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It’s often the ordinary people who spot the murderer – whether they know it or not…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

‘Few murders would go unhung,’ said plump, cynical Arthur Crook, ‘if people used their eyes more. It’s the man selling violets in the gutter, the woman exercising her Pekinese, the chap reading the midday racing news in the Tube who actually have the chance to spot the murderer. They’re the people he can’t guard against.’

Arthur Crook is a delightful nosey-parker, and here his blustering humour and bulldog tenacity face their toughest test yet.

The case started with a corpse. Nobody knew who he was. Next, a man named John Burke disappeared. But D.A. Doug Selby could not find his body.

Then Mrs Burke swore that the corpse and her missing husband were one and the same man. This should have solved both mysteries. All it did was run the D.A. up two different trees. Sure, the faces of the dead man and John Burke were exactly the same. The only trouble was that their fingerprints were different!

Impossible? That’s what Doug Selby thought too – until the killer struck again …

The little clergyman had died peacefully in bed in the Madison Hotel. But Douglas Selby, recently elected District Attorney, suspected there was more to this death than meets the eye, and soon knew that something was definitely wrong.

So Doug finds himself faced not only with a wily murderer, but with virulence from a hostile press, reluctant witnesses, and a film star unwilling to explain why she was on the spot.

On the face of it, the double homicide of Arnold and Marie Robbins looks like just another brutal Miami Beach murder – except that teenage Cathy Robbins is lying between the bodies, traumatised but unharmed. Is she a silent witness to murder, or is she a killer?

‘An absorbing, cleverly constructed thriller by an ever-popular British writer’ Books Magazine

On trial is young tearaway Ian Tanner, accused of the accidental but reckless hit-and-run killing of his own buddy. What really happened? The answer involves a ruthless gang, a gang that nearly disposes of yet another victim before Detective Constable Patrick Bramley figures it all out.

Meanwhile the judge is facing a personal predicament so closely associated with the case itself that he doubts whether he should proceed …

‘Excellent’ Current Crime

Adam Cape – a young barrister – prosecutes a case of assault at the Old Bailey. On the face of it, it’s a straightforward trial but its aftermath brings him uncomfortably close to death and Adam is unable to free himself from a murder that results.

With the best of motives, and the most unprofessional behavior, he becomes a bane to police; lands in hospital; is on hand when a bank robbery is averted – and, remarkably, bumbles into the truth of the case.

It was largely chance that took Dougal Macneil to the empty racetrack that morning, but when he inadvertently sees – and photographs – something he shouldn’t he is soon under threat from a seemingly omnipotent force.

Colonel Weber, head of police of the tiny Central American country of Montoro, is sheltering a former Nazi whose name is high on Israel’s most-wanted list. And on the face of it he holds all the cards: control of the police force, the trust of government officials – and Macneil’s wife, whom he is holding in ‘protective custody’. But Macneil is not an adversary to be underestimated . . .

Newly extradited to England from California on charges of fraud, Philip Page faces a long prison sentence. The police are already convinced of his guilt, having been furnished with apparently watertight evidence by an anonymous informant, but Page believes he has been framed.

Released on bail, he sets about unmasking the mystery witness. When maverick investigator John Raven is called by one of the suspects, Page and Raven soon realise they want the same thing. So begins a gripping race against time to expose the source of the evidence and clear Page’s name.

Not much was known about Arthur Kedby in the West End Club that he frequented. ‘He doesn’t look much like a secret agent,’ remarked one member, but in general that was what he was believed to be. But Kedby is a blackmailer, and not even a very successful one; his great success lies in the fact that he has never been caught.

Then he recognises the face of a club guest – a face he has seen before. And all at once Kedby has an opportunity to practise his skills at a level that might just furnish him with a pension …

It is 1936 – the year of the Abdication Crisis – and gangland capo Sonny Tarrant’s money-laundering operation is being threatened by three small-time thieves thinking big.

Would-be gangsters Sandboy, McGouran and Gillis have carried out a violent raid on the premises of furrier Pelly Pender. But Pender insists to the police that no attack took place, for he knows the trio will face a different justice in which the law plays no part. And Sandboy soon finds himself caught in a nightmare world in which Tarrant manipulates his victims with the deftness of a flick-knife.

