Search Results for: turning-on

Retired professor Andrew Basnett had been at a loose end since he’d finished writing his book, and a country visit with friends seemed just the diversion he needed.

But when seven friends gather to welcome him to their village, conviviality soon turns to crime as guests suddenly start dying – and Basnett finds himself seeking a clever killer who is sure to strike again.

‘Her fans will love it’ Kirkus Reviews

Christie Opara, the only woman on the DA’s Special Investigation Squad, is assigned by her boss to shadow his daughter to a civil rights demonstration. An ugly group of hecklers soon turns the demonstration into a riot and someone gets shot. A cop with a bewildered look on his face stands over the body with a revolver in his hand.

The crowd and the public cry for the cop’s blood in the days to come. Only Christie, who was standing next to the cop, saw another person pull the trigger. Now she must find the real murderer before matters get totally out of hand . . .

‘Detective Opara is going to become one of fiction’s most popular police people’ Sunday Mirror

Hubbard made his money in blackmail, most detestable blackmail at that. A wealthy, lisping butterfly collector, there were no special regrets when he was found dead at his desk in his own home. Yet Colonel Sanderstead felt it his duty to probe the affair, since his nephew’s best friends had very good reason to wish Hubbard dead.

His investigation, as it turns out, would never have solved the case, but it leads to an amazing confession …

The Constable was content to call it a suicide pact. All the evidence was there. The bodies of John Barratt and Mrs Callis were discovered in a lovers’ nook among some bracken.

Beside them was a pistol with Barratt’s fingerprints on it, and torn up letters in the handwriting of Barratt and Mrs Callis were scattered around. Arrangements for the elopement had apparently been complete. Why had their plans fallen through? Why had they turned their backs on the railway station with tickets to London in their pockets?

Sir Clinton Driffield is not so sure that the obvious solution is the right one …

Scott Hamilton is a professional thief, one who would never turn down an opportunity to steal something really worthwhile – in this case, a priceless collection of Ming Dynasty jade statuettes, whose owner is a man with a private army; a man rich enough to be above the law.

Hamilton’s accomplices are the charming and tough Gunilla von Mayenfels, who is a girl with an interest in jade, and the odious and unreliable Kosky. And the result of their attempt combines triumph and disaster in equal measure.

It was a dazzling two-man jewel robbery that went like clockwork, but when Arran and his confederate, Bain, fall out the plot takes a sinister turn. Bain learns that Arran has left with the take, and without his wife, Caroline, for Gibraltar.

With Caroline as bait, and a false passport, Bain follows Arran – but his single-minded desire for retribution is weakened by his attraction to Caroline, which, for the first time, threatens his criminal existence. And Bain can secure revenge only at the expense of his freedom . . .

John Raven – the ex-cop with a taste for exotic adventures and voluptuous adventurers – is unexpectedly thrust into the thick of the action.

His Andalusian holiday turns out to be no picnic when he finds himself at the crossroads of the snow-white heroin trail and the blood-red trail of international murder . . .

‘A swift, stylish novel’ Publishers Weekly

Terminally ill Polish refugee Henryk Lamprecht, a decoder for British Security, has a score to settle with the Russian who killed his wife and daughter. As he is close to death, he has no time to lose when an opportunity he has been waiting for turns up.
But now, through a chance meeting with his old friend Zaleski, ex-cop John Raven is involved, and so is Lamprecht’s English sweetheart. And so the game of cat-and-mouse begins . . .

‘Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller’ Guardian

John Raven – the ex-cop with a taste for exotic adventures and voluptuous adventurers – is unexpectedly thrust into the thick of the action.

His Andalusian holiday turns out to be no picnic when he finds himself at the crossroads of the snow-white heroin trail and the blood-red trail of international murder . . .

‘A swift, stylish novel’ Publishers Weekly

For the police it was an open and shut case: Stephen Lumley was guilty of taking part in the robbery at his uncle’s jewellery shop. All the evidence was against him – he was unemployed and in debt, he’d made threats in the past against his uncle, Bernard Hammond, and he’d tried to escape when the other thieves fled the scene.

Yet Lumley maintains his innocence, and the only person who believes him – apart from his wife – is his lawyer, the intuitive Rosa Epton. Rosa’s efforts to learn the truth are frustrated by the elusiveness of a possible lead, so Lumley must stand trial at the Old Bailey. Undeterred, Rosa carries on her private enquiries with little success, until, that is, her lead turns up – dead.

When Evelyn Henshaw comes to Rosa Epton’s office demanding that in the event of her disappearance her husband be investigated for murder, Rosa is more than a little doubtful. Hesitant to take the woman on as a client, she is drawn in when Mr Henshaw subsequently arrives at her office claiming that his wife has disappeared.

And when the young lodger living in the couple’s home turns up dead, Rosa must unearth the skeletons of the couple’s troubled marriage and fit together the pieces of a complicated puzzle.

Solicitor Rosa Epton has vowed never again to work on a case with Malcolm Palfrey. For two years she’s managed to keep that promise – but when Palfrey journeys from distant Nettleford personally to request her assistance in one final case, Rosa finds herself reluctantly agreeing.

