Search Results for: suspension

This swift-moving story of murder and suspense culminates in an unexpected and dramatic climax that is the hallmark of a James Hadley Chase novel.

Chris Burnett – successful, wealthy and married to the daughter of a multi-millionaire – receives severe brain injuries in a car accident. While convalescing Burnett disappears for 24 hours, during which time a prostitute is brutally murdered and mutilated.

Evidence found by a private inquiry points to Burnett. His wife, blackmailed by the inquiry agent, sets out to prove her husband’s innocence …

‘A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times

There’s no holiday from crime at the Los Angeles Police Department, not even at Christmas. Among a string of bizarre cases, there’s the very mysterious killing of Lila Askell, the young devout Mormon who was on her way home for Christmas but is found strangled and thrown out of a car.

As the Christmas trees are being decorated and the presents wrapped, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza has one of his toughest cases on his hands…

‘A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times

When a respectable young woman’s naked body is found far from her home, the case proves baffling for Lieutenant Luis Mendoza of the Los Angeles Homicide squad.

But Mendoza is struggling with more than the case. He’s a man down too. Sergeant Higgins’ first baby has arrived and he is far too preoccupied to put his mind to murder. But killers go on killing…

‘A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times

Lieutenant Luis Mendoza is laid low with measles and the Homicide Squad of Los Angeles Police Department has to manage without its Chief of Detectives.

There are several off-beat cases to occupy them, like the man tied to a railway and decapitated by a passing train. But, Mendoza does not take his convalescence lying down and he is soon unofficially investigating a case that his colleagues are already pursuing…

Offering indisputable evidence of the early talent that was to lead him to the top of the bestseller lists everywhere, these fourteen tales of crime and corruption, of sleuthing and suspense, of treachery, intrigue, and revenge, by the incomparable John D. MacDonald, were selected from the hundreds that originally appeared in the immensely popular pulp magazines of the late 1940s.

Superb entertainment from one of crime’s most famous and accomplished writers.

‘The stories share MacDonald’s love of a buzz ending and the biting setup’ Chicago Sun-Times

Journalist Hamish Hunter finds himself in possession of a film on which the fate of several people and the relations between two countries – Poland and Great Britain – depend. But who can he trust? His girlfriend, Wanda, daughter of a déraciné Polish count, whose loyalties are more complex than they seem? An old friend in the intelligence racket? The authorities?

Soon Hunter finds himself in desperation, hounded on all sides, and in a climax of nerve-racking suspense it becomes finally clear that no on is on any side but their own.

An early June hot spell takes its toll as it fuels a wave of bloody and bizarre crimes for Luis Mendoza of the LAPD. Grisliest by far is the psycho they call the werewolf, who gets his kicks by killing hookers before vanishing into the dark. A gorgeous teenage redhead holds up liquor stores with her boyfriend. And to make the caseload really interesting, ‘Jack the Stripper’ hits the city’s gas stations – stealing cash and his victim’s clothes . . .

‘A Luis Mendoza mystery means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times

Death is everywhere. A child in a playground. A playboy in a cheap hotel. A John Doe in a freight yard. A nanny and her two charges in a church pew.

After twenty-six years in homicide, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza knows death is all in a day’s work. But in the heat of a Los Angeles summer, even the predictable becomes bizarre. And for a hard-boiled cop with a decidedly soft centre, nothing is more implausible than human nature – especially when it comes to murder . . .

‘A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times

To a man, the members of the LAPD homicide department were yawning with unaccustomed inactivity. Then everything happened at once – a cop killed by a hit-and-run driver; the questionable suicide of a young girl; and the victim (apparently) of a heart attack found in the clutter of her ‘second-hand’ shop.

It was the last that led Lieutenant Luis Mendoza to the Celtic Hotel, where events moved swiftly and with about as much clarity as the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. But, in this case, the tea party was lethal.

‘A Luis Mendoza mystery means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times

Lieutenant Luis Mendoza of the Los Angeles Police Department was vacationing in Bermuda with his wife when the call came. His friend Sergeant Art Hackett had been forced over the edge of a mountain road in a murderous automobile attack.

Rushing back to LA to take charge of the investigation, Mendoza discovers another horror awaiting him: a serial killer who has already committed four grisly murders in ten short days . . .

‘A Luis Mendoza mystery means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times.

Joey Luck and his daughter Cindy are small-time criminals going nowhere fast, until they join forces with Vin Pinna, a hardened criminal on the run from Miami.

They soon begin to set their sights higher and turn their hands to kidnapping. But their hostage, ex-movie star Don Elliot, seems to have different ideas. When he wants in they form a ‘quartet in crime’, and this time the stakes are higher still – eight Russian stamps worth a million dollars.

‘Realistic and suspenseful far beyond his average’ Observer

‘Geoffrey Household’s prose is as clean and spare and unwaveringly efficient as are his plots’ Sunday Times

On the death of his father, artist and mystic Alfgif Hollaston returns to his Somerset house. There, he befriends Paddy Gadsden, a saddler and horse psychiatrist, and inherits Paddy’s polecat, Meg, after Paddy’s violent and inexplicable death. But innocent and playful Meg isn’t quite what she seems.

Soon Alfgif’s life and sanity are threatened by a relentless terror, resembling the sixth sense of an animal, which warns when danger is imminent …

A company-controlled oil town becomes the scene of a layoff and a subsequent boycott led by Rafael Garay, whose wife is killed alongside 17 others in the protest.

Mat Darlow, a gentle mining engineer, is sent to the Latin American community to handle the situation. Each man is fighting for control of the Three Sentinels: three, deep, surging oil wells perched on a barren ridge of the Andes.

Despite the deadlock, the opponents are instinctively drawn to each other – and one thing links them: Garay’s son, Chepe, who attaches himself to both men at war.