His last hope is Yvonne Manders, once the stage-dancer ‘Lady Blue’ . . .

Sergeant Verity’s second adventure sees him sweltering under the Indian sun, as mutiny brings pillage and war to Bengal. Attached to the Intelligence Department in Calcutta, Verity is given the task of tracing English women who have fallen into the hands of the mutineers, and who face death – or an even worse fate in the harem.

But this task is supplanted by a yet more desperate quest when the Kaiser-i-Hind, the great diamond which symbolises sovereignty over all India, disappears, as if by magic, from beneath Verity’s eyes as it is about to be handed over to the British.

Immaculate officers and rough-bearded riflemen, evangelists, card-sharps and dandies face death at attention on the sloping deck of the Birkenhead. But who was the coward hidden among the women in the lifeboat, and who was the girl who lived to report his shame?

Eight years later in the summer of 1860, the coward’s legacy unfolds, and Verity must piece together a mystery that leads him to uncover an ingenious plot: a madman’s revenge for the loss of the Birkenhead. And with this knowledge, only Verity can avert a tragedy unparalleled in English history since the loss of Prince William in the White Ship 700 years before.

The only clue that could lead to the arrest of a homicidal killer is a golf ball button, torn from the jacket the killer was wearing, and found next to the horrifyingly mutilated body of a young hooker.

There are four owners of jackets with golf ball buttons living in the city. When Detective Tom Lepski of the Paradise City Police checks out these jackets, suspicion falls on Ken Brandon, an insurance agent.

But just when Lepski is sure he has his man, two more horrifying killings occur, and he is faced with the trickiest case he’s ever had to solve.

Mark Girland, good-for-nothing secret agent with a distinct weakness for money and women, finds himself in Prague for his latest adventure. But events in the Communist country prove all too much for Girland as he comes face-to-face with a sinister world of deception, fraud and corruption.

‘The same compulsive readability and sheer hard story-telling as in every other’ Sheffield Telegraph

Sudden death lurks along the canals of Venice …

That’s what Don Micklem, millionaire American playboy on the trail of a disappearing one-time British agent, discovers the hard way. Has his quarry been murdered or has he committed treason?

Against the backdrop of Venice’s sinister waterways, Micklem must fight a ruthless political organization while facing the prospect of a violent death at every turn.

Chief Superintendent Colin Harpur and his amoral superior Assistant Chief Constable Desmond lles face a political and personal dilemma when they suspect fellow Officer Nivette of taking bribes from underworld villains, panicking Ralphy Ember and Mansel Shale.

Is Nivette doing some unauthorised undercover work, or is he really bent? And where has the body of smalltime dealer Slow Victor gone? Trussed up in the cabin of a deserted boat one minute, gone the next. Harpur starts to make the connection, but will it be in time to save Nivette?

‘The suspense is almost unbearable, the latent truth uncomfortable and the result haunting’ Frances Fyfield

There was an extra body in the morgue – a body stripped of all identification and with its face badly battered. But when Inspector Martineau was called to the scene he had a pretty good idea whose it was.

That was, however, just the beginning. A big payroll robbery, a group of out-of-town mobsters and some odd behaviour in a local night spot all attract Inspector Martineau’s attention. While, at a funeral parlour, the quick are considerably more active and dangerous a problem than the dead.

Imprisoned for seven years for killing his fiancée’s lover, now Guy Rainer has escaped, and Detective Inspector Martineau is on his trail.

Martineau had sent Guy down. Now it’s his job to find the escaped prisoner. But in the midst of the hunt for the killer, Martineau is faced with another problem: a nine-year-old girl, Dessie Kegan, has disappeared. Has Dessie been murdered? Has Guy Rainer taken her, for reasons of his own?

Martineau has to work fast – and he knows it.

Quayle, the master of a British spy ring in World War II, is faced with the task of dealing with a man who has come from Morocco with what he says is important information about German troops there. But is the man what he seems?

Quayle puts his agents into action, not hesitating to risk their lives to discover the answer, but it is Quayle who ends up doing most of the work – and who is prepared to sacrifice everything for the cause of war.

Blood’s runnin’ down my face from where this guy’s just bust me, my nose feels like it’s split in half. Then this dame gets up an’ strolls over to me – I reckon I am not lookin’ quite so good.

