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

The Grayson sisters are trouble. Everyone in their small town knows it. But no one can know of the secret that binds them together. Hattie is the light. Penny is the darkness. Together, they have balance. But one night the balance is toppled. A match is struck. A fire is started. A cruel husband is killed. The potential for a new life flickers in the fire's embers, but resentment, guilt, and jealousy suffocate like smoke. Their lives have been engulfed in flames. Will they ever be able to put them out?

Detective Inspector Bethany Smith arrives at the scene of the crime still dressed in her funeral attire. Her head thick with emotion. Her colleagues think she's mad. But she wants to be there. She needs to be there. Even if what she sees makes her skin crawl. The next day another body is discovered. The victim has suffered a similar gruesome fate. Left for dead at the bottom of his garden where the creepy-crawlies can get to him.

Nga-Yee, a librarian, lives a quiet life with her 15-year-old sister, Siu-Man. After a difficult, impoverished upbringing and the deaths of their parents, they are finally finding a bit of stability. Then one day, Nga-Yee comes home to find her teenage sister has jumped to her death. Was it suicide, or was she pushed? And does it have anything to do with a recent trip on the Hong Kong subway which left Siu-Man silent and withdrawn? Nga-Yee cannot rest until she knows the truth about her sister - even if that means tracking down her sister's friends one by one and making them confess.

Career campaigner Fraser Neal continually clashed with local businessmen, most recently over the council's selling publicly-owned social housing in the Docklands to private developers and displacing vulnerable residents. Until he's found dead in an alley behind Tennessee Fried Chicken's wheelie bins. Neal was also a police informant – or so he said. DS Max Lomax of Special Operations says he wasn't. No one believes him.

Gianni Peroni is at a loose end. He's got nothing urgent to do but he notices that the pathologist has a busy day ahead: during the night two corpses were picked out of the Tiber. At first glance, it seems that the similarities between the two men end there. But then Gianni notices something very strange...

Kristina is a successful therapist in central Oslo. She spends her days helping clients navigate their lives with a cool professionalism that has got her to the top. But when her client Leah, a successful novelist, arrives at her office clearly distressed, begging Kristina to come to her remote cabin in the woods, she feels the balance begin to slip.

The gripping crime novel, brimming with expert knowledge and authenticity, from an author with over 20 years’ policing experience. When Anna arrives in the UK, she believes it’s the start of a better life for her and her daughter. But what awaits her is more shocking than anything she could have ever imagined...DI Harry Powell is investigating a shooting, but the victim has been scared into silence. As Harry struggles to piece together what little information he has, he stumbles upon an operation that may put countless lives across the country at risk.

Robert Finlay seems to have finally left his SAS past behind him and is settled into his new career as a detective. But when the author of a book about secret operations goes missing, along with his agent and an explosive new manuscript, it’s clear that Finlay’s troubles are far from over. With his friend and former colleague, Kevin Jones, in trouble, and police complaints branch gunning for them both, Robert teams up with MI5 agent Toni Fellowes to find out who’s behind the growing conspiracy.

In the straight world, when you 'see something' you 'say something' to the law. In the bent world, they call Joe. Still reeling from a particularly difficult operation, and having plummeted back into the drug and alcohol addiction that got him kicked out of the military as a result, Joe has just managed to detox at the clinic of a Chinese herbalist when the mob bosses phone: they need Joe to help them swindle a group of opioid dealers (of all things). But these are no typical drug-ferrying gangsters.

Whilst investigating the theft of a stolen Da Vinci, reformed art thief Tom Kirk is confronted with the horrifying sight of a cat nailed to the wall where the painting once stood. He recognises the sign as a greeting from his old enemy Milo, and then finds out that a long time friend in Seville has been murdered.

When maverick Police Sergeant Jolly Macken is banished to the sleepy 1950s Irish border village of Blackwatertown, he vows to find the killer of his brother - even if the murderer is inside the police. But a lot can happen in a week. Over seven days Macken falls in love, uncovers dark family secrets, accidentally starts a war and is hailed a hero and branded a traitor. When Blackwatertown explodes into violence, who can he trust? And is betrayal the only way to survive?

