Showing results by narrator "Colin Mace" in All Categories

On a summer evening in 2002, ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman left the house to go to buy some sweets, but they never came home. For weeks after they were declared missing, an image of these smiling young girls dressed in their matching Manchester United kit, taken just a couple of hours before they went missing, was plastered across the British press as a nationwide search began to take place. When the bodies were discovered in a ditch, the final ray of hope for their safe return was extinguished as it became clear that both girls had been murdered.

It's Friday the thirteenth and Detective Inspector Andy Horton’s luck is about to run out. His Harley-Davidson is vandalized, a strange symbol etched into the paintwork. A convicted murderer, Luke Felton, a name he recognizes, has gone missing. A decomposing corpse washes up in Portsmouth Harbour. A mysterious phone call leads him to another in a windswept garden in Portchester. To make matters worse, Horton's nit-picking boss, DCI Lorraine Bliss, has returned early from her secondment to HQ. Horton's got a lot on his plate. Can he connect the dots before anyone else dies?

Operation Anglo, 31 August 1942. Beneath the waves, HMS Traveller closes in on the coast of Rhodes in the Eastern Mediterranean. Aboard, eight SBS commandos check their weapons and munitions as they prepare to infiltrate and sabotage two Axis bomber fields. That part of their mission will be a success... but only two of the eight commandos will make it back to the submarine. Ex-Black Watch Sgt Jim Hunter will be one of the lucky ones, but what he will face next will make Operation Anglo look like a cakewalk.

Former cinema camera director Julius Sewell journeys across Europe with his family to his sister's wedding in Rome. But this will be an unusual road trip. For one thing, Julius has been in an institution and has only just been released to travel. And then there is his family. This is Easter 1934 and Julius' stepfather and mother are keen members of Oswald Mosley's new party, the British Union of Fascists. One of Julius' half-sisters is in studying in Munich, where she dreams of meeting meet her idol, Adolf Hitler.

The Earl of Essenburg, Steven Hargraves, is dead. Assassinated by an unknown assailant, his death plunges the earldom into a bloody civil war. Rival siblings of the murdered lord have vied for control of the region for three long years. Frederick, the rightful heir to his father’s title, lies ensconced in Bode Castle, held under siege by his younger sister Catherine’s army.

Only a handful of people know the truth of why Kate Hood left the military in disgrace; now a contract pilot for a private jet company, she's looking for a second chance... And to keep her secrets she must take a last-minute assignment to fly a covert cargo to a non-extradition country. The cargo is a prisoner who may be the key to a violent international conspiracy – but he swears he is an innocent man, wrongly accused of crimes he played no part in.

A cold, grey January morning. A woman with a gun in her hand. A corpse on an abandoned golf course. Detective Inspector Andy Horton is taking a break on the Isle of Wight. But even when he’s on holiday trouble follows him... On an abandoned golf course, Horton finds a distraught, young woman with a gun in her hand, crouching over one of the derelict bunkers. Then the smell hits him. A dead man lies there. Dressed in walking gear, his body decomposing. The woman with the gun says she’s his sister. The local police think she killed her brother, but Horton’s not so sure.

Detective Inspector Andy Horton has a lot on his plate. A celebrity receives threatening phone calls. A nursing home resident is assaulted. A man is found in a pit with several of his fingers severed. Perry Jackson and his team are filming a new TV series about wrecks in the Solent and staying at the large and luxurious Royal Hotel on Portsmouth’s seafront. Shortly after they’ve checked in, Jackson receives a series of threatening phone calls telling him to watch his back and you’ve been warned. Horton thinks it’s a publicity stunt to promote the new TV show.

The stakes are high, and time is running out... When a charred body is discovered on a burning boat at Horsea Marina, Detective Inspector Andy Horton is called to investigate. The victim is identified as Tom Brundall, a wealthy financier from Guernsey, who was terminally ill. Puzzled, Horton wonders why a dying man would return to his hometown of Portsmouth and who would want to kill him. As Horton digs deeper, another body surfaces, forcing him to grapple with not just the victims' pasts but also the unresolved mystery of his own mother's disappearance three decades earlier.

