Showing results by narrator "Brendan McDonald" in All Categories

Vampires do not exist. Everyone knows this. So it's particularly annoying when they start popping up around Manchester. Nobody is pleased about it. Not the Founders, the secret organisation for whom vampires were invented as an allegory, nor the Folk, the magical people hidden in plain sight who only want a quiet life. And definitely not the people of Manchester, because there is nothing more irksome than being murdered by an allegory run amok. Somebody needs to sort this out fast before all hell really breaks loose - step forward the staff of The Stranger Times.

Vincent Banecroft, the irascible editor of The Stranger Times, has never believed his wife died despite emphatic evidence to the contrary. Now, against all odds, it seems he may actually be proved right; but what lengths will he go to in an attempt to rescue her?

A weekly newspaper dedicated to the weird and the wonderful (but mostly the weird), The Stranger Times is the go-to publication for the unexplained and inexplicable. At least that's their pitch. The reality is rather less auspicious. Their editor is a drunken, foul-tempered and foul-mouthed husk of a man who thinks little of the publication he edits. His staff are a ragtag group of misfits. And as for the assistant editor...well, that job is a revolving door - and it has just revolved to reveal Hannah Willis, who's got problems of her own.

Five hours. Four points of view. Vincent is a wealthy banker living in one of the plushest penthouses Dublin has to offer. Ryan is a former PR executive who quit his job in an attempt to write a best-selling novel. Jack is a former member of one of Dublin’s notorious crime gangs, keen to get away from his illicit past. Darragh is young and dumb, desperate to make a name for himself in gangland circles. 

It's a night just like any other in the Conister home - but then Paul heads upstairs and never comes back. When his wife, Maggie, goes to see where he is, she can't find him. His phone and wallet are by the bed. The windows are locked from the inside. Paul has vanished. Missing persons investigator David Raker is an expert in locating the lost. So when he's hired by Maggie, he knows that in every disappearance - however impossible it seems - there's an answer. What he doesn't know yet is that his search for Paul Conister will become linked to three other mysteries.

Colm Healy used to be one of the Met's best detectives. Until, haunted by the unsolved murders of a mother and her twin daughters, his failure to find an elusive killer left his life in ruins. Missing persons investigator David Raker is the only friend Healy has left. As they reopen the investigation together, Raker learns the hard way how this case breeds obsession - and how an unsolvable puzzle can break even the best detective. Their search takes them down a trail of darkness, unravelling a thread of tragedy, and forces them to sacrifice everything they have left.

Ten seconds before the crash, Cate and Aiden Gascoigne are recorded on CCTV. The couple are laughing—happy, untroubled. Then their car plunges into a ninety-foot ravine. The impact should kill them. And if that doesn't, the fire will. Within seconds, the vehicle is an inferno—with the Gascoignes trapped inside. But when fire crews arrive at the scene, they find something impossible. The vehicle is empty. Cate and Aiden have vanished. Now only missing persons investigator David Raker can solve the mystery.