She says: ‘Well for cryin’ out loud.’

Is this my big day or is it?

She stands lookin’ at me, sippin’ champagne. ‘So you’re a big “G” man,’ she says. ‘Well, personally, if you hadn’t got a lot comin’ to you I would take a bust at you myself, you lousy, crawlin’, gum-shoein’ dick. Have a drop of liquor, big boy.’ She pours the contents of her glass over my face. It stings like hell, but I’m tellin’ you it was good liquor.

Peter Grant, sailing his boat in unfamiliar waters, is forced ashore on an island connected with the mainland by a causeway uncovered only at low tide. There is a house on the opposite shore lived in by two secretive people.

His involvement in their affairs, begun by his sea-chance, becomes deeper and more dangerous as the tides ebb and flow over the causeway, until he finds himself face-to-face first with love – and then with terror and violent death.

‘A sensitive, absorbing tale’ Sunday Times

Centuries after Connavar’s triumphant battles against the invading army of Stone gained the Rigante their freedom, the clan finds itself oppressed once again. Magic that once flourished has been all but snuffed out. The Varlish king and his barons have stolen Rigante lands and robbed the people of their culture and liberty. From the Rigante’s former seat of power the black-hearted Moidart rules; only in the north are the clansmen free. There, in the Druagh mountains, the magic still reigns, strengthened by bold, brilliant victories of the outlaw leader known as Ravenheart. In the south, civil war has drenched the land in blood, and the armies of destruction are slowly creeping north where Ravenheart waits, believing the armies of hated Moidart will come, led by the brutal ruler’s only son, Stormrider.

Ravenheart and Stormrider: enemies of uncommon courage, are unaware that the fate of their world lies in their hands. Both are destined to be heroes, but one of them is doomed. For a secret lost in the uncharted past has returned to haunt these two warriors as they face, not only the malice of powerful men, but the vengeance of an ancient evil, rising from the bloodshed to slake its thirst. As immense armies of darkness advance, it seems as if nothing will stop them. They crush their enemies with ease, until only a few thousand highlanders stand before them, with no help in sight.

But these are not ordinary men. They are clansmen, and more than that, they are Rigante.

Read by Adjoa Andoh
(p) 2017 Orion Publishing Group

Eight hundred years have passed since King Connavar of the Rigante and his bastard son, Bane, defeated the invading army of Stone. In that time, Connavar has become a legend, and the Rigante have lost the freedom so many gave their lives to preserve. A conquered people, they live and die under the iron rule of the Varlish, their culture all but destroyed.

One woman remains who follows the ancient paths once trod by the

Rigante. She is the Wyrd of Wishing Tree Wood, and she alone knows the nature of the evil soon to be unleashed on a doomed and unsuspecting world.

In a perilous land, facing an uncertain destiny, she pins her initial hopes on two men: Jaim Grymauch, the giant Rigante fighter, a man haunted by his failure to save the friend he loved from betrayal, and Kaelin Ring, a youth whose deadly talents will earn him the enmity of all Varlish. One will become the Ravenheart, an outlaw leader whose daring exploits will inspire the Rigante. The other will forge a legend and light the fires of rebellion.

The Wyrd knows that ultimately all hopes will rest on a third man. Of the bloodline of Connavar the King, he will need to overcome generations of fear and hatred if he is to achieve his destiny. For he is a Varlish nobleman, and – worse – the son of the Rigante’s greatest enemy . . .

Read by Adjoh Andoh
(p) 2017 Orion Publishing Group

They called him Bane the Bastard – though none said it to his face

Born of treachery, his name a curse, he grew up among the warriors of the Rigante. They valued his skills in war, but they feared the violence in his heart.

And when, as a Wolfshead and Outlaw, he left Rigante lands, they breathed sighs of relief.

But Bane would return, the destiny of the Rigante in his hands, the fate of the world resting on his skills with a blade.

Midnight Falcon continues the tale of the Rigante, which began in Sword in the Storm, and tells the epic story of Bane, the bastard son of Connavar the King, and his quest for vengeance in a world of blood, honour, betrayal and love.

Read by Adjoa Andoh
(p) 2017 Orion Publishing Group