Showing results by narrator "Peter Wickham" in All Categories

Of all the weird characters Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond has met in Bath, this one is the most extreme: a 21st-century private eye called Johnny Getz, whose office is over Shear Amazing, a hairdressing salon. Johnny has been hired by Ruby Hubbard, whose father, an antiques shop owner, has gone missing, and Johnny insists on involving 'Pete' in his investigation. When Diamond, Johnny and Ruby enter the shop, they find a body and a murder investigation is launched.

Through a particularly tragic series of events, couch potato Maeve Kelly has been forced to sign up for the Other Half, Bath's springtime half-marathon. What Maeve doesn't know is just how brutal some of the other runners are. As race day draws closer, an Albanian refugee named Spiro makes a run for freedom on the other side of town, escaping the chain gang that has held him hostage and its murderous foreman, who is known to his charges as 'The Finisher'.

Run, run, girl. In the name of God, run.It's 1141 and freezing cold. Gwil, a battle-hardened mercenary, watches in horror as a little girl with red hair is dragged away by his own men. Caught in the middle of the fight for England she is just one more victim in a winter of atrocities.But a strange twist of fate brings them together again. Gwil finds the girl close to death, clutching a sliver of parchment - and he knows what he must do. He will bring her back to life.

It is 1932, and John Madden, former Scotland Yard inspector, is now a farmer in the peaceful Surrey countryside. However, his peace is shattered when he discovers the disfigured body of a young girl hidden in a wood and is convinced the killer has struck before.... When a second body is found, Madden knows there is a multiple killer at large. Allying himself with his old colleagues, and against the wishes of his anxious wife, he immerses himself in one more case.

As a New Year begins in Bath, Ben Brace proposes to his long-term girlfriend, Caroline. The problem is that she's the daughter of notorious crime baron Joe Irving, who is coming to the end of a prison sentence. And Ben's father George is Bath's Deputy Chief Constable. But mothers and sons are a formidable force: a wedding in the Abbey and reception in the Roman Baths are set in place before the career-obsessed DCC can step in.

1949. An unsigned letter arrives on the desk of Chief Inspector Derry of the Canterbury police. Enclosed is a jade pendant, identical to the one that went missing from the body of an actress murdered a decade previously. The case had been shut quickly at the time - the accused vagrant gave a written confession and was sentenced to the gallows - but the necklace was never recovered. Until now. Inspector Madden is asked to investigate the letter's worrying claims by his old friend....

During a blackout on the streets of London in late 1944, a young Polish land girl, Rosa Nowak, is suddenly and brutally killed. But the police, their resources already stretched by war regulations and the thriving black market, cannot find any reason why someone would want to murder an innocent refugee. For the former police inspector John Madden, the crime hits close to home. Rosa was working on his farm, and he feels personally responsible for not protecting her.

The Beecheys were a close-knit family, eight brothers and five sisters under the loving eye of their widowed mother, Amy. As the First World War raged across Europe and beyond, the brothers were one-by-one swept up into its devastating path.

The young orphan Oliver Twist flees a cruel workhouse for the dirty streets of London, where he falls in with a nefarious gang. As the shrewd Artful Dodger, the menacing Fagin and the vicious Bill Sikes lead Oliver deeper into a criminal life, a dark conspiracy is revealed around him.

In the dying months of World War I, Spanish flu suddenly overwhelmed the world, killing between 50 and 100 million people. Nowhere escaped this common enemy: in Britain, 250,000 people died, and in the United States it was 750,000, while European deaths reached over two million. The numbers are staggering. And yet at the time, news of the danger was suppressed for fear of impacting wartime morale. Behind the numbers are human lives, stories of those who suffered and fought it - in the hospitals and laboratories.

World War Two has ended, but the peace is threatened when a shocking murder takes place in the Sussex countryside. Before long, police discover a link to another killing hundreds of miles away.... Scotland Yard detective Billy Styles is on the case, but a strange twist of fate brings former DI John Madden into the investigations. As the victim count rises, it becomes clear that to catch this serial killer they must act quickly.

Bath's top detective, Peter Diamond, doesn't believe in jinxes. So when he's asked to investigate a top TV show plagued by a series of misfortunes, Diamond is unmoved. He's no fan of the show—which glorifies criminals and mocks the police—and the incidents were spread across six years. It's clear this is the press making a sensation out of nothing. So Diamond puts the junior member of his squad on the case. But when young officer Paul Gilbert goes on location with the TV unit and witnesses another near-death incident, Diamond is forced to take an interest.

The Fischer House was the scene of a vicious crime in the 1920's-a crime which still resonates as the century turns. At its heart was a beautiful, enigmatic woman called Pandora Gibson-Hoare, a photographer of genius whose only legacy is a handful of photographs and the clues to a mystery. Paul Seaton was lured to the house 10 years ago and escaped, a damaged man. Now three students will die unless he dares to go back. But this time he has ex-soldier Nick Mason at his side.

Bursting with life and bawdy humour, National Serviceman Brigg is now a Regular Army sergeant defending the Empire in the beds and bars of Hong Kong. Peace-time diversions include sensual fireworks with a pair of delicious Chinese twins and a tender, erotic affair with the lonely wife of an American serviceman.

Haunted by the brutal killing of his UN interpreter wife in Bosnia, ex-SAS operative Ed Coltrane is consumed with the need to hunt down her murderers. Drinking too much and spending too much on his search, his life is going into meltdown. Just as it seems he can fall no further, a former colleague informs him that one of his wife's killers is in London, as a guest of the British government. Certain unofficial figures in the corridors of power would like to see this man disappear, and they'd like Ed Coltrane to accept the contract.

They are the Pessarane Behesht. Sons of heaven. Spawned in war-torn Beirut. Nurtured in revolutionary Iran to wreak vengeance on the enemies of Allah. When the freighter Clarion Call disappears mysteriously in the Gulf, she is carrying a secret consignment of French arms for the Pessarane Behesht in return for the release of a diplomat held hostage. Ex-SAS Major Robert D'Arcy, whose international security firm was protecting the ship, finds himself in the midst of a deadly battle of wills.

Queen Elizabeth I is dying, and the king of England’s oldest and bitterest enemy, Scotland, is poised to take the throne. With all her old allies and advisors dead, she turns to the only man she can trust: Henry Gresham. Gresham finds himself unwillingly dragged into the political manoeuvring that will decide England’s next ruler. Involved in the race to be the first to tell James VI of Scotland that Elizabeth has chosen him as her successor, Gresham faces savage attacks on his home and those he loves.

In the final days of Henry VIII, one man is there to witness the demise of a legend... Master historian Paul Doherty weaves his magic in an epic tale of murderous schemes and a blood-smattered political order.King Henry VIII, a fearsome figure of power and stature, lies upon his deathbed diminished by sickness and haunted by ghosts from his past. Only Will Somers, long-serving jester and confidant, sees all. While Henry is confined to his chamber, Will begins a journal that will document his King's last turbulent days.

When Alan left school at fifteen little was expected of him. An 'O' level in art is not the most obvious passport to success, but in the ancient greenhouses of the local nursery Mrs T's little lad found his spiritual home, learning his trade and the strange ways of human nature. But

Dave Aston is a dead man walking. He was a member of the elite British SAS. Black Ops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Until that final mission into bandit country. Unauthorised, with no back up. That was when his luck ran out ...Now, he's returned home to an alien civilian life. Everything is lost: his marriage, his home and his self-respect. Down and out on the cold, mean streets of his homeland. There he discovers that the astonishing circle of deceit is complete. But is he just too far down to fight back against a new evil force at work in his own back yard?