Initially the job seems routine enough: the two lawyers are to defend a young couple charged with malicious damage following a night of reckless drinking. While Rosa doggedly prepares the defence, Palfrey’s participation is almost nonexistent, and on the day of the trial he fails to turn up. What Rosa doesn’t know is that he is slumped over a park bench with a bullet in his brain and gun in his hand …

When schoolboy Jason Cutler is killed late one night in a hit-and-run, the police are puzzled by the presence of a letter in his locker, to which is attached a five-pound note. They are unable to identify its author, nor can they ascertain why the boy was out so late at night.

Solicitor Rosa Epton has followed the case with interest, but when a client she has recently defended on a drugs charge turns up dead in the grounds of the school, her involvement becomes professional. It seems unlikely that the two cases are connected, but why does Jason’s brother deny having seen him in the days leading up to his death? And who was the girl seated opposite Rosa on the train and behaving erratically on the day news of the accident came out?

Deepwood Grange is no longer what it was in the thirties: the beautiful old house has been converted into luxury apartments, and the original family is long gone. But on a rare visit to her godmother, solicitor Rosa Epton finds herself quite entertained by the eccentric residents of the other flats. Until, that is, one of them turns up dead in the chimney of an empty apartment, and her godmother becomes a prime suspect.

Then her godmother disappears, and Rosa’s involvement becomes even more personal …

It is extremely bad luck for Sarah Atkins that she is very slightly over the limit when she knocks down and kills a man in a patch of fog. It is even worse luck that the man is Jonathan Cool, a well-known pop star.

There are three witnesses: Cool’s girlfriend, Sarah’s husband and Sarah, whose fate will turn on their testimony. But as the evidence unfolds, it begins to appear that this may not have been a run-of-the-mill accident, and it is down to her solicitor, Rosa Epton, to unravel the truth.

Sergeant Verity’s adversaries in the underworld are as busy as ever, this time taking advantage of the Brighton Races to dupe the populace, and, more seriously, to steal the beautiful Shah Jehan clasp. Everyone knows that the glistening jewel is priceless, but only the likes of Sealskin Kite and Old Mole know its true worth.

Down from Paddington Green with his family and his old accomplice Miss Jolly, Verity thinks he has crime at bay in Brighton. But the easy time he had anticipated soon turns into a nightmare of false alarms, public disgrace and, worst of all, personal disaster.

Dirk Wallace is handed a simple assignment – find out who’s blackmailing Mrs Thorsen’s daughter. Before long, Wallace realises that he’s up against some very organised crime.

And when things turn nasty, there’s only one thing to do. Wallace and his assistant quit the Acme Detective Agency and go it alone. There’s a score to be settled. And Dirk Wallace doesn’t want to have to play by the rules.

When Johnny Jackson unaccountably disappears, his grandfather contacts the police for help. As they prove to be uninterested, he turns instead to Colonel Parnell of the Parnell Detective Agency. It seems at first to be a simple case of a missing person – but they soon find themselves in the middle of a complicated web of deceit, intrigue and murder.

Jack Crane arrives in Paradise City to find a job lined up for him by his ex-boss Bernie Olson. Bernie, a bomber pilot turned personal pilot to multi-millionaire Lane Essex, wants Jack to fly Essex’s new luxury plane in a hijack plan.

Planning a hijack shouldn’t be that difficult, but they soon discover they didn’t account for every eventuality. There’s a stowaway passenger on board – Lane’s gorgeous wife Victoria – who decides to join the party …

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

Poke Tohola, a Seminole Indian, is on to a smart racket. His formula is that fear is the key that unlocks the wallets and handbags of the rich. But Chuck, a cop-killer at 18, and Meg, beddable but dumb, don’t work to formula. The three of them turn Paradise City into Panic City. Then Detective Tom Lepski lumbers in …

‘An old master on top form’ Sunday Telegraph

From the moment Helga Rolfe, the elegant wife of one of the richest tycoons, picks up a gum-chewing boy young enough to be her son, events jump back and skid through a series of 180-degree turns. Games of bluff and counter bluff quickly develop into a dangerous and deadly battle and as the action hots up, Chase weaves a fast-moving story of blackmail, intrigue and extortion with a hair-raising climax.

Jay Benson had been one of the US Army’s top snipers. In Vietnam he’d killed 82 Vietcong. But making the School of Shooting he’d taken over outside Paradise City pay was a tougher proposition than the Vietnamese jungle.

So when the sinister Augusto Savanto turns up with an offer of $50,000 if Jay turns his gun-shy son into an expert shot – in just nine days – he accepts. Then he discovers the horrific reason why Savanto wants his son made into a marksman. But by now there is no backing out for Jay …

A brilliant but sadistic safe-breaker; a beautiful seductress; an expert young hunter and an ace pilot with a shady past – this is the team that undercover operator Armo Shalik assembles to steal the priceless Borgia ring from millionaire Max Kahlenberg’s closely guarded fortress in the remote and deadly African bush.

But when Kahlenberg finds out they are coming, the gang’s expedition turns into a strictly one-way safari – to slaughter …

‘Insanely readable’ Observer