Kerrang! has an unparalleled reputation as one of the world's best-loved rock-focused publications. It continues to be at the forefront of alternative music, flying the flag for metal, hardcore, punk and beyond, introducing millions to their new favourite bands. Anyone who's anyone in the metal scene has featured Kerrang!'s hallowed pages and this unique book chronicles these appearances. If it happened in metal, Kerrang! covered it, as confirmed in this year-by-year survey of alternative music.

The peace of a Midlands village is upset when local businessman Harry Bowers doesn’t return from choir practice. More concerned than the man’s own wife, it would seem, investigating officer Detective Sergeant Sunita Roy becomes convinced he has been done away with. But there is no trace of the man, just a litany of evidence of an ailing marriage and a nose-diving business venture. In charge of her first serious case, DS Roy will struggle to win the respect of her colleagues—in particular her Brummie boss, DCI Gavin Roscoe. 

The reverberations from Fred West's crimes continue to this day. The story never dies. West was perhaps one of Britain's most evil, feared serial killers. His horrifying compulsion to kidnap, rape and torture his victims before murdering them showed a savagery and cruelty that can barely be believed. His 'House of Horrors' at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, became a burial ground for the women who fell into his hands. This new publication of Geoffrey Wansell's iconic, best-selling true-crime masterpiece comes 30 years after West was arrested, in 1992.

The game of cat and mouse begins... Following an eight month suspension for gross misconduct, Detective Inspector Andy Horton returns to his job after the charges are dropped, but the stain on his career and personal life persists. When Horton stumbles across a naked corpse, brutally bludgeoned, he sets out to find the killer. And while his colleagues want him off the case, fate has other plans.

Stranded by a storm in the airside zone of a remote municipal airport, beleaguered businessman Kevin Tyler stumbles upon a bag of money that could be the solution to all his woes. There's just one problem – the money is part of a conspiracy of blackmail and murder, and those involved are willing to do anything to keep it.

On 14 June 2017, a 24-storey block of flats went up in flames. The fire climbed up cladding as flammable as solid petrol. Fire doors failed to self-close. No alarm rang out to warn sleeping residents. As smoke seeped into their homes, all were told to ‘stay put'. Many did–and they died. It was a disaster decades in the making. Peter Apps exposes how a steady stream of deregulation, corporate greed and institutional indifference caused this tragedy. It is the story of a grieving community forsaken by our government, a community still waiting for change.

When James Montague first began covering football in the Middle East two decades ago, people asked him what future there could possibly be for the beautiful game in one of the most volatile regions in the world. In the years that followed, it would become one of the biggest stories in global sport, from the from revolutionary ultras of the Arab Spring and the takeover of some of the world's biggest clubs by the Emirati super rich, to Qatar's controversial journey towards hosting the 2022 World Cup finals.

Ian Softley is a killer. He's the man governments call when they want somebody dead. His is a life of intimidation and brutality, of beatings and executions—including, ultimately, his own. Jack Softley's life is a world away from his brother's. A high school English teacher, devoted father, and all-round nice guy, Jack tries to stay as far from trouble as possible. But when he receives word that Ian has been murdered, he finds himself dragged into a storm of violence and danger. Because the same people who killed his brother want him dead too.

Egypt, 25 BC. Titus Cervianus marches into the unknown as he and the Twenty Second Legion contend with the armies of the Bellatrix: the Warrior Queen of Kush. The Kushites and the Egyptians are united against the Roman presence in their lands—but there are complex political and military forces at work. Deep in the deserts, Cervianus and his comrades must brace themselves for a furious onslaught as they take on the might of the Bellatrix.

Dark waters hide deadly secrets. When the headmistress of a Portsmouth school is found brutally murdered on an old structure in the middle of Langstone Harbour, Detective Andy Horton of Portsmouth CID is assigned to the case. The victim, discovered with a note with the words ‘Have you forgotten ME?’, was a steely, determined woman who made enemies on her path to success. But did any of them hate her enough to want her dead?With the clock ticking and Superintendent Uckfield pressing for results, Horton is forced to make a decision that will put his life on the line.