Katie Maguire

On an isolated farm in southern Ireland, a decades-old grave houses the dismembered bones of 11 women. Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire of the Irish Gardai is used to bloodshed, but these white bones speak of unimaginable butchery. Not far away, a young American tourist is at the mercy of a sadistic killer. His tools are a boning knife, twine, and a doll fashioned from rags, nails, and fish-hooks. The murder of his victims is secondary only to his pleasure at their pain.

One cold spring morning in County Cork, two fishermen find a body floating in the Blackwater River: the mutilated corpse of a retired music teacher. The Garda want to wrap this case up before the press get hold of it, but when a second man is found murdered, his body bearing all the same marks as the first, DS Katie Maguire knows the press are the least of their worries – this could be the work of a serial murderer.

On a bloodstained mattress in a grimy flat, a man lies dead. A terrified girl kneels over his body. It doesn't take DS Katie Maguire long to identify the murder victim: he's a cruel and powerful pimp she's been trying to convict for years. It's Katie's job to catch the killer. But with men like this dead, the city is safer – and so are the frightened young women who are trafficked into Cork. When a second pimp is horrifically murdered, Katie must decide. Should she do her job, or follow her conscience and allow the killer to strike again?

In a secluded cove just outside the reaches of the city of Cork, a woman wakes up buried in the sand, unable to pull herself free. DS Katie Maguire of the Cork Garda is soon tracking the terrifying gang of torturers who call themselves the High Kings of Erin. Is Maguire losing her touch? Or is somebody close to her less trustworthy than they seem?

In a nursing home on the outskirts of Cork, an elderly nun has been suffocated in her sleep. Another sister from the same convent is found floating in the Glashaboy river. The nuns were good women, doing God's work. Why would anyone want to kill them? A child's skull is unearthed in the garden of the nuns' convent, and DS Katie Maguire discovers a fifty-year-old secret that just might lead her to the killer.

In Blarney, Cork, an old millworker's cottage guards its secrets. In 1921, a mother, father, and their two young children disappeared from this house. Now their mummified bodies have been discovered under the floorboards. As DS Katie Maguire investigates a ninety-five-year-old murder, the flames of old family rivalries flare up once more, catching Katie in the crossfire. Will catching the killer mean losing her life?

DS Katie Maguire and her team are stretched to their limit. A gang of dognappers is terrorizing Cork. The city's drug trade is at an all-time high. Now a girl has gone missing – and all in the glare of the media spotlight. As Katie closes in on the truth, she realizes that the three cases might be connected. But with every second she spends investigating, the clock ticks on for the missing girl, trapped in a living death...

In the middle of winter, a fire blazes through a dance studio. Seventeen young dancers die, their promising careers cut short by a tragic accident. But where others see tragedy, DCI Katie Maguire sees murder. This is not the first fire to sweep through Cork. And in one recent case, the victims were dead before the fire was lit. Katie Maguire is determined to see justice done, unaware she's about to face her most chilling killer yet...

A young girl has been found in a deserted cemetery. She speaks a foreign language, and she cries for her mother. But nobody claims her. Nobody knows who she is. On the streets of Cork, beggars are being horrifically murdered. But why would anyone want to kill the city's homeless? It's up to DS Katie Maguire to find out. Katie's fiancé is fighting his own battle: against illegal puppy farming, a lucrative black market run by Ireland's most fearsome gangs. When the investigations collide, who will Katie save first?

It started with the judge. He was about to sentence five of Cork's most notorious criminals. But his body has just turned up, beaten and broken, on an isolated road in his burned-out car. Now four members of a rival gang have been shot, and in retaliation three civilians have been blown up. To Katie's horror, Cork is becoming a gang battleground like Dublin. Can Katie save the city? Can she save herself?

DS Katie Maguire is one of Ireland's best detectives. There's no mystery she can't crack with her killer instinct and hunger for justice. Until now...

Meet DS Katie Maguire. With her bright green eyes and short red hair, she looks like an Irish pixie. But she is no soft touch. In this exclusive short story, Ireland's most fearless detective hunts down a priest-killer in county Cork.