Search Results for: Born a Crime

‘Shadow Man is a harrowing and horrific game of consequences’ Val McDermid

THE BRILLIANTLY COMPELLING SECOND NOVEL IN THE DI LUKAS MAHLER SERIES

A missing child. A seventy-year-old murder. And a killer who’s still on the loose.

Ten year-old Erin is missing; taken in broad daylight during a friend’s birthday party. With no witnesses and no leads, DI Lukas Mahler races against time to find her. But is it already too late for Erin – and will her abductor stop at one stolen child?

And the discovery of human remains on a construction site near Inverness confronts Mahler’s team with a cold case from the 1940s. Was Aeneas Grant’s murder linked to a nearby POW camp, or is there an even darker story to be uncovered?

With his team stretched to the limit, Mahler’s hunt for Erin’s abductor takes him from Inverness to the Lake District. And decades-old family secrets link both casesin a shocking final twist.

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT MARGARET KIRK’S DEBUT NOVEL SHADOW MAN:

‘Gripping’

‘Kept me on my toes right to the end’

‘Another great detective is born’

‘Shadow Man has a taut plot, maintains suspense cleverly and is crisply written’

‘The city of Inverness is almost a character in its own right’

‘A top-notch crime thriller, full of intricate twists with a disturbing insight into the mind of a cold blooded killer’

‘Dark and atmospheric, I just couldn’t put it down’

DS Benjamin Chambers and DC Adam Winter are hunting a twisted serial killer who recreates famous works of art using the bodies of his victims. But after Chambers almost loses his life, the case goes cold – the killer lying dormant, his collection unfinished.

Jordan Marshall has excelled within the Met Police, driven by a loss that defined her teenage years. She obtains new evidence, convincing both Chambers and Winter to revisit the case. However, this new investigation reawakens their killer, the team in desperate pursuit of a monster hell-bent on finishing what he started at any cost.

Praise for Daniel Cole:

‘A brilliant, breathless thriller’ M.J. Arlidge

‘Superb thriller writing’ Peter Robinson

‘A star is born. Killer plot. Killer pace’ Simon Toyne

‘Shiveringly good suspense!’ Lisa Gardner

THE SECOND BOOK IN A GRIPPING SERIES FROM 30 MILLION COPY SELLING AUTHOR.

Detectives Regan Pescoli and Selena Alvarez have been searching for the Star Crossed Killer for months, never imagining Regan will be captured by the madman she’s been hunting. Regan knows exactly what he’s capable of – and avoiding the same fate will take every drop of her courage and cunning.

As Selena joins forces with Regan’s lover Nate to dig deeper into the case and the body count rises, the truth about Regan’s disappearance becomes chillingly clear.

Something evil is lurking in the snow-covered mountains. With time running out, the only way they can save Regan will be to get inside a killer’s twisted mind and unravel a shocking message that he is revealing.

‘She is one of the best’ Harlan Coben

THE NEXT BOOK IN THE SERIES, BORN TO DIE, IS AVAILABLE NOW

‘Shiveringly good suspense!’ Lisa Gardner

THE THIRD BOOK IN A GRIPPING SERIES FROM 30 MILLION COPY SELLING AUTHOR.

At first Kacey Lambert thinks it’s a sad, strange coincidence that two women with an amazing resemblance to her have died suddenly.

But detective Selena Alvarez suspects otherwise. An autopsy confirms that one of the women had traces of poison in her blood…

And Kacey has started to notice ties between the dead women’s lives and her own. They were all close in age. They were born within a few miles of each other. And they all have ties with Trace O’Halleran, the single father Kacey is dating.

Soon more lookalikes are dying and as the body count rises, the killer gets bolder and more brutal. All Kacey knows is that it’s only a matter of time before hers is the next name on a list of those who were born to die.

‘She is one of the best’ Harlan Coben

THE NEXT BOOK IN THE SERIES, AFRAID TO DIE, IS AVAILABLE NOW

An outlaw motorcycle club is a band of brothers like no other. Hidden away from mainstream society behind multiple layers of secrecy, mythology and a sophisticated campaign of misinformation that portrays them as nothing more than loveable rogues, the brutal truth about the biker world has long escaped public scrutiny.

In reality, today’s outlaw bikers are at the epicentre of a violent underworld subculture, enforced by a ruthless code of silence, and control a global criminal empire worth millions.

Spanning the UK, Europe, America, Canada and Australia, OUTLAWS is a compelling, shocking and chilling story of how bikers are born and made, and how and why they die.

Classic police procedural by a ‘born storyteller’ (Sunday Times), who combined natural flair with his experience in the police to truly authentic effect.

Hell is a City is the first of Maurice Procter’s Inspector Martineau series and was made into taut, fast-paced film in 1959 by Hammer Studios, set against the grimy back streets and rain-streaked bright lights of Manchester.

When hardened criminal Don Starling escapes from jail, killing a prison guard in the process, Inspector Philip Martineau knows he will stop at nothing to make good his escape. The two men have known each other since childhood, and Starling blames Martineau for his incarceration a decade earlier. As the story hurtles to its conclusion, the two men meet in a final, violent confrontation.

