Beware the Past

When DI Rowan Jackman and DS Evans are told that the IT boss has disappeared, they soon suspect foul play. Orla Cracken, known as Orac, is no ordinary techie; she was once a field agent traveling abroad undercover, working for the government. Meanwhile DC Robbie Melton discovers that two people, both urban explorers, have mysteriously disappeared whilst out exploring abandoned buildings. One went missing at a disused airfield, but was it a military base, or was it civilian?

Detective Joseph Easter's daughter discovers a cottage hidden in some trees on a large fenland farm. Someone has been living there. The farm owner's wife has been receiving sinister pagan artifacts, including a witch's knife. Are they some sort of warning or message? Joseph and his daughter search the cottage and find an old satchel. Inside are photos of a beautiful girl, Jennifer Cowley. She went missing 15 years ago. She'd been stalked by a young man, who was convicted of her murder, even though her body was never found.

Revellers are flocking into Greenborough for the yearly Dark Greenborough Festival, a three-day event celebrating local folklore, superstition, and the darker side of life. What the public doesn't know is that there has been a warning sent to the police, saying that Greenborough will be a very dangerous place this year. The anonymous letter ends with the Latin phrase, Mors certa, hora incerta: Death is certain, the hour uncertain.  

DI Nikki Galena gets a series of anonymous calls. She is told the place, time, and who will die. But the messages are in a secret language used only by villains. Nikki and her team must decode the riddles and work out where the threats are coming from.

DI Nikki Galena's close friend Helen Brook is involved in a serious accident where she is trapped in a collapsed cellar. After her hard-won recovery, Helen is still getting flashbacks to a man she says was down there with her and who confessed to a murder. But no trace of this man can be found. Then Helen tells Nikki that someone is watching her. But is all this in her friend's imagination and part of her post-traumatic stress?

A skeleton is found in a shallow grave in the churchyard. But this was not an official burial. The victim was murdered decades ago. At the same time, Detective Nikki Galena and her team are investigating the brutal slaying of local businesswoman Madeline Prospero. She was a member of an exclusive and secretive drinking club called The Briar Patch. But they've got no suspects and no one is telling them the truth. Meanwhile, the buried skeleton leads them on a trail to the village of Quintin Eaudyke. This is a troubled place. In the late 70s and 80s a reign of terror was unleashed.

A young woman's body is found in a remote barn on the Fens. Before she was killed, one of her fingers had been cut off. Who is inflicting this violence and why? The young woman in the barn had been kept captive for some time. And the case shows strong similarities to an unsolved murder in Derbyshire. When another woman is found alive with similar injuries, the case grows even more complicated.

Stella North, a rising star in the police, has her life torn apart by a gunman's bullets. She has often faced danger, but these injuries mean she must give up the job she loves. Her grandmother Beth is her rock. And Beth is no ordinary woman. At 70, she runs marathons and has a past that Stella knows very little about. Beth calls in her friend, Michael, to help with Stella's recovery. But this man means a lot more to Beth than she reveals. And Stella's ex-husband, Edward, and old police partner, Robbie, want to help, but Stella puts up emotional barriers.

Jackman’s sister-in-law Sarah disappears to London and throws herself into the river. What drove her to this? She was a woman with a seemingly happy home life and two beloved sons. DI Jackman and DI Evans dig into Sarah’s life. And Jackman realises he knew almost nothing about his sister-in-law’s past. Then, they discover a woman in a neighbouring village died in similar circumstances. What is the connection to a convicted murderer whose family are convinced he is innocent? Who is really pulling the strings?

Crimