this day. The story never dies. West was perhaps one of Britain's most evil, feared serial killers. His horrifying compulsion to kidnap, rape and torture his victims before murdering them showed a savagery and cruelty that can barely be believed. His 'House of Horrors' at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, became a burial ground for the women who fell into his hands. This new publication of Geoffrey Wansell's iconic, best-selling true-crime masterpiece comes 30 years after West was arrested, in 1992.

The gods have broken free, in an inferno of magic and flame. Now they seek total domination, turning Erland’s conflicts and divisions to their own dark purposes. Orsian is trapped in the dungeons of Merivale. He must escape the darkness and duel his hateful brother to take up his father’s legacy, as Erland’s champion in the coming storm. Far to the West, Rymond Prindian fights for his crown. Outnumbered and outclassed by the imperial legions, his ragged band of warriors and mercenaries needs a miracle to survive.

Eight years ago, James McCready was convicted of killing his partner, Gary Meadows. But McCready has always claimed that the stabbing was a tragic accident and, when fresh evidence comes to light, he wins his appeal for a retrial. Detective Inspector Pat North is assigned to the reinvestigation. But when North discovers that her partner, Detective Superintendent Mike Walker, led the original police inquiry, their fledgling relationship is put to the test - particularly when she starts to suspect that he is covering something up. 

From the number one best-selling author. ex-SAS operative Ben Hope decided to give up rescuing kidnap victims in favour of the theology studies he abandoned years before. He should have known that fate would decide differently. Searching for missing biblical archaeologist Zoë Bradbury, Ben finds himself embroiled in his riskiest mission yet. What is the ancient secret that Zoë uncovered? And just who is willing to do anything to protect it?

The plea of insanity in criminal cases can be traced back at least to the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, which dates from 1755-1759 BC. It is a complicated defence, and its origins in modern law lie with the 'M'Naghten Rules' of 1843. Clearly a plea of insanity in murder cases is of critical importance when the death penalty is still applied, and even today it may still be the difference between a life sentence in a high-security prison, or an indeterminate one in a secure psychiatric hospital.

September 1977. Mette Misvãr, a three-year-old girl, disappears without trace from the sandpit outside her home. Her tiny, close middle-class community in the tranquil suburb of Nordas is devastated, but their enquiries and the police produce nothing. Curtains twitch, suspicions are raised, but Mette is never found.

As dawn breaks on a snowy February morning, a refrigerated lorry is found parked in the heart of London's Chinatown. Inside, 12 women, apparently illegal immigrants, are dead from hypothermia. But in the cab, DC Max Wolfe finds 13 passports. Twelve dead women. Thirteen passports. The hunt for the missing woman will take Max Wolfe into the dark heart of the world of human smuggling, mass migration and 21st-century slave markets.