Showing results by publisher "Orion Publishing Group" in Crime Fiction

Dexter Morgan isn't exactly the kind of man you'd bring home to your mum. At heart he's the perfect gentleman: He has a shy girlfriend and seems to lead a quiet, normal life bordering on the mundane. Despite the fact that he can't stand the sight of blood, he works as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police. But Dexter also has a secret hobby: He is an accomplished serial killer. So far he's killed 36 people and has never been caught because he knows exactly how to hide the evidence.

Two minutes can be a lifetime. But break the two minute rule and it's a lifetime in jail. Ask anyone on the wrong side of the law about the two minute rule and they'll tell you that's as long as you can hope for at a robbery before the cops show up.But not everyone plays by the rules. When an ageing ex-con finally gets out of jail, freedom doesn't taste too sweet. His son is gunned down in a drive-by shooting.

Haunted by his wife and son's brutal abduction and murder, ex-soldier Will Jaeger runs to the ends of the Earth to recover and to hide. But even there he is found and compelled to undertake one last mission and to confront a savage past he can barely even remember. Jaeger agrees to lead an expedition into the Mountains of the Gods in the remote Amazon jungle.

Gravy worked in the graveyard - hence the name. He was having a normal day until his friend Benjy turned up in a car Gravy didn't recognise. Benjy had a bullet hole in his chest, but lived just long enough to ask Gravy to hide him and look after his gun. Gravy had looked after things for Benjy before, but never a gun. When Gravy looked in the car he found blood, a balaclava, and a bag stuffed with money. Gravy's not too bright but he wants to help his friend. So Gravy finds himself caught up in the middle of a robbery gone wrong....

A long time ago, Joe Pike asked for help. In return, he would, one day, be called upon to return the favour, no questions asked. That day has come. Joe Pike is asked to protect the life of Larkin Conner Barkley, a spoiled rich girl who happens to be a federal witness in a major case. But someone is leaking information about their whereabouts, and the killers are getting all too close. So Pike hatches a plan: disappear into the anonymous underbelly of Los Angeles, turn the tables and hunt down the hunters.

Stalking a poisoner at the local zoo, Inspector John Rebus comes across a paedophile taking pictures of children. When the social workers claim he is there for legitimate educational reasons, Rebus is faced with a dilemma—should he be outed to protect local kids or given a chance to start anew? As the locals begin a hate campaign, Rebus gets a call from the past: the son of a friend has gone missing, and no one else will make time to ask the right questions. And then a fragment of Scotland's criminal history is repatriated at the end of a life sentence for murder.

The Stranger appears out of nowhere, perhaps in a bar or a parking lot or at the grocery store. His identity is unknown. His motives are unclear. His information is undeniable. Then he whispers a few words in your ear and disappears, leaving you picking up the pieces of your shattered world. Adam Price has a lot to lose: a comfortable marriage to a beautiful woman, two wonderful sons, and all the trappings of the American dream - a big house, a good job, a seemingly perfect life. Then he runs into the Stranger.

After the nightmare of Hurricane Katrina, Dru Rayne and her uncle relocated to Los Angeles. Five years later, their struggling restaurant faces a different danger. When Joe Pike witnesses Dru's uncle beaten by a neighbourhood gang, he offers his own brand of protection, but neither Dru nor her uncle want his help. And neither do the federal agents mysteriously watching their store...But Pike is falling for Dru and won't back away whether she wants his help or not.

The morning it all started, newspaper reporter David Harwood had plenty to worry about. A single parent with no job, forced to return with his young son to the small town of Promise Falls to live with his parents, the future wasn't looking too rosy. So when his mother asked him to look in on his cousin, Marla, who was still not quite right after losing her baby, it was almost a relief to put the disaster his own life had become to one side. The relief wouldn't last long.

Six months after nearly losing everything to the men who kidnapped his girlfriend's ten-year-old son, Elvis Cole is slowly coming back to life - when he receives an ominous phone call from the LAPD. An unidentified body has been found in a seedy Los Angeles alley. The only clue the cops have is a packet of newspaper articles about the past exploits of Elvis Cole - and the fact that before the man died, he said he was Elvis' father...Joe Pike is the only person who can help Elvis navigate his past.