‘Household is a story-teller in direct line of descent from Daniel Defoe and Robert Louis Stevenson’ New Yorker

Olura Manoli is a lovely creature, though perhaps a little foolish in her friendship with an African prime minister whom she accompanies to Spain without police protection.

Olura and the politician are followed by an Italian paparazzo hoping to catch glimpses of their indiscretion. But when he turns up dead in the couple’s bathroom, it seems there is no one Olura can turn to for help but Philip Ardower, an English don and authority on the Basque language.

His help is certainly needed in the dangerous day to follow, when violent death and police suspicion dog the lovers along the rugged mountains and dark mine shafts of the fierce Biscay coast.

Another superbly crafted Middle Eastern adventure by the author of the classic Rogue Male

They called the organisation World Opposition. Its aim was a world where the State no longer existed and where the individual controlled their own destiny.

Their headquarters were called Kasr-el-Sittat – meaning fortress of the holy women – and their leader was the strange and beautiful Elisa Cantemir. For her, no method was too ruthless, no human life too valuable, compared with the aims of the organisation.

Only one man knew their real aims and opposed them. And he was desperately in love with Elisa Cantemir.

A superb thriller, romance and spy novel from ‘The best in his field since Buchan’ Observer

Arabesque is a love story that takes us to the colourful crossroads of the Middle East at the height of World War II

Armande Herne – half English, half French and impassively beautiful – is sitting out the war in Beirut with no visible means of support. The rumour is she’s a spy. But, as conflict between British and French, Jew and Arab whirl around her, it is a British security sergeant who finds her. Soon they are embroiled in a plot, rich with adventure and intrigue.

She always felt different – and now she knows why.

‘An outstanding novel which confirms Glaister’s command of the domestic and the bizarre’ Independent on Sunday

‘Enormously enjoyable’ Nick Hornby

Jennifer is about to turn thirteen and is suffering more than the usual teenage confusion. She’s lonely and her parents are unfashionably strange, so she lives in her imagination, dreaming of acceptance, to be popular and normal.

Then Jennifer learns that her supposed parents are really her grandparents, and that her mother deserted her years ago. So when Bronwyn, the new girl at school, and the sinister Johnny crash into her life, adventures with them – no matter how dangerous – seem immediately more attractive.

‘Glaister’s rounded gift is to show life as it really is’ Independent on Sunday

At first the murder of Nelson Jamison seemed fairly straightforward. He had been strangled, but next to his corpse lay a hand-printed card with the words The Vengeance is Just. Jamison, a rich ne’er-do-well, has a prison record for rape, and everything pointed towards a victim’s revenge killing.

But within hours Lieutenant Luis Mendoza and his team have an identical killing on their hands, and then a third. But is the killer about slip up and reveal their identity?

‘A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times

‘A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times

Lieutenant Mendoza seems to be beset on all sides: at home, his wife Alison is convinced she is having twins; at the office his worry is a man called Francis Ingram, prime suspect for a murder Mendoza does not think he has committed.

Yet the fact remains that someone has murdered Mendoza’s wife, Arabella, and the evidence points straight at him. But as the case progresses it becomes clear that everyone has a grudge against her and a consuming interest in her will . . .

By the CWA Gold Dagger award-winning author of Other Paths to Glory

Anthony Price ingeniously combines the machinations of British Intelligence with the legend of King Arthur in an extraordinary thriller that crackles with suspense from start to finish.

A US Air Force plane mysteriously vanishes on a flight from its base in Britain, and its ace pilot with it. The CIA investigates the missing pilot, and makes some odd findings – finding that will take British Intelligence officer David Audley back to the sixth century in an absorbing battle of wits with the Soviet secret police.

Lieutenant Luis Mendoza and the LAPD homicide division tackle some of their most shocking cases to date. Half a million dollars is stolen from a fashionable department store; a young divorcée is murdered by her ex-husband’s lover; three flawless robberies occur in rapid succession and a middle-aged woman is senselessly murdered in a public park.

The continually erupting crime in Los Angeles stretches the team to the limit. However, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza handles all this action with his own characteristic, inimitable finesse.

‘A Luis Mendoza mystery means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times.

The weather in LA hasn’t been living up to its sunny reputation – the murder of an unwanted newborn and the assault of a twelve-year-old girl don’t make things pretty for the family-man cop, especially with a new baby at home.

The most puzzling crime of all is the murder of a respectable middle-aged woman from Indianapolis. A string of hit-and-runs involving a Model A Ford, and a bizarre mugger with a penchant for footwear all add up to another high-voltage month in the city of the stars for Lieutenant Luis Mendoza.

‘A Luis Mendoza mystery means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times

A nice young man is helping little old ladies with their groceries . . . then stealing their Social Security; an enormous ‘ape man’ with a face like King Kong is robbing liquor stores; ‘Jack the Stripper’ is leaving gas-station registers empty . . . and the attendants naked; a pretty Hispanic woman is killed and ethnic tensions are ready to explode; a little girl is mutilated; a cop is fatally shot.

Between the weather and the crime wave, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza – the family-man cop – finds shelter at home, knowing that even violence on the streets of Los Angeles eases up . . . eventually.

‘A Luis Mendoza mystery means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Timesc

The body of a woman from respectable, conservative Glendale is found stashed under a ramshackle house in the middle of the inner city. Detective Luis Mendoza marks the rising heat by the crime and violence raging through the sun-baked streets of Los Angeles – and it’s going to be a hot one . . .

A thug is shot to death. A mysterious string of robberies continues unabated . . . all without a clue. But the family-man cop knows that where there’s heat there’s fire – and a cold trail to nowhere promises to turn into a red-hot path leading straight to the damned.

‘A Luis Mendoza mystery means superlative suspense’ Los Angeles Times