Showing results by publisher "Oakhill Publishing" in Mystery

London, 1882. Alec Lonsdale, a young reporter on the Pall Mall Gazette, is working on a story about a fatal house fire. But the postmortem on the victim produces shocking results: Patrick Donovan's death was no accident. But why would someone murder a humble shop assistant and steal part of his brain? When a second body is discovered, its throat cut, and then a third, Lonsdale and his spirited female colleague, Hulda Friederichs, begin to uncover evidence of a conspiracy that reaches to the highest echelons of Victorian society.

Mrs Laetitia Rodd is the impoverished widow of an Archdeacon: she is also a private detective of the utmost discretion. In winter 1850, she is asked by Sir James Calderstone to investigate the background of an 'unsuitable' woman his son intends to marry. In the guise of governess, she travels to the family seat, Wishtide, where she discovers that the Calderstones have more to hide than most. As their secrets unfold, the case takes an unpleasant turn when a man is found dead outside a tavern.

Norah Thornby can no longer afford to live in her grand family home - unless she can find a respectable lodger. But Nurse Lettie Quick is not nearly as respectable as she seems. Meanwhile the beautiful Rae Grainger is staying in an isolated house miles away from the town. It’s certainly rather creepy, but Rae knows that all she has to do is stay out of sight until paid-professional others take her little problem away.

A solitary tent is found to contain the body of a half-buried woman. She’s been stoned to death. There are lash marks across her back. One of her hands has been cut off. Two years earlier Internet reporter Henning Juul lost his son, Jonas, in a domestic fire. As he returns to work, physically and emotionally scarred, Henning struggles to escape this past and to be taken seriously again as a reporter.

A family of Hasidic Jews dies suddenly while picnicking in Finsbury Park, and the finger is quickly pointed at a gang of Islamist youths. Too quickly, thinks local reporter Rex Tracey. Rex starts to investigate. But when his longtime colleague and friend is also accused of murder, the sleuthing journalist with a fondness for Polish lager and dry one-liners is catapulted out of his depth into a disturbing world of religious fanaticism, false prophets and century-old secrets.

John Holderness, known to the women in his life as ‘Wilderness’, comes of age during World War II in Stepney, breaking in to houses with his grandfather. After the war, Wilderness is recruited as MI5’s resident ‘cat burglar’ and finds himself in Berlin, involved with schemes in the booming black market that put both him and his relationships in danger.

At Police Scotland HQ, Grace Macallan has pitched up in Counter Corruption. But the demons of her past are never far behind. Meanwhile, Edinburgh's gangland is in turmoil, with territory battles causing serious havoc. Into the war steps DI Janet Hadden. An ambitious risk-taker, she knows how to throw opponents off balance. When she's thwarted, Hadden seeks help from a notorious underworld fixer - only for Grace to start an investigation that threatens to uncover all Hadden's secrets.

Christopher Kent, worth a quarter of a million pounds yet not a penny in his pocket, stands hungrily in Piccadilly one snowy morning looking up at the huge hotel when a piece of card bearing a number floats down to him. He enters the hotel and is served with breakfast, giving the waiter the room number to charge. Then an unlucky chance compels him to go up to room 707....

In the shadowy hallway of clockmaker Johannes Carver's house a policeman is found murdered, the arrow-tipped minute hand of a monumental antique clock embedded in his neck. For Dr Gideon Fell this is the only case that has ever really frightened him, and before he can solve it he must find answers to some seemingly impossible questions. Why was Calvin Boscombe standing near the corpse with a silencer on his gun? Who locked the attic door? And what has become of the 16th-century death-watch?

A nine-to-five job away from the frontline isn't all it's cracked up to be for Grace Macallan. So when she's sent to investigate a suicide at Glasgow's notorious Barlinnie prison, Grace gladly escapes her desk. The dead inmate is Tommy McMartin, heir to a ferocious criminal family - though his murder conviction for killing his gay lover saw him cast out. The investigation drags Grace into contact with old McMartin adversaries - but the dynasty is under threat, and as it topples, buried secrets are unearthed.