When an armed man massacres several people in central London, Claudine witnesses the whole thing. To her horror, one of the victims is her brother, Jethro. Riven by grief, Claudine retreats to the house in the Fens where she and Jethro grew up. When the police contact her, she is left reeling when they tell her Jethro orchestrated the attack. Why would a gentle, if troubled, middle-aged man cause such bloodshed – and why would he include himself in the list of victims? Claudine finds herself down a rabbit hole of mystery, caught up in Jethro's research on a medieval cult.

The Chalet des Anglais should be the ideal locale for recently widowed Oxford don Emily to begin cutting through the fog of her grief. With no electricity, running water, or access by car, the rustic chalet nestled at the foot of the verdant, snow-topped Alps should afford Emily both time and space to heal. Joining her will be a collection of friends from the university, as well as other fellows, graduates, and undergraduates. Something feels off, though—heightening Emily's existing grief-induced anxiety.

In the small Hampshire village of Sowerbridge, Irish labourer Patrick O'Riordan has been arrested for the brutal murder of elderly Lavinia Fanshaw and her live-in nurse, Dorothy Jenkins. As shock turns to fury, the village residents form a united front against Patrick's parents and cousin, who report incidents of vicious threats and violence. But Siobhan Lavenham remains convinced that Patrick has fallen victim to a prejudiced investigation and, putting her own position within the bigoted community in serious jeopardy, stands firmly by his family in defense of the O'Riordan name.

Waldo, a onetime LAPD superstar, now lives in solitude deep in the woods. He has left behind his career and his girlfriend, Lorena, to pay self-imposed penance for an awful misstep on an old murder case. But the old ghosts are about to come roaring back. Alastair Pinch is a onetime Royal Shakespeare Company thespian who now slums it as the 'wise' Southern judge on a tacky network show. He's absurdly rich, often belligerent, and typically drunk - a damning combination when Alastair's wife is found dead on their living room floor and he can't remember what happened.

In an age of cybercrime, Finn is a thief with a unique specialty: he steals only big things. Fresh out of prison, he is faced with his biggest steal yet: breaking out $50 million worth of rhodium.

To do so, Finn calls in the team that put him in prison. But things get twisty when Finn navigates the betrayals of double-crossing partners, a corrupt billionaire and the ambiguous proposals of a woman.

Paramedic Andy Campbell has a secret he can't tell anyone, not least the police. But when his missing wife's image is found at the home of a suspected killer, detectives start asking questions, and they're not the only ones . . . The race for the truth leads them far from their Edinburgh home. But who will find her first, and will they save her life or take it?

An astonishing and evocative debut from a new voice in crime fiction. Holly Blain wants to cover real news. The entertainment beat - pop stars and teen trends - was not why she moved to Tokyo. When she meets Inspector Tetsu Tanaka, head of Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police’s Gaikoku-jin unit, it might just be her big break. Tanaka isn’t so sure. Always one to do things by the book, he’s hesitant about bringing this headstrong reporter into his carefully controlled investigation. But young women keep disappearing, and Tanaka is given no choice.

There was a time when Jackie Reed knew if her sons were lying. But it's as though every day, every minute even, she knows them a little less. Her boys aren't boys anymore, they're becoming men - men she's not sure she recognises. When one of her son's classmates is killed in suspicious circumstances, people start asking questions. Was it really a hit-and-run? Or something more sinister? And where was her son that night?

Budapest, January 2016. The Danube is grey and half-frozen, covered with ice, and the city seems to have gone into hibernation. But not for Detective Balthazar Kovacs. He has been called out to investigate the disappearance of a young Israeli historian, Elad Harari. Harari was working in the archives of the city's Jewish museum, researching what happened to the assets of the Hungarian Jews murdered in the Holocaust. His work could bring justice to the families of those who died, but it seems not everyone welcomed his probing into the country's darkest period.