Showing results by narrator "Paul Thornley" in All Categories

Eighteen years after the barbarous war with the Serbs that tore their communities apart, a group of Croatian villagers discover the identity of the Englishman who they believe betrayed them by reneging on a deal to supply arms. With revenge in sight at last, they hire a professional killer from London to track him down... but is the story as simple as they think?

THE UNDERCOVER COP. Having worked undercover the last ten years, Sean Egan is used to life on the edge. He’s recently infiltrated one of London’s most dangerous criminal gangs, and they’ve just informed him that they want him for a very special job: the daring abduction from police custody of a serial killer known as The Night Creeper. THE KILLER. Brutally violent yet highly intelligent, The Night Creeper has earned his reputation by torturing five young women to death.

"Sorry, boys, my hands are tied. The order comes from Special Force HQ, and I can’t countermand it. So I’m giving you a warning order for an imminent active service operation. You’ve got forty minutes to call your wives and girlfriends and sort your kit." After the tragic loss of one of his patrol on an ill-advised training exercise in the Arctic Circle, Spider Shepherd and his comrades are angry at their incompetent commanding officer.

Two Brothers tells the story of a great sporting family, uncovering new details, exposing myths and placing Jack and Bobby Charlton in their historical context. It's a book about two English footballers but also about English football and England itself.

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.

It is London 2012 and Stratford in the East End is at the centre of the world. But next to the Olympic Park are some of the poorest and most crime-ridden streets in the city. PI Lee Arnold and his assistant, Mumtaz Hakim, run a detective agency in a community fraught with conflict and tension. Approached by a frightened woman, they start to investigate her stalker. But soon their enquiries turn in a far more sinister direction.

"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.

It begins with just a few people falling ill. Another flu virus that spreads around the globe. And then the reports begin that people are dying.... When most of the world's population is wiped out, a handful of survivors are left to pick up the pieces. Cities become graveyards. Technology becomes largely obsolete. Mankind must start again.... Includes 'Cabin Fever' by Jonathan Morris, 'Contact' by Simon Clark, 'Rescue' by Andrew Smith and 'Leaving' by Matt Fitton.

Why does a wealthy Scottish financier set up a drugs deal with the IRA? Jeopardise his career, endanger his family and lover by tangling with the East End underworld and a ruthless mercenary? The motive is simple: revenge for a cold-blooded act of murder. His adversary is a dangerous gangland boss whose connections stretch from the Highlands to London and beyond. More than a match for a newcomer, especially when his plans contain a fatal flaw, which will be discovered only when it is much too late…

A Deadly Hunt. DS ‘Heck’ Heckenburg has been tasked with retrieving one of the UK’s most wanted men. But the trail runs cold when Heck discovers a videotape showing the fugitive in a fight for his life. A fight he has no chance of winning. A Dangerous Game. Heck realises that there’s another player in this game of cat and mouse, and this time they’ve not just caught the prize: they’ve made sure no one else ever does.

Dan 'Spider' Shepherd was sipping his first coffee of the day as the sweat from his morning run slowly dried on his skin. Kept on standby in Cyprus, Shepherd and his patrol mates are getting fed up with the lack of action. When they're offered the opportunity to spend some time in Nepal, they jump at the chance. Whilst there, they meet an SAS living legend, and are roped into a mission.

"So if you can’t find a helicopter anywhere in Sierra Leone for a lift-out, you’d better order up four body bags instead.” Spider Shepherd and his SAS mates are stranded, low on rations and ammunition, waiting for a ride to Freetown before they are overrun by rebels. Upon their return to the capital, they are pressed into service by MI6, tasked with destroying a rebel arms dump. But to do this, they must wade through infested swamps and face rebel soldiers. Many of the soldiers are boys.

Irving Levy is a man with few roots and, now that he is terminally ill, is anxious to find anyone to whom he can leave his considerable property. When he learns that there may be more to the disappearance of his younger sister, who disappeared when she was a baby, he engages the services of Hakim and Arnold to investigate. Unwittingly in mortal danger, the private detectives and Levy enter the world of Barking Park Fair and the secrets its brightly coloured attractions conceal. Secrets that lead them back to the chaotic world of postwar Europe, where few people were what they seemed.

"Spider Shepherd squatted on his heels outside his tent, drinking his first brew of the day from a battered mug as he watch the wind stirring dust devils from the dirt floor of the compound." When an inexperienced officer sends out innocent paratroopers to be betrayed by a surrendered Taliban sniper, Spider Shepherd is the man chosen to clean up the mess. With his old friends Jock and Geordie to help, along with SAS hopeful Lex, can they take their revenge? Or are they just putting themselves in the kill zone?

The chance discovery of a 30-year-old blue movie leads back to the film's maker, Tim Purdom, and the London of the late fifties and early sixties. Purdom was a pioneer of the B&W British porno film and a figure on the periphery of the Profumo sex scandal. He directed eight films... but who was directing him and what was their hidden agenda? And where is Tim now? London Blues explicitly and unremittingly details the hidden world of Soho vice and London's demi-monde at the time when the grey 1950s were giving way to the 'swingin' sixties'.

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.

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.

When an undercover police officer is killed and a deadly shipment of pure heroin hits land, it looks as though the operation to bring down Brighton's biggest drug dealer is compromised. But the investigation is in more trouble than either Detective Sergeant Minter or his boss, Tom Beckett, could ever imagine. Embarking on a bloody journey that will set him on a collision course with his team, Minter is pulled back into his own troubled past - to a childhood spent in care and the vicious murder of his closest friend.

"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.

Billy and Charlie thought their killing days were behind them. They used to be prolific life-takers, but old age finally caught up with them. Now they are ending their days in a dismal nursing home in Blackpool, with only their memories to keep them going. Memories of murder and mutilation. But when Archie turns up at the home, everything changes. Archie is a breath of fresh air, and he puts new life into Billy and Charlie—and before long, they realise that it's time to start killing again.