Showing results by narrator "James Lailey" in All Categories

Of all the mysteries Bernard Samson has encountered, the greatest is his wife, Fiona. Dedicated agent of the Service and a woman of secrets, she will risk everything to play the long game. As the truth about the decision that shattered their marriage is gradually revealed, the web of deception that has snared Bernard for 10 years begins to unravel.

World-weary agent Bernard Samson is losing control of his personal and professional life. Sent to Mexico to aid the defection of a KGB agent to the West, he has a chance to prove his worth. Instead, he is torn between conflicting loyalties and lost in a maze of double-dealing and duplicity. The second novel in the Game, Set and Match trilogy is a gripping portrayal of a man who can trust no one, not even those closest to him.

A long, hot summer in Salisbury is broken by a sudden downpour. Flash floods and burst riverbanks bring something sinister to the surface - a partial human skeleton. When forensic testing matches the bones to a man named Lee Hall, reported missing some fifteen years earlier, the case is passed to DI Matt Lockyer. Hall was a known criminal and drug user. It looks like a simple case of accidental overdose, but Lockyer isn't so sure.

Detective Inspector Matt Lockyer has been side-lined to working cold cases, following a bad decision he made in a recent investigation in order to support a friend. Lockyer isn't too bothered though, as it gives him the chance to review some of the cases that keep him up at night and to look into his own brother's senseless killing, which still remains unsolved. On a quiet afternoon, Lockyer receives a phone call from prisoner Hedy Lambert—a woman he put inside for murder 14 years ago. She informs him that the man she was originally accused of killing has turned up alive and well.

A sunken U-boat has lain undisturbed on the Atlantic ocean floor since the Second World War - until now. Inside its rusting hull, among the corpses of top-rank Nazis, lie secrets people will kill to obtain. The sequel to Len Deighton's game-changing debut The IPCRESS File, Horse Under Water sees its nameless, laconic narrator sent from fogbound London to the Algarve, where he must dive through layers of deceit in a place rotten with betrayals.

Embattled agent Bernard Samson is used to being passed over for promotion as his younger, more ambitious colleagues - including his own wife, Fiona - rise up the ranks of MI6. When a valued agent in East Berlin warns the British of a mole at the heart of the Service, Samson must return to the field and the city he loves to uncover the traitor's identity. This is the first novel in Len Deighton's acclaimed Game, Set and Match trilogy.

Oslo, New Year’s Eve. The annual firework celebration is rocked by an explosion, and the city is put on terrorist alert. Police officer Alexander Blix and blogger Emma Ramm are on the scene, and when a severely injured survivor is pulled from the icy harbour, she is identified as the mother of two-year-old Patricia Smeplass, who was kidnapped on her way home from kindergarten 10 years earlier and never found. Blix and Ramm join forces to investigate the unsolved case.

Bernard is trying hard to readjust his life in the face of questions about his wife, Fiona, and her defection to the East. Is she the brilliant high-flyer that her Department seems to think she is? Or is she a spent force, a wife and mother unwilling or unable to face her domestic responsibilities? Bernard doesn't know but is determined to find out. Bernard's boss, Dicky Cruyer, is certainly not anxious to reveal what he knows, as he jostles for power with Fiona herself in London Central, and takes to the road with Bernard on a mysterious mission to Poland.

It is 1941, and Germany has won the war. Britain is occupied, Churchill executed and the king imprisoned in the Tower of London. At Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Archer tries to do his job and keep his head down. But when a body is found in a Mayfair flat, what at first appears to be a routine murder investigation sends him into a world of espionage, deceit and betrayal. 

Oslo, 2018. Former long-distance runner Sonja Nordstrøm never shows at the launch of her controversial autobiography, Always Number One. When celebrity blogger Emma Ramm visits Nordstrøm’s home later that day, she finds the door unlocked and signs of a struggle inside. A bib with the number one has been pinned to the TV. Police officer Alexander Blix is appointed to head up the missing-persons investigation, but he still bears the emotional scars of a hostage situation 19 years earlier, when he killed the father of a five-year-old girl.

Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain's new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons. As long as Jim can survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch's, deliver a lecture on 'Merrie England' and resist Christine, the hopelessly desirable girlfriend of Welch's awful son Bertrand.

1963 Berlin is dark and dangerous. The anonymous hero of The IPCRESS File has been sent to help arrange the defection - in an elaborate mock coffin - of a leading Soviet scientist. But, as he soon discovers, this deception hides an even deadlier truth. One of the first novels written after the construction of the Berlin Wall, Funeral in Berlin revels in the murky, chilling atmosphere of a divided city.

A brand new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of a classic Raymond Chandler mystery featuring private eye, Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is now married, living in the resort town of Poodle Springs. Once again, he sets himself up as an investigator and soon finds himself in the middle of blackmail and murder....

From a snowbound inn, high in the Alps, four unlikely allies will turn against the might of Byzantium to secure the English throne for Richard, duke of Gloucester, and make him Richard III. A noble Byzantine mercenary. A female Florentine physician. An ageless Welsh wizard. And Sforza, an uncanny duke. Together, they will alter the fate of millions.

Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to his only friend in the world: Philip Marlowe, Private Investigator. He’s willing to help a man down on his luck, but later, Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe finds himself drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA’s Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn’t kill his wife, but how many more stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?

Eighty years on, Churchill's Few: The Battle of Britain tells the dramatic story, in their own words, of five brave young men who fought in the skies to prevent Hitler's invasion of Britain.

Texan billionaire General Midwinter will stop at nothing to bring down the USSR - even if it puts the whole world at risk. The fourth and final novel featuring the cynical, insolent narrator of The IPCRESS File sees him sent from his shabby Soho office to bone-freezing Helsinki in order to penetrate Midwinter's vast anti-Communist network - and stop a deadly virus from wiping out the planet.

Suspended from duty, Detective Frølich is working as a private investigator when his girlfriend's colleague asks for his help with a female asylum seeker who the authorities are about to deport. She claims to have a sister in Norway and fears that returning to her home country will mean instant death. Frølich quickly discovers the whereabouts of the young woman's sister, but things become increasingly complex when she denies having a sibling, and Frølich is threatened off the case by the police.

Bennett Driscoll is a Turner Prize nominated artist who was a Bright Young Thing. Now, aged 55, his wife has left him, the reviews have dried up and his gallery wants to stop selling his paintings, saying they'll have more value retrospectively...when he's dead. So, left with a large West London home and no income, he moves into his painting studio in the back garden and rents out the house, soon reaching status as a Super Host on AirBed. 

Bosnia, 1993. A small army of Serbs, Muslims and Croats, formed to defend the isolated mountain town of Zavik and under the command of Reeve, a renegade Briton, has begun mounting raids further afield in search of food, fuel and medical supplies. All sides in the civil war are enraged by its exploits; even UN mediators recognise the need for its suppression. But there are only two people Reeve will listen to: his ex-wife and an ex-comrade in the SAS.