Being a blood-spatter analyst who hates the sight of blood has always made Dexter's work for the Miami PD tough. But it means he's very neat when it comes to his out-of-hours hobby: murder. Of course the fact Dexter kills only bad people helps, too. Now Dex is facing a disturbing situation. He's used to blood at work and blood when he's out with the dark passenger (the voice that guides him on his deadly outings). But he's not sure what to make of the man who says blood is art.

Seven years ago, Terry Archer and his family experienced a horrific ordeal that nearly cost them their lives. Today, the echoes of that fateful night are still audible. Terry's wife, Cynthia, is living separate from her husband and daughter after her own personal demons threatened to ruin her relationship with them permanently. Their daughter, Grace, is rebelling against her parents' seemingly needless overprotection. Terry is just trying to keep his family together. And the entire town is reeling from the senseless murder of two elderly locals.

Dexter Morgan is busy planning his wedding to Rita to complete his nice-guy disguise. But when a student is found burnt, molested and headless - seemingly sacrificed to an ancient god - and Dex is brought in as forensic analyst to help investigate, he realises he could be dealing with someone a whole lot more sinister than he is. Soon it seems the dark passenger in Dexter's head has gone into hiding. And when something creeps out your friendly neighbourhood serial killer, you know it's serious.

Hired to uncover the past of Jodi Taylor, an actress in a hit TV show, Elvis leaves his native Los Angeles to head for Louisiana in search of Jodi's biological parents. But before he can tackle the mystery of Jodi's background, he is up against a whole host of eccentrics, including a crazed Raid-spraying housewife, a Cajun thug who looks like he's been made out of spare parts and a menacing hundred-year-old river turtle named Luther.

After the screen of a run-down drive-in movie theater collapses and kills four people, the daughter of one of the victims asks private investigator Cal Weaver to look into a recent break-in at her father's house. Cal discovers a hidden basement room where it's clear that salacious activities have taken place - as well as evidence of missing DVDs. But his investigation soon becomes more complicated when he realises the DVDs may contain something even more shocking.

Everything's changing for our friendly neighbourhood serial killer. As if getting married wasn't enough to complete his nice-guy persona, Dexter is now the proud father of a baby girl. And, disconcertingly, he actually seems to care. But even if fatherhood is distracting Dexter from his midnight excursions to rid Miami of a few more lowlifes, there's no let-up at work. Two young girls are missing - and it's not long before one of the bodies turns up partially eaten.

A marine engineer who tumbles off a cliff path on a windy night. A burglary where everything taken was returned by the thief. The suicide of a man in love with life. An accident, a mystery, an unexplained tragedy. And nothing at all to connect them. Until, that is, Detective Constable Fiona Griffiths, searching for something - anything - to take her mind off the tedious job of evidence cataloguing she's been assigned to, starts to wonder if all three incidents are not quite what they seem.

Bradley Warren had lost something very valuable, something that belonged to someone else: a rare 13th-century Japanese manuscript called the Hagakure. Everything PI Elvis Cole knew about Japanese culture he'd learned from reading Shogun, but he knew a lot of crooks - and what he didn't know, his sidekick Joe Pike did.

Together, Cole and Pike begin their search in L.A.'s Little Tokyo, the nest of the notorious Japanese mafia, the Yakuza.

It wasn't supposed to end this way. In a flash of steel, a flurry of gunshots, a chorus of strangled moans, blending with the wails of sirens, certainly. A properly dramatic ending, with a good body count, a dash of treachery, absolutely. But not with Dexter, serial killer and forensic blood spatter analyst, horribly wronged and unjustly accused of the wrong murder, languishing inside the Guilford Knight Correctional Centre, bound and restrained, getting one hour's exercise a day.

When DC Fiona Griffiths says 'yes' to her policeman boyfriend, it's an affirmation that she wants finally to put her psychological breakdown behind her, and become a resident of 'Planet Normal' like everybody else. But she still can't resist the challenge of an undercover policing course, and finding it remarkably easy to assume a new identity, she comes top of the class. So when an ingenious payroll fraud starts to look like the tip of a huge criminal iceberg, Fiona is selected to infiltrate the fraudsters' operation.