Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Crime Fiction

Dan Starkey arrives on Wrathlin Island to investigate the residents' belief that the Messiah is alive, female, and about to start school there: It's not a commission that turns up everyday. He finds a mess of religious intolerance and illicit drinking in a tiny community that is big on religious fervour but small on hospitality. Apart from the Messiah's mum of course, who's clung to her sanity. And her lager.

When an old crony of Van Shaw's late grandfather calls in a favour, he treks deep into the remote forest of the Olympic Mountains in search of a missing girl. Discovering a brutal murder scene, Van finds himself caught between a billionaire businessman on the one side and vicious gangsters on the other. In an attempt to survive, a desperate Van may just need every ally he can get, especially as someone prepares to unleash a firestorm on Seattle that could burn them all to ashes.

The small town where Turner has moved is the perfect hide-away for him to forget he was a cop, a psychotherapist and always an ex-con - until a body is found and Turner is thrust into the investigation and everything he thought he had left behind. Turner slowly becomes reacquainted not only with the darkness he had fled, but with the unsuspected kindness of others.

Newly appointed District Sheriff Tristan Haraldsen and his wife, Elsebeth, are looking forward to a peaceful semiretirement in the remote fishing village of Djevulsfjord on the stunningly beautiful island of Vagar. But when two boys go missing during the first whale hunt of the season, the repercussions strike at the heart of the isolated coastal community. As he pursues his investigations, Tristan discovers that the Mikkelsen brothers aren’t the first young men to have vanished on Vagar.

Jane Whitefield helps people disappear. Fleeing desperate situations, Jane's clients come to her for new identities, new lives where they won't be found. And when people need Jane's services, they come to the old house in rural New York where she was raised. It's there Jane finds Sara, a young woman in serious trouble. Sara's boyfriend found out she had a lover, then made Sara watch as he murdered the man. Acquitted despite Sara's testimony, now he's trying to find her and kill her.

Constance Kopp doesn't quite fit the mould. She towers over most men, has no interest in marriage or domestic affairs, and has been isolated from the world by a family secret. When a ruthless factory owner runs down their buggy, a dispute over damages turns into a war as he unleashes his gang. The sheriff enlists her help, and it turns out that Constance has a knack for outwitting the criminal element which might just lead her onto a new path in life.

If you found the person who brutally murdered a loved one, what would you do? Forgive and forget? Or take the law into your own hands? Detective Martin Murphy is the law and he's back with a vengeance.... Someone has started killing the killers - who just happen to have been under the surveillance of 'Confront', a support group for relatives of murder victims who believe that therapy conies through empowerment. Suspecting the group of revenge killings, Murphy goes undercover and joins them.

For many years Dan Starkey has been a journalist of some repute - mainly ill. Now he is back with his wife Patricia, and while they try for a baby, he is aiming to keep himself out of trouble. Had he not been caught in a rather awkward position when he received a phone call from Big Davie Kincaird, he might not have decided to return to the village of Groomsport. And had he not drunk too much in order to cover the awkwardness, he might not have found himself agreeing to go on honeymoon...with Big Davie.

Two teenagers see a dead man rising from his grave. And if that's not alarming enough, one of them is killed in a hit and run accident. Soon it seems death is all around and Bryant and May must confront a group of latter-day bodysnatchers. More graves are desecrated, further deaths occur, and when Bryant is blindfolded and taken to a secret society, he realises that this case is more complex than even he had imagined.

Caught as a teenager at a wild party, and sent home in disgrace, Lucy Sheridan is finally returning to Summer River 13 years later. Lucy now works for a private investigation firm, and Summer River is now a trendy spot in California's wine country. Mason Fletcher, has changed, too, setting up a security firm of his own. But when he and Lucy make a shocking discovery inside her aunt’s house, Mason is determined to protect her.

Farideh's husband is a corporal in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, entrapped by MI6 for interrogation. His job as a driver to a top general has left him with potentially valuable knowledge, but he won't talk unless Farideh is brought out of Iran. The SAS say it's too dangerous, so MI6 assemble a team of three ex-soldiers and a student dropout who knows the language and smuggles them into Tehran.…

Will's a nice guy. So when he takes a shortcut to the tube station after a few beers with his mates from work, he steps out of the way of the fellow who's staggering towards him. But he—deliberately—moves back into his path. They knock each other as they pass. Moments later one man is dead and another's life is changed forever. Or is it? There are no CCTV cameras. There was no one else in the out-of-the-way alley. Maybe the world doesn't have to end for Will after all. But there's always someone watching . . . and Will's life is about to implode.

In a grimy flat in the city of Cork, a man lies dead. His face is unrecognisable: seven gunshots have shattered cartilage and bone. Yet DS Katie Maguire, of the Irish Garda, knows exactly who he is. Amir Xaaji Maxamed, an evil man who trafficked young girls to be sold for sex. When a second pimp is killed, Katie must decide. Are these vigilante murders justified? And can she stop them spiralling out of control?

Growing up in one of Manchester's roughest council estates Mark (Macca) McNeil's life seems already written for him until joining forces with rough boy Todd Brown to form a gang offers him a way out. He is finally changing his life but then, there is Joanne… She is more than a fling and although they come from the same estate, but she is heading places. She loves his lavish gifts and the life he is promising her, but she doesn't want to see what Macca is capable of.

In a hidden studio in Rome, an art expert is found dead in front of one of the most beautiful paintings Nic Costa has ever seen - an unknown Caravaggio masterpiece. But before long, tragedy will strike Nic far closer to home. The main suspect's identity is known, but he remains untouchable, protected by a fleet of lawyers and a sinister cult known as the Ekstasists. If Costa can crack the reasons for the cult's existence, he may well stand a chance of nailing his wife's killer. But the mystery will take him right back to Caravaggio himself and the reasons he had to flee Rome.

As the Bruschetti brothers' criminal empire has grown, they have relied on a complex web of financial arrangements to keep their business safe. Now wealthy and aging, they have decided to retire from crime. But when actor Harry Murphy overhears the Bruschettis plotting to kill several associates, he decides he must intervene. After warning one of the intended victims, Harry is caught up in the drama and enlisted by the British authorities to build a case against the Bruschettis.

Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count and rip apart language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable. When Frank is fatally stabbed, Lionel's world is suddenly turned upside down.

Things are looking up for Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni - their humiliating exile in Venice is nearly at an end, and their long-awaited holiday is about to begin...

It's April 1939, and, with their lives in Berlin and Vienna under threat, Esther and Kitty - two very different women - are forced to make the same brutal choice. Flee Europe, or face the ghetto, incarceration, death. Shanghai is a haven - and so they secure passage to the other side of the world. What they find is a city of extremes - wealth, poverty, decadence and disease - and of deep political instability.

You see the people you work with every day, but what can't you see? Amira, Sarah, Paula, Ewan and Charlie have worked together for years - they know how each other likes their coffee, whose love life is a mess, whose children keep them up at night. But their comfortable routine life is suddenly shattered when an aggressive new boss walks in.... Now there's something chilling in the air. Who secretly hates everyone? Who is tortured by their past? Who is capable of murder?