Scarred by the troubles in Belfast, Billy Nelson returns to his loyalist roots following his discharge from army service. But an outbreak of gang violence forces Billy to move on to Edinburgh, where he muscles in on the capital's drug trade. As the balance of power tips, underworld rivalries between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Belfast spill onto the streets. With a spate of horrific incidents and a trail of victims, the pressure is mounting for Grace Macallan, new superintendent of the Crime & Counter Terrorism Directorate.

London, 1880. When accounts clerk Ernest Stibbins approaches the World's End investigation bureau with wild claims that his wife Albertina has been warned by her spirit guides that someone is out to harm her, the bureau's owner Lily Raynor and her new employee Felix Wilbraham are sceptical. How are the two private enquiry agents supposed to investigate threats from beyond the grave? But after she attends a seance at the Stibbins family home, Lily comes to realize that Albertina is in terrible danger. And soon, so is Lily herself....

Grace Macallan is at breaking point, and a new investigation is testing her to the limit. An undercover officer is missing and a woman is washed up, traumatised and barely alive, on the shores of Berwickshire. As she untangles the woman's story, Grace is drawn into a cold-blooded criminal world headed by Pete Handyside, a notorious gangland boss who will fight hard and dirty to control his empire. But a traitor in his midst is intent upon betrayal, triggering an uncontrollable wave of violence. As she hones in on crucial evidence, Grace knows that one wrong move could end in tragedy.

June 1604. When the emaciated body of a vagrant is found on the edge of the moor, physician Gabriel Taverner's verdict is death from natural causes. But is all as it seems? Who was the dead man, and why had he come to the small West Country village of Tavy St Luke's to die cold, sick and alone? Then a discovery found buried in a nearby field throws a strange new light on the case...and as they search for answers, Gabriel Taverner and Coroner Theophilus Davey unearth a series of shocking secrets stretching back more than 14 years.

1851. Wealthy businessman Jacob Welland is dying of consumption and implores private detective Laetitia Rodd to find his beloved brother, whom he has not seen for 10 years. An impoverished Oxford scholar who left college to live as a wandering hermit, Joshua Welland has been spotted in a gypsy camp, where it was rumoured he was learning great secrets.

Laos, 1972. The Communist Pathet Lao has taken over. Most of the educated class has fled, but 72-year-old Dr Siri Paiboun, a Paris-trained doctor, remains and is appointed state coroner. When three bodies are recovered from a reservoir, Dr.Siri establishes the cause of death was not drowning - they seem to have been electrocuted. And then there is the inexplicable death of a Party bigwig's wife at a banquet. Dr.Siri doesn't think her death was from natural causes.

In April 1956, at the height of the cold war, Khrushchev and Bulganin leaders of the Soviet Union are in Britain on an official visit. Chief Inspector Troy of Scotland Yard is assigned to be the official bodyguard and to spy on the Soviets. Soon after, a Royal Navy diver is found dead in a mutilated state in Portsmouth Harbour. Troy embarks on an investigation that takes him to the rotten heart of MI6, to the distant days of his childhood and into the dangerous arms of an old flame.

Arriving home from a routine day at work, Anna Cottrell has no idea that her life is about to change forever. But discovering the stabbed body of a stranger in her flat, then becoming prime suspect in a murder inquiry is only the beginning. Her persistent claims of innocence start to crumble when new evidence links her irrevocably with the victim.... Leading her first murder investigation, DCI Helen Lavery unravels a trail of deception, family secrets and betrayal.

1603. Former ship's surgeon Gabriel Taverner is attempting to re-establish himself as a physician in rural Devon but it's not easy to gain the locals' trust and a series of disturbing incidents convinces him that at least one person does not welcome his presence. Called out to examine a partially decomposed body found beside the river, Gabriel discovers he has a personal connection to the dead man.

December 1882. Attending the opening of the new Natural History Museum, reporter Alec Lonsdale and his colleague Hulda Friederichs are shocked to discover a body in the basement, hacked to death. Suspicion falls on three cannibals, brought from the Congo as museum exhibits, who have disappeared. But Alec discovers that three other men have been similarly murdered, and when he and Hulda discover a letter in the victim's home warning of a catastrophic event planned for Christmas Eve, they find themselves in a race against time.