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Random Tyranny
The year is 2027: Wars continue in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the Chinese threaten Tai-wan. Another problem is a worldwide outbreak of a new and virulent strain of syphilis.
One of the countries worst affected is the United Kingdom, where the standard of ethics in public life is at an all-time low and law and order have effectively ceased to exist. Politicians of all parties seem clueless.
A group of army officers plan a coup. Amongst them is SAS reservist Richard Tyrrell. An untypical soldier, stoical, introverted, and not far from a pacifist, he joins the conspiracy with grave misgivings. His conscience is further troubled when he begins an affair with a nineteen-year-old handicapped girl who proves more formidable than she seems.
He is targeted by political extremists, she by a serial rapist and murderer. How should a man and woman behave when the world is falling apart around them? …..(MORE)
Jerusalem By Moonlight
Judea, 30 AD. The Prefect, Pontius Pilate, is trying desperately to maintain control over the most volatile province in the Roman Empire. Terrorists, or freedom fighters, are committed to the overthrow of Roman power by force. The knifemen known as Secarii are abroad on moonlit nights, slaughtering those they perceive as traitors sympathetic to the occupying power. And the Passover approaches: the time when Jewish national and religious feeling is at its height. What is the role of the man from Nazareth called Joshua bar-Josef, who preaches love, forgiveness of sin, and the imminent overthrow of all temporal power? Is he a force for rebellion or moderation?…..(MORE)
Murder In A Cathedral City
Early in the morning of the last day of 1842, in the middle of the small midland city of Churchfield, there is found the body of a murdered stranger. Enquiries by Constable Buckingham lead to the household of Elijah Lightfoot, a well-respected local banker. It soon becomes clear that both Lightfoot and most of his family and friends have guilty secrets. Which of them had reason to fear the dead man?
Yet not every member of the Lightfoot household is corrupt. The exception is their young governess, Agnes Bell, despised by her employers, reduced to despair by the antics of their monstrous children, and grieving over the recent death of the man she loved. Trying to escape from her misery, she sets herself the task of uncovering the truth. And is she destined to find love again? But the young man she feels attracted to is one of the suspects ……..(MORE)
Murder And The Scottish Play
Agnes Bell, alter ego of Anne Brontë, is back in her native Yorkshire, employed at Miss Wilkinson’s School for Young Ladies at Thorsby, and surprised to receive from her impregnably respectable superior a request to take part in a local theatrical production, including a scene from Macbeth. Both excited and slightly unnerved by the prospect, Miss Bell makes the acquaintance of famous Shakespearean actor Gervase Keene, who has condescended to take part as a favour to his friend Mr Hatfield, chairman of the school governors.
Then tragedy strikes in the shape of a brutal murder. Shocked by the incompetence of the local policeman, Miss Bell decides to investigate. Suspects abound, including an American gangster and a mysterious man of colour. Her investigation leads her deep into the world of the ‘Fancy’: those involved in the sleazy sub-culture of mid-nineteenth century prize-fighting. And indeed, Miss Bell proves no mean fighter herself!…..(MORE)
Look About and Die
The First Richard Karelius Adventure
Vienna, 1805. The invading Grand Army under the Emperor Napoleon marches into Austria. But why have all British agents there ceased to report? The task of unravelling the truth is entrusted to Richard Karelius, a young Anglo-Prussian cavalryman. Within days of his arrival in Vienna, there is an attempt on his life. But the young Hapsburg officer who comes to his rescue may not be all that he seems.
Meanwhile a junior officer in the French Grand Army is murdered in cold blood for no obvious reason. His friend, Jacques Thiercelin, a captain in the 26th Infantry, is instructed to investigate.
As he and Karelius pursue enquiry from opposite sides of the war, it becomes apparent that their quarry is the same: a savage psychopath losing his grasp on reality. And as their trails converge upon the Theater an der Wien, where Beethoven’s opera, Leonore, (now known as Fidelio) is to have its premiere, both become involved with a most dangerous lady. Gradually the truth begins to emerge. But is it the whole truth?
Romance and adventure set against the glamorous world of early nineteenth-century Vienna, on the eve of that greatest of all Napoleonic victories, the Battle of Austerlitz….(MORE)
The Snows of Yesteryear
The Second Richard Karelius Adventure
Autumn, 1806. A year after the defeat of the Austrian and Russian armies at Austerlitz, it is the Kingdom of Prussia which stands in the way of Napoleonic ambition. Meanwhile Richard Karelius, gentleman spy, is requested by the Prussian Queen to investigate the disappearance of a young officer on the eve of the war.
The campaign begins badly for the Prussians, as their greatest general, Prince Louis Ferdinand, is killed in the first skirmish. Worse still, it becomes apparent that he died not by the fortune of war, but by betrayal. As Prussia collapses under the Napoleonic onslaught at Jena, investigation reveals the traitor to have been one of the Queen’s four ladies-in-waiting. Matters are complicated by the fact that one of them seems hopelessly in love with Karelius, whilst another is the mistress of his friend and colleague.
Meanwhile Jacques Thiercelin, spy-catcher for the French Grand Army, commences enquiry into events following the shooting of a bookseller for publishing anti-Napoleonic literature. Once more destiny brings him into contact with Karelius. These two men, both admirable, yet cast by fate on opposite sides, close in on the truth, and bring events to a gripping climax amidst the snows of East Prussia….(MORE)
Kidnap Of The King
The First Danzig and Hare Murder Mystery
Meet Jim Danzig, enquiry agent of Castletown, a man deeply disillusioned with modern life and technology, and remarkably incompetent at handling the latter, for which he has to rely upon his assistant, Judith Hare.
Danzig is employed on what seems a routine security job: looking after a successful racehorse for a few days before it goes to stud.
But the apparently straightforward task blows up in his face when he is knocked on the head and the horse stolen. Matters get worse, as couple of murders follow. Who is responsible for the kidnap and ransom demands, who calls himself by the code name ‘the Tetrarch’? And is he also responsible for the murders?
The first in a series of murder mysteries involving Danzig and Hare, played out against the background of an English country town, and the picturesque if sometimes sinister surroundings of local beauty spot Sandford Heath…..(MORE)
Murder For Murder
The Second Danzig and Hare Murder Mystery
Another adventure for Jim Danzig, the Castletown enquiry agent deeply suspicious of (and incompetent at handling) modern technology. He and his partner Judith Hare are called upon to investigate the death of 16-year-old Ryan Kelsall, former pupil at the local independent Grammar School, who met his death by a fall from the top of a deserted multi-storey car park. Two other people associated with him also died recently in obscure circumstances.
Enquiries by Danzig and Hare lead to their joining a local drama group run by former pupils and staff of Castletown Independent Grammar School, who are producing Measure for Measure. Many of the cast are found to have guilty secrets, from mere sexual peccadilloes to an elaborate fraud involving a hitherto unsuspected Shakespeare play.
Not without risk to themselves, an occasional punch-up, and some friction with the police, Danzig and Hare uncover the truth, and the murderer is revealed…..(MORE)