Classic police procedural by a ‘born storyteller’ (Sunday Times), who combined natural flair with his experience in the police to truly authentic effect.

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.

Classic police procedural by a ‘born storyteller’ (Sunday Times), who combined natural flair with his experience in the police to truly authentic effect.

When a respected and successful businessman claims that he is being blackmailed by Inspector Martineau, and provides evidence to support his allegations, the policeman’s superiors have no choice but to suspend him from duty.

Martineau must go to work to clear his name, but the trail is a complex and dangerous one. The inspector has many enemies, not least Dixie Costello, whom he helped to put in jail and who is now once more at large. But is the trail a false one? And are all of Martineau’s colleagues to be trusted?

Ritchie Duncan, a convict, is released from prison and decides to go clean. But when he is handed some top secret film containing electronic data by a girl in a bar there ensues mayhem and murder. The film is the property of her communist agent boyfriend, and when she refuses to surrender it her connection is killed and she is kept quietly alive in a nursing home until Duncan can save her.

‘Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller’ Guardian

‘Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller’ Guardian

Every thief dreams of committing the perfect crime. Cameron, Thorne and Gun are convinced that the jewel robbery they have planned cannot possibly go wrong, but jealousy mistrust and fear doom the enterprise from the start.

One of them dies a slow, hideous death; the other two find they have walked into hell. Soon, a beautiful woman and two desperate men find themselves trapped by their own actions. And when the thread of tension snaps they learn that death can indeed be a friend.

Paul Henderson is a big time jewel thief on a run of bad luck. He has a seven-year-old daughter to support, so when he’s offered a partnership in the biggest heist of all time he decides to try to take the baubles and run.

He reaches Switzerland, where the crime is to take place, and wangles an invitation to a gala only to be confronted by a double threat, a double cross and a kidnapping. And all this is before the night of the burglary arrives . . .

‘Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller’ Guardian

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

When Kirstie Macfarlane’s younger brother is framed for stealing a Van Eyck portrait, she puts the case in the able hands of ex-Scotland Yard Inspector John Raven.

Seduced away from his quiet life on the Thames, Raven dives back into the seamy London underworld filled with police corruption and high-handed swindles. Kirstie and Raven soon realise they have more than one opponent and their lives are perilously on the line.

‘Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller’ Guardian

John Raven and his wife Kirstie are holidaying in Lisbon at Ilona Szecheyi’s villa when Ilona’s father Stephen reveals his well-guarded secret: shortly before the communist occupation of Hungary in 1945, he was entrusted with 17 million in government gold bullion. Now, thirty-seven years later, the courts have awarded him full ownership of the money – and the current Hungarian regime is not pleased.

They will stop at nothing to get it back, and when blackmail and murder strike, Raven can’t pull out fast enough before he becomes the main suspect . . .

‘Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller’ Guardian

It’s 1927 and New Orleans-born novelist Jeff Caldwell is called back to that most colourful of American cities by a frantic letter from Dave Hobart, a boyhood friend.

Dave owns a fabulous and foreboding 16th-century English manor house moved from England to New Orleans at the whim of his eccentric grandfather. But Delys Hall has been nicknamed Deadly Hall. Some terrible things have happened there – including murder – and there are rumours of hidden treasure and a ghost.

‘The plot’s the thing … it is a sort of gleeful game’ New York Times Book Review

Some men are born to be murdered
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

Lewis Bishop was born to be murdered – the perfect victim, a man whom many had every reason to hate and fear. When he is suddenly shot dead one night he leaves behind him only unpleasant memories, a flood of relief, and a pretty puzzle for the police – and a case for the irrepressible detective Arthur Crook . . .

Contains the two novellas Border Town Girl and Linda.

Border Town Girl

Once, Lane Sanson had been a Somebody – war correspondent and a bestselling author. Now he was a Nobody, bumming around Mexico. Lost, lonely, hungry for hope, he was a pushover for a border town B-girl – the perfect fall guy for a lethal frame up . . .

Linda

She was born with the morality gene missing. As beautiful, as inviting, as treacherous as the sea around her, Linda is one of the most compelling women ever created by John D. MacDonald.

The third book in the New York Times bestselling Longmire series, featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire.

Walt Longmire has been the Sheriff in Wyoming’s Absaroka County for 25 years, but nothing could have prepared him for the savage attack on his daughter, Cady, a Philadelphia lawyer who has unwittingly become embroiled in a political cover-up.

As Walt and his best friend, Henry Standing Bear, scour the city for clues, he gets help from his deputy Victoria Moretti and her family of Philly police. But Longmire wasn’t born yesterday. He’s willing to pull out all the stops to find Cady’s attacker and show the big city that this old-timer has a few moves left in his saddlebag of tricks.

‘Johnson’s pacing is tight and his dialogue snaps’ Entertainment Weekly

An inheritance comes with its own sinister dangers…
‘Joan Aiken’s triumph with this genre is that she does it so much better than others’ New York Times Book Review

Annette, an increasingly amnesiac magazine editor who has inherited an unexpected fortune, leaves London for a new life in a cottage in the country, but falls prey to a series of strange characters who threaten to deprive her of not just her money, but her sanity too. There’s a world-famous artist with a dark secret; a New Zealander on an archaeological dig; and a strange neighbour wheeling an invalid ‘child’ on a lonely road…

Set in the picturesque Sussex town where the author was born and spent her early years in a haunted house, this gothic thriller builds to a terrifying climax as the heroine pits her wits against the sinister forces that surround her.

In 1955, aged twenty-three and fresh from a Master’s in English Literature, Joe Gores knew he wanted to be a writer. In the meantime, he had to pay the bills.

He became a repo man for L. A. Walker, later going into partnership with Walker’s San Francisco manager, Dave Kikkert. The inspiration for Gores’s DKA Files series was born.

Gores fictionalises his repo man days in these twelve ‘cases’. Some of the stories were published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and were written throughout a distinguished career. Gores won an Edgar Award in 1969 for A Time for Predators, and wrote TV scripts for Columbo, Kojak and Magnum, PI among others.

A young artist is searching for the truth about her past – but does she really want to know…?

With an introduction by A J Finn, bestselling author of THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW

Superb classic crime from ‘the mistress of day-lit terror!’ NEW YORK TIMES

‘Psychologically rich, intricately plotted and full of dark surprises’ Megan Abbott

When Amanda Garth was born, a nearly-disastrous mix-up caused the hospital to briefly hand her over to the prestigious Garrison family instead of to her birth parents. The error was quickly fixed, Amanda was never told, and the secret was forgotten for twenty-three years … until her aunt thoughtlessly revealed it in casual conversation.

But what if the real accident was Amanda being returned to the wrong parents? After all, she seems much more like the painter Tobias Garrison. Amanda is determined to discover the truth within her aunt’s bizarre anecdote, but soon is trapped in a web of lies, suspicions and deadly secrets …

The true story behind the ‘Fatty Arbuckle’ Scandal

David Yallop is no stranger to controversy. The impact of his investigations in such bestsellers as In God’s Name, Beyond Reasonable Doubt and To Encourage the Others has reverberated around the world. In The Day the Laughter Stopped, he uncovers the incredible true story behind the Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle scandal of 1921, when the fat film comedian stood accused of the rape and murder of a pretty screen actress.

Arbuckle’s is the story of a man born in extreme poverty who was destined to rise to the heights of a multi-million dollar career, only to have it snatched from him by a wave of hysteria and bigotry that swept the globe. It is the story of Hollywood and what really happened in the corridors of power; the political corruption of San Francisco; the immorality of a president. How Charlie Chaplin’s career was saved. How Buster Keaton’s was begun. Both by Arbuckle. It is a life story that ranges from comic heights to tragic depths.

The Day the Laughter Stopped confirms David Yallop’s reputation as the world’s greatest investigative author, combining exhaustive research with compulsive narrative.

This brand new short story from international bestselling M. C. Beaton takes us back to Agatha Raisin’s very first case – the case that started it all!

At the age of 26, Agatha Raisin has already come a long way. She has clawed her way up since leaving the slum where she was born. She’s lost her Birmingham accent, run away from her drunken husband and found a job at a PR agency as a secretary. When her boss asks Agatha to go to the home of Brian Devese to tell him that he is soon going to be arrested for the murder of his wife and that the agency no longer wants to represent him, Agatha accepts the task – with some trepidation. Still, she’s used to doing her boss’s dirty work for her.

Brian, impressed with the pugnacious and fearless Agatha, asks her to handle his PR for him and even offers her an office and staff. So certainly the best thing Agatha can do for her first client is to find out who really murdered his wife and clear his name. And armed with only her wits and gumption, Agatha sets out to do just that.

First in a delightfully charming crime series set in 1930s Singapore, introducing amateur sleuth Su Lin, a local girl stepping in as governess for the Acting Governor of Singapore.

1936 in the Crown Colony of Singapore, and the British abdication crisis and rising Japanese threat seem very far away. When the Irish nanny looking after Acting Governor Palin’s daughter dies suddenly – and in mysterious circumstances – mission school-educated local girl Su Lin – an aspiring journalist trying to escape an arranged marriage – is invited to take her place.

But then another murder at the residence occurs and it seems very likely that a killer is stalking the corridors of Government House. It now takes all Su Lin’s traditional skills and intelligence to help British-born Chief Inspector Thomas LeFroy solve the murders – and escape with her own life.

‘Simply glorious. Every nook and cranny of 1930s Singapore is brought richly to life, without ever getting in the way of a classic puzzle plot. But what’s a setting without a jewel? Chen Su Lin is a true gem. Her slyly witty voice and her admirable, sometimes heartbreaking, practicality make her the most beguiling narrator heroine I’ve met in a long while.’ Catriona McPherson

‘Charming and fascinating with great authentic feel. Ovidia Yu’s teenage Chinese sleuth gives us an insight into a very different culture and time. This book is exactly why I love historical novels.’ Rhys Bowen