Written in Blood (40 page)

Working with Asian liaison officer Jamilla Begum on the more high profile case, Mariner soon discovers that the picture of Yasmin her school-friends paint is far cry from her parents’ claim that she is a total innocent . . .

Iain McDowall

 

Chief Inspector Jacobson and DS Kerr had been on leave when the body of a young black man, Darren McGee, had been fished out of the River Crow. The autopsy had pointed to suicide by drowning. But now Darren’s cousin, Paul Shaw, is in town: a top-notch investigative journalist with an axe to grind and a claim that Darren had really been the victim of a racially-motivated murder.

Jacobson isn’t convinced. But when Paul Shaw turns up as dead and as terminally-wet as his cousin, Jacobson and Kerr are faced with a baffling double-murder to investigate. And a dangerous confrontation lies ahead with the murky world of the Far Right.

Praise for Iain McDowall
:

‘has a vivid sense of place . . . Crowby becomes more than a fictional town: it’s almost a state of mind. Moreover its inhabitants are wonderfully characterised’ ANDREW TAYLOR

‘a lean, impressive debut . . . Kerr and Jacobson are a pleasure to meet and who offer hoped for more rich reading in future additions to the series’ WASHINGTON POST

Kate Ellis

 

The brutal massacre of the Harford family at Potwoolstan Hall in Devon in 1985 shocked the country and passed into local folklore. And when a journalist researching the case is murdered twenty years later, the horror is reawakened. Sixteenth century Potwoolstan Hall, now a New Age healing centre, is reputed to be cursed because of the crimes of its builder, and it seems that inheritance of evil lives on as DI Wesley Peterson is faced with his most disturbing case yet.

As more people die violently, Wesley needs to discover why a young woman has transformed a dolls house into a miniature reconstruction of the massacre scene. And could the solution to his case lie across the Atlantic Ocean, in the ruined remains of an early English settlement in Virginia USA?

When the truth is finally revealed, it turns out to be as horrifying as it is dangerous.

Praise for Kate Ellis
:

‘a beguiling author who interweaves past and present. Like its predecessor . . . the book works well on both levels’
The Times

Hope McIntyre

 

Although she loves her boyfriend Tommy, Lee is suffering from commitment phobia because, as a ghost-writer, she values her privacy above all else . . . and she can’t bear his mess. At the same time, though, she doesn’t really like living alone in her big, creaky old house in Notting Hill. But whilst Lee tries to remain in denial about the state of her crumbling home, a neighbour is suddenly killed in a fire, and it looks like arson.

Lee’s latest commission, ghosting the autobiography of a soap opera star, seems to offer her an escape from her problems at home. Until she meets her subject’s smoulderingly sexy manager, and finds herself compulsively attracted to him. But then Lee is drawn into a murder investigation as there is a second fire and another murder closer to home. As her home deteriorates further and her precious privacy comes under increasing pressure from all sides, could it be that Lee herself is in danger?

Praise for
How to Seduce a Ghost
:

‘Smart and hugely enjoyable’ Elizabeth Buchan