Showing results by author "Ann Cleeves" in All Categories

Fifteen year old Marilyn turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay’s doorstep so he takes the young girl home to the isolated coastal community known as the Headland. And in the Howes’ dark and cluttered kitchen they find Kathleen safe and apparently well, though acting rather mysteriously. Six months later, Ramsay has more or less forgotten the strange incident, busy as he is on the trail of a local child abductor. Until he receives news that Mrs Howe has disappeared once more.

Isolated farmer Ernie Bowles was found lying on his kitchen floor, gruesomely strangled. News of the murder came to Inspector Stephen Ramsay early on Monday morning and he fears this case will not be simple. In his experience, most murders are straightforward: an explosion of family pressure, the loss of control in a fight. But Bowles seems to have kept himself to himself and had lived alone since his mother’s death. A seemingly unconnected women is then found strangled too, surely two such killings in the same locality are more than just chilling coincidence?

Emma Bennett sieht sich mit dem schlimmsten Trauma ihrer Kindheit konfrontiert: Zehn Jahre zuvor entdeckte sie an einem frostigen Wintertag in einem Graben die Leiche ihrer besten Freundin. Eine Frau wurde verhaftet, doch nun taucht ein Zeuge auf, der ihr umstrittenes Alibi nach all den Jahren bestätigt. Kommissarin Vera Stanhope würde den Mordfall gerne lösen, doch das gestaltet sich unerwartet schwierig: In dem Dörfchen Elvet findet sich kaum ein Einwohner, der kein Motiv gehabt hätte, die hübsche, verzogene und sehr gerissene Abigail zu töten.

The youth theatre cast are in their places but Gus Lynch’s female lead is missing, that is, until she’s found in the boot of his car. Detective Inspector Stephen Ramsay and Sergeant Gordon Hunter are assigned to head the murder enquiry, meanwhile violence is escalating on the Starling Farm Estate as police battle to contain the latest outbreak of joyriding. Is the death of Gabriella connected to the events at Starling Farm? When another death occurs, investigations suggest a possible link, and Ramsay realizes what could have provoked someone to kill...and kill again.

For Dorothea Cassidy Thursdays were special. But one Thursday in June was to be more special than any other. It was the day that Dorothea Cassidy was strangled... As the small town of Otterbridge prepares for its summer carnival, Inspector Stephen Ramsay begins a painstaking reconstruction of Dorothea’s last hours. He soon discovers that she had taken on a number of deserving cases – a sick and lonely old woman, a disturbed adolescent, a compulsive gambler, a single mother with a violent boyfriend and a child in care – and even her close family have their secrets to hide.