Showing results by author "Sally Spencer" in All Categories

July 1900: Sam Blackstone has gone to New York to pick up a prisoner, but he soon finds himself drafted in to investigate the murder of Inspector O’Brien who is famed for rooting out police corruption. Working with an enthusiastic young detective who worshipped O’Brien, Blackstone scours the city in search of the killer. And the more he searches, the more he becomes convinced that the police department doesn’t really want the murder to be solved.

When Mary Corbet walks into private investigator Jennie Redhead's rundown Oxford office one pleasant spring day in 1974, she is a desperate woman. Although she's convinced her daughter has been murdered, she can get neither the police nor her husband to agree with her. Jennie is not convinced either, but more out of compassion than conviction agrees to take the case. The only clue she has to go on is a fragment of an obscure 17th-century poem she finds in Linda's bedroom. 

Blackstone and the Rendezvous with Death is an expertly plotted Victorian mystery that will keep listeners guessing to the last minute. The body of a young man fished out of the Thames is of little interest to Londoners caught up in the excitement of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Yet to Inspector Sam Blackstone, the case is as puzzling as any he has ever come across. Why should a corpse dressed in the rags of a commoner have the face of a gentleman? And if this man does belong to noble stock, why has no one come forward to claim the body?

The entire audience at the George Theatre saw Charlotte Devaraux stab William Kirkpatrick with a fake dagger, but they gasped even more when they realized he was dead. Assisted by Sergeant Patterson and Dr. Ellie Carr, Blackstone follows the trail of the killer.

The new Charlie Woodend mystery - Angela Jackson has been missing for over 24 hours and, in the opinion of Dr. Stevenson, the psychiatrist who Woodend turns to for advice, her kidnapper will first torture and then kill her. With damaging strains operating within his own team, the more the investigation proceeds the less hope Woodend can see. And he knows deep within himself that he will fail in bringing Angela back alive....

A DCI Charlie Woodend Mystery - A charred body is discovered in an abandoned cotton mill, and the crime scene presents DCI Woodend and his team with many questions, but very few answers. As Woodend attempts to solve a murder with no clues, he must also battle against a police authority blocking him at every turn. And worse is to follow, because Elizabeth Driver, Inspector Bob Rutters lover, has almost finished the book which could destroy everything he has ever worked for.

When Captain Robert Kineally went missing from Haverton American Army base in Devon in 1944, it was generally assumed he had lost his nerve and deserted. But now, 20 years after the war, a body found on the near-derelict base seems to tell an entirely different story.

DS Charlie Woodend has a murder to solve. Trouble is, nobody seems to want him to solve it. Not Eddie, a Liverpudlian thug sent to threaten him; not DCI Bentley; not Deputy Commissioner Naylor, whose word is law in Scotland Yard; not even the dead girl's mother herself. But Woodend cares. He will find the murderer, he promises himself, even if that means putting his career and perhaps even his own life on the line.

The discovery of Bradley Pines body off a busy road signals the end of his bid to win a local election. But why would the killer risk dumping the body so publicly? With the election looming, and Charlie Woodends old enemy Marlowe replacing Pine as candidate, Woodend is required to produce a result.

It is a worried letter for Tom Yardley, an old army comrade who once saved his life, that takes Inspector Sam Blackstone to the salt mining village of Marston. But by the time he arrives there, Yardley is already dead blown to pieces in what was apparently a freak accident. Acting strictly unofficially, Blackstone begins to investigate Yardley's convenient death. It does not take him long to realise that there is true evil lurking in and under the village.

August, 1900. William Holt, a reclusive millionaire businessman, has been kidnapped from his grand Coney Island home after the brutal murder of his two bodyguards. Soon, a huge ransom is demanded, and the victim’s two sons are given just days to find the money. Inspector Sam Blackstone, now seconded to the New York Police Department, and his partner, Alex Meade, are charged with solving the case, but they’ll need to keep their wits about them if they are to solve it in time...

Would a man really use his dying breath to play Russian roulette with his soul? If what Fred Howerd revealed under the seal of confession is true, then a grave miscarriage of justice has been allowed to lie festering for over 20 years - and that, for the Whitebridge police, is political dynamite. DCI Monika Paniatowski argues with the Chief Constable that it will be almost impossible to solve a case which is almost history. But the real reason for her reluctance to take it on is more to do with her own past....

The last thing Inspector Sam Blackstone wants to do is investigate the murder of a young lieutenant on the Western Front, but he owes a debt to General Fortesque - the soldier’s grandfather. Once he arrives at the front line, it does not take him long to realise that he is completely out of his depth. The officers resent his presence, and the enlisted men refuse - or do not dare - to talk to him. As thousands are slaughtered around him, Blackstone struggles to solve one of the most difficult cases of his career.

December 1916. Inspector Sam Blackstone is suspicious when he is called to the office of Superintendent Brigham - the new head of Special Branch. A German traitor wants £25,000 in exchange for intelligence on U-boat locations, and 'Max' has specifically asked for Blackstone to be the one to deliver the money - alone. Blackstone and his sergeant, Archie Patterson, are certain there's more to it, but Blackstone can't turn down the job.

It will be no easy task to fill the shoes of a local legend like DCI Charlie Woodend, the newly-promoted Monika Paniatowski tells herself – particularly when he’s still a very real presence in Whitebridge – but given a little time, she thinks she can grow into them. Yet time is the one thing she does not have. On her first day in the new job, a severed female hand is discovered on the riverbank. And not only that, but the killer has already alerted the press.

A man is found hanging from a bridge. A second is found hanged from a crane. DCI Charlie Woodend soon discovers that the men did military service together in Cyprus. When a third ex-soldier disappears, DS Monika Paniatowski is sent to Cyprus, where she uncovers a long-buried tale. Back in Whitebridge, Woodend is determined to solve the case before tragedy strikes again...

When a young girl, Jill Harris, is murdered, the case soon becomes personal for Monika Paniatowski. She saw the victim looking distressed only hours before she was killed, and Jill was the same age as her own daughter, Louisa. Driven by guilt and pity, Monika throws herself into the investigation, but both the chief constable, who is away, and Colin Beresford - her right hand man - think she is too emotionally involved to handle it. What none of them know is that the killer is planning to strike again...

DCI Monkia Paniatowski has seen dozens of murder victims in her time, but nothing could have prepared her for the corpse in the woods. It is not so much that the man’s throat has been slashed that shocks her, nor even the way he is naked – it is the way he has been carefully posed. Paniatowski has been assigned a new sergeant, who she does not entirely trust. Worse yet, an old enemy from the secret service announces he will be monitoring her every move.

The colliery village of Bellingsworth is already divided over an impending strike, so the last thing it needs is a murder - but that's exactly what it gets, when a retired miner called Len Hopkins is found battered to death in his outside lavatory. Detective Chief Inspector Monika Paniatowski, called in to track down the killer with all possible speed, finds herself working in an atmosphere as thick with suspicion and distrust as the mine is with coal dust.

DCI Monika Paniatowski has a bitter personla history with Chief Superintendent Kershaw, but that is not the only reason she doesn’t want the investigation into the sudden – and probably violent – disappearance of his wife, Elaine, landing on her desk. Why should all the resources be channelled into this one case?Why doesn’t somebody take an interest in the disappearance of a young prostitue called Grace Meade?