Showing results by narrator "Sean Barrett" in All Categories

A collection of the author's articles and reviews, giving an insight into some of the most important literary, artistic, and scientific movements and events of the last 30 years.

Scarred by the troubles in Belfast, Billy Nelson returns to his loyalist roots following his discharge from army service. But an outbreak of gang violence forces Billy to move on to Edinburgh, where he muscles in on the capital's drug trade. As the balance of power tips, underworld rivalries between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Belfast spill onto the streets. With a spate of horrific incidents and a trail of victims, the pressure is mounting for Grace Macallan, new superintendent of the Crime & Counter Terrorism Directorate.

A superstitious man might just have balked at putting to sea on Friday 13th in the centenary year of the sinking of the Titanic.... Fatal Voyage is the first comprehensive account of the wrecking of the Costa Concordia - an enthralling narrative of events before, during, and after the 114,000-ton liner slammed into rocks off the Mediterranean island of Giglio. Focusing on the experiences of a Californian family, Fatal Voyage brings to life the terrifying reality of being trapped aboard the listing, crippled Costa Concordia.

In the wake of several unexpected deaths at the hospital, Dr Claire Woodforde suspects there is a killer amongst the staff. As Detective Chief Inspector Beverley Wharton and her new sergeant, Tom Bayes, begin to investigate, they too start to wonder if the deaths were natural or whether someone helped them along. But as they start to make headway, something much more sinister comes to light.

1856, London: The specimen-collecting craze is growing, and discoveries in far-off jungles are reshaping the known world. When the glamorous Lady Bessingham is found murdered, surrounded by her vast collection of fossils and tribal masks, Professor Adolphus Hatton and his morgue assistant Albert Roumande are called in to examine the crime scene - and the body. In the new and suspicious world of forensics, Hatton and Roumande are the best. But the crime scene is not confined to one room.

What does a man do when he discovers a process like Omega Minus? He wishes he hadn't. Scientist James Hallet has the intelligence forces of all the world's major powers on his back, and they're not too particular about how they get their information. They wouldn't, for instance, baulk at the kidnap and torture of Hallet's beautiful blonde mistress. Not if it would give them Omega Minus.

Two high profile victims - a former left-wing radical turned environmental campaigner and a geneticist researching the possibility of inherited memory - are found murdered within 24 hours of each other. Both men have been scalped. Jan Fabel and his murder team have nothing to go on other than a single red hair left as a signature at each scene - each hair cut from the same head at least 20 years previously. Connections begin to appear: a long disbanded terrorist group; a mummified body; and a killer....

July, 1858. Forensic scientist Adolphus Hatton and his trusty assistant Albert Roumande have a morgue full of cholera victims to attend to, and an eager apprentice to teach. When a leading politician of the Irish Unionist movement is murdered, the flamboyant Inspector Grey calls on Hatton and Roumande to help solve the case. But Inspector Grey proves difficult to deal with.

Just as a major environmental summit is about to start in Hamburg, a massive storm hits the city. When the flood waters recede, a headless torso is found washed up. Initially, Jan Fabel fears it may be another victim of a serial rapist and murderer who stalks his victims, then dumps their bodies in waterways around the city. But the truth of the situation is far more complex. Fabel’s investigations lead him to a secretive environmental Doomsday cult called “Pharos”, the brainchild of a reclusive, crippled billionaire.

October, 1975. When Dr Lance Elliot receives a call from his elderly father to say he has been arrested for arson, he can hardly believe it. Especially when he discovers that the intended victim was his father’s neighbour, Oliver Lightoller, with whom his father has a long-running feud. But things quickly take a dark turn when Lance stumbles across Lightoller’s body, which has been pinned by an old sword to an office chair in the dead man’s South London antiques shop.

In London, a newly-arrived Kurdish immigrant is brutally murdered by Turkish people-traffickers. The dead man’s wife, Irena, flees to East Anglia where she disappears into the murky world of illegal foreign workers. Reporter Joe Verdi goes undercover as a migrant worker to try to find Irena. But he’s not the only one looking for her – the Turks are also on her trail. Meanwhile, Joe’s colleague, Elli Mason, is following up the story of a typhoid outbreak. Three people have contracted the disease and the only link between them is a supermarket chain.

July, 1977. Lance’s eccentric father, the retired Dr Benjamin Elliott, has been running a Horticultural Club at local Bensham Manor School, a good deed he decided to take on to impress Ada Clarke, the head dinner lady at the school. One summer’s evening, Lance and his girlfriend Max turn up for the school’s parents evening to show their support of the elder Dr Elliott’s efforts.

It is a sweltering July in the mid-1970s, and for Will Flemyng, foreign office minister, the temperature is rising with each passing hour. A mysterious death has exposed secret passions in government, bringing on a political crisis that will draw him back into a familiar world of danger and deceit. For Flemyng has a past. He was trained as a spy for a life behind enemy lines and now he's compelled to go back.

Paganini – showman, womaniser, dazzling virtuoso – is one of the most fascinating characters in the history of classical music. His violin is now kept in Genoa, where it is played once every two years by the winner of an international competition. This year, an unsavoury art dealer is found dead in his hotel room the day after the concert. Clutched in his fist is a scrap of sheet music torn off a page that belongs to the competition winner. But how did the dead man get hold of it? And why?

A strikingly beautiful young woman is found dead in her Florence apartment. She lays on her bed, naked, a black rose between her legs. And the murders do not stop there: shortly afterwards, a woman is burned to death in a church, and a man is shot on the Ponte Vecchio. Chief Superintendent Michele Ferrara is all too familiar with the dark side of Florence.

Southern Spain. It is in Semana Santa - Holy Week - and the heat is building up in the city. This is always a difficult time for the police, with thousands of visitors adding to thousands of hooded penitents parading through the medieval streets. In the modern slums and the fine old houses of...

There is a killer loose on the streets of London, one that evades security cameras, is not held by locks, and savagely mutilates his victims. When the murderer switches from unknown prostitutes to Julie Longmuir, a beautiful actress at the height of her success, no woman feels safe. As the press begin to draw uncomfortable comparisons with Jack the Ripper, Jane Sullivan, heading up the police investigation, grudgingly has to agree.

One of the best-loved composers of all time, Dvorák rose from rural origins to become not only a great but an influential composer. The first composer to put his native Bohemia on the musical map of the world, he was invited to do the same for America. One result was the famous "New World" Symphony, which made him a household name across the globe. Writing music of irresistible color, lilt and peasant vitality, he was also a melodist-in-a-million. This portrait-in-sound follows a lovable and in many ways a very simple, man from hay cart to imperial palace, from tragic loss to heart-warming joy, to pigeon-raising and world celebrity.

As Jan Fabel, of the Hamburg murder squad, interprets this twisted imagery at a crime scene, it becomes clear that each new crime is a grisly reference to folk stories collected by the Brothers Grimm. The hunt is on for a serial killer who is exploring the darkest, most fundamental fears hidden in ancient fairy tales.

Nothing Like the Sun is a magnificent, bawdy telling of Shakespeare's love life. Starting with the young Will, the novel is a romp that follows Will's maturation into sex and writing. It is at the same time a serious look at the forces that midwife art, the effects of time and place, and the ordinariness that is found side by side with extraordinariness of genius.