Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Mystery

Connor Laird frightens people: he's intense, he's fearless, and he seems to be willing to do anything to protect himself and those he loves. He arrives in the Longacre Children's Home seemingly from nowhere, and instantly becomes hero and villain to every other child there.

We could tell you about the bodies. We could tell you their names, where they were found, the states they were in. We could tell you about the suspects, too, the evidence, the investigators; join a few dots, even throw you a motive. But what would be the point? After all, you know these people. You went to school with them. We all did. So if you really knew them then, you’ll already have all the answers....

A band of vigilante executioners roam London's hot summer nights, abducting evil men and hanging them. Sentenced to death is the gang member who abused vulnerable girls, the wealthy drunk driver who mowed down a child and the hate preacher calling for the murder of British troops. As the bodies pile up and riots explode all over the sweltering city, DC Max Wolfe embarks on his most dangerous investigation yet: hunting a gang of killers whom many believe to be heroes....

DS George Cross can be rude, difficult, and awkward with people. But his unfailing logic and relentless pursuit of justice means his conviction rate is the best on the force. When a ravaged body is found in a local demolition site, it is up to Cross to piece together the truth from whatever fragments he can find. DS Cross has little to go on, but from the faint tan lines on the body and strange scars on his forearms, an identity gradually emerges. Cross mounts an investigation that will uncover jealousy, ambition and a family tearing itself apart.

Winter 1793. Master and Commander Charles Hayden’s orders are to return to the ill-fated frigate, HMS Themis. Placed in temporary command, he is to join the escort for the last convoy of the season - braving the wintry seas. Hayden's uncanny knack for attracting the attention of the French navy sees the Themis thrown back into action only hours out of port. Soon, Hayden's captaincy and military skill are stretched to their utmost....

1899, South Africa: As the Boer War rages, Captain Ingo Finch of the Royal Army Medical Corps pieces together casualties at the front. Later, recovering in Cape Town, he is woken by local police. A British officer has been murdered, and an RAMC signature is required for the post-mortem. Shocked by the identity of the victim, the bizarre nature of the crime and what appears a too-convenient resolution, Finch turns detective. He is soon thrust into a perilous maze of espionage and murder.

For its own very good reasons, Scotland Yard sends Dover off to remote Creedshire to investigate the disappearance of a young housemaid, Juliet Rugg. Though there's every cause to assume that she has been murdered - she gave her favours freely and may even have stooped to a bit of blackmail - no body is to be found. Weighing in at 16 stone, she couldn't be hard to overlook. But where is she? And why should Dover, of all people, be called upon to find her? Or, for that matter, even bother to solve the damned case?

The odd couple of detection, the brilliant but cranky Arthur Bryant and John May of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit, return in a tense, atmospheric new thriller that keeps you guessing right to the end. This time the detectives are up against a series of bizarre murders that defy human understanding, and a killer no human hand may be able to stop.

An artist is found dead in a gallery with locked doors and windows. A television presenter is struck by lightning while indoors. Two seemingly impossible crimes that only Arthur Bryant and John May of the Met's Peculiar Crimes Unit might be able to solve. But Bryant has lost his nerve, and May is fighting to keep the unit from closure. Worse still, an unsolved mystery from the past has returned to haunt them...

At Black Rabbit Hall, nothing much ever happens - time seems to move slower at this idyllic holiday home in Cornwall. Until the worst thing happens, and for the Alton children time feels like it's stopped altogether. In the present day, Lorna Smith is searching for her perfect wedding venue and is inexplicably drawn to the now crumbling Black Rabbit Hall, unaware that her own history is locked up in those derelict walls....

Charles Hayden sets off aboard the ill-fated HMS Themis with orders to destroy a French frigate and to gather intelligence from a royalist spy. On discovering French plans for an imminent invasion of England, Hayden must return to Portsmouth to give warning before it's too late. But the enemy has been lying in wait for him, and so begins a dangerous chase out into the Atlantic and into the clutches of a powerful French squadron…

It is with some trepiditation that Meredith Mitchell returns to the Cotswolds: the Bamford district holds memories that, to put it generously, are bittersweet, and Christmas is a difficult time to find oneself a stranger in a new area. Yet she receives a kindly welcome, in particular from her old acquaintance Chief Inspector Markby and from her new neighbour Harriet Needham, a striking redhead with whom Meredith immediately feels a certain kinship. But Meredith has barely got to know her neighbour when Harriet is involved in a shocking—and fatal—accident at the Boxing Day Hunt.

It's Christmas, and half the Partickhill police squad is down with flu. Not good timing, with a series of cyanide poisonings in the area, plus two small boys reported missing in the space of a few days. And then there's the monumental task of providing concert security for rock legend Rogan O'Neill.

Acid Row. The name the beleaguered inhabitants give to their 'sink' estate. A no-man's land of single mothers and fatherless children—where angry, alienated youth controls the streets. Into this battleground comes Sophie Morrison, a young doctor visiting a patient in Acid Row. Little does she know that she is entering the home of a known pedophile . . . and with reports circulating that a tormented child called Amy has disappeared, the vigilantes are out in force

Bristol detective DS George Cross, champion of the outsider, the voiceless and the dispossessed. DS George Cross can be rude, difficult and awkward with people. But his unfailing logic and dogged pursuit of the truth means his conviction rate is the best on the force. An outsider himself, having been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, DS Cross is especially drawn to cases concerning the voiceless and the dispossessed. Now, Cross is untangling the truth about a young woman who died three days ago.

In San Pedro, Los Angeles, one of the world's busiest harbours, an unlikely pair of lovers is caught up in terror. When Dinko Babich, a young longshoreman, delivers Lita Medina, a young Mexican dancer, from the harbour to a Hollywood nightclub, his life is forever changed as an unexpectedly tender and moving love story develops. Comedy and tragedy are intertwined in the everyday life of the cops and residents of San Pedro Harbor.

Walter has a rubbish job, so has Margaret. But when they meet through a dating agency, neither is who they seem. Margaret's married for a start, and Walter's encounter with her husband, Billy, leaves him black and blue. Billy's a dodgy accountant for politician and racketeer Pink Harrison, who is about to come unstuck.

Young girls are disappearing around the country, and there is nothing to connect them to one another. Dr Tony Hill sets his team an exercise: they are given the details and asked to discover links between the cases. Only one officer comes up with a theory that is ridiculed...until one of their own is murdered. For Tony Hill the murder becomes a matter for personal revenge, and, joined by colleague Carol Jordan, he embarks on a game where hunter and hunted can all too easily be reversed.

Kate Brannigan’s having a bad week. Her boyfriend’s death notice is in the paper and her plan to catch a team of fraudsters is in disarray. Kate can’t even cry on her best friend’s shoulder, for Alexis has worries of her own. Her girlfriend’s pregnant, and when the doctor responsible for the fertility treatment is murdered, Alexis needs Kate like she’s never done before. Delving into the alien world of medical experimentation, Kate confronts betrayal and cold-blooded greed as she fights to save not only her livelihood, but her life as well.

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.