Showing results by author "Simon Kernick" in Crime Fiction

It's evening, you're back late from work - and the house is in darkness. You step inside, and the phone rings. You answer it - and your world turns upside down. Your 14-year-old daughter's been taken, and her kidnappers demand half a million pounds in cash. They give you 48 hours to raise the money, and warn you that if you call the police, she'll die. Trying desperately to remain calm, you realise that your husband - the man you married only two years previously - is also missing.

A threat has been made. An ultimatum delivered. Innocent people are in mortal danger. The gripping new bestseller from the master of the race-against-time thriller.8am: an explosion blasts through a cafe in central London. Minutes later a call is made to a local radio station: ‘We’ve just detonated a bomb. Another will explode shortly. The British Government has until 8pm tonight to meet all our demands, or a far greater attack will take place somewhere in the country that will bring fire down on all your heads.

The gripping new race-against-time thriller by the best-selling author of Relentless, The Last 10 Seconds and The Final Minute. When Jane Kinnear sees her lover being murdered, she suddenly finds herself in danger. Taken to an anonymous police safe house, it soon becomes clear that her lover was an MI5 informant with important information about an imminent terrorist attack.

Undercover cop Chris Sketty became a hero when he almost died trying to stop the most brutal terror attack in UK history. With the suspects either dead or missing, the real motive remains a mystery. But someone is convinced Sketty is a liar. A criminal mastermind. A murderer. Blackmailed into revealing the truth, Sketty will share a twisting tale of betrayal, deception and murder...with a revelation so shocking that nothing will be the same again.

'It's night, and I'm in a strange house. The lights are on and I'm standing outside a half-open door. Feeling a terrible sense of foreboding, I walk slowly inside. And then I see her. A woman lying sprawled across a huge double bed. She's dead. There's blood everywhere. And the most terrifying thing of all is that I think her killer might be me ...'

From Sunday Times bestselling author Simon Kernick - the UK's answer to Harlan Coben - come two electrifying novellas and three gripping short stories published in book form for the very first time. Fans of David Baldacci, Stuart MacBride and Peter James will not be disappointed.

When writer Rob Fallon gets drunk one night and ends up joining his friend's girlfriend, Jenny, back at her apartment in London's West End, he's feeling guilty before anything's even happened. But guilt quickly turns to shock when a sequence of events put him in the centre of a mystery and a deadly race against time.

It's a typical cold November night in London and Detective Sergeant Dennis Milne, a very atypical policeman, waits in the Traveller's Rest Hotel parking lot for the arrival of three men. Cynical and jaded, Milne earns money on the side by doing what he does punishing the bad guys. But this time he's been duped. Instead of blowing away drug dealers, he kills three innocent people, their deaths starting an investigation that sees him and his conscience heading for trouble.

When Operation Surgical Strike, a police sting designed to catch Colombian drug traffickers, goes tragically wrong, suspicion quickly falls on one of the undercover police officers involved: 'Stegs' Jenner. But Stegs is no ordinary cop. Something of a maverick, he has in the past played the role of a criminal just a little too well. Now suspended from duty, and with his close friend killed in the shootout, he determines to go it alone....

When former soldier Dan Tyler wakes up in a strange room on a bed covered in blood, with no idea how he got there, he thinks he's stepped into someone else's nightmare. But he's wrong. This is reality.

When Max I Versson, codirector of a small firm of freelance bodyguards, is introduced to North London nightclub owner Roy Fowler, he immediately senses that the man is trouble. Fowler wants security for a meeting with a group of businessmen who want to buy his nightclub. Five grand for a couple of hours' work is too tempting to turn down, so Iversson - against his better judgment - takes the work....

You come home to find your wife missing - and the body of a woman you've never seen in her place. A phone in her hand starts to ring. A voice says you have 24 hours to clear your name; 24 hours to save your wife. But there's only one way to do it. You must kill someone for them. Someone you've never heard of. A complete stranger. And the clock is ticking.

You have it all. Success, a beautiful home, a happy family. Until, in a heartbeat, it's gone. We've kidnapped your daughter, and we know everything about you. Including the dark secrets from your past you thought were forgotten. We tell you not to contact the police - and that we’ll know if you do. Because we can see you.... And now you know this is no ordinary abduction. It’s worse. Within hours you’re on the run, with only one thought in your head: That you will stop at nothing to get your daughter back. Even murder....

A house deep in the countryside where the remains of seven unidentified women have just been discovered. A cop ready to risk everything in the hunt for their killers. A man who has seen the murders and is now on the run in fear of his life. So begins the race to track down this witness before the killers do. For Ray Mason and PI Tina Boyd, the road ahead is a dangerous one, with bodies and betrayal at every turn....

Alastair Sheridan has it all. Wealth, good looks, a beautiful wife and children and, in the chaotic world of British politics, a real chance of becoming prime minister. But Alastair also has a secret. He’s a serial killer with a taste for young women. Only a handful of people know what kind of monster he is, and disgraced detective Ray Mason is one of them....

A new twist to a decades old mystery. 1990. A young woman goes missing while backpacking in Thailand. She is never seen again. 2016. Her bones are discovered 6000 miles away in an English field and, within hours, the boyfriend who reported her disappearance all those years ago is dead. So begins a hunt to solve her murder that will take DI Ray Mason and PI Tina Boyd into a dark and terrifying world of corruption and deadly secrets, where murder is commonplace, and nothing and nobody is safe....

When ex-cop Dennis Milne, now living under an assumed identity in the Philippines, hears that his old friend Asif Malik has been gunned down in a restaurant, he decides to go back to the violent city he once called home and hunt down the murderer.

THE UNDERCOVER COP. Having worked undercover the last ten years, Sean Egan is used to life on the edge. He’s recently infiltrated one of London’s most dangerous criminal gangs, and they’ve just informed him that they want him for a very special job: the daring abduction from police custody of a serial killer known as The Night Creeper. THE KILLER. Brutally violent yet highly intelligent, The Night Creeper has earned his reputation by torturing five young women to death.

You’re on a trip with your family, miles from anywhere. A shot rings out - and your whole life changes in an instant. A woman is racing towards you, chased by three gunmen. Although you don’t know it, she harbours a deadly secret. She’s in terrible danger. And now you are, too. You’re running, terrified, desperate to find safety. You know that the men hunting you have killed before. And if they catch you, you’ll be next.…

A gripping narrative from the master of the race against time thriller. Have you ever been in the wrong place at the wrong time? You are hiking in the Scottish highlands with three friends when you come across a girl. She is half-naked, has been badly beaten, and she can’t speak English. She is clearly running away from someone. Do you stop to help her? Even if it means putting your friends’ lives - and your own - in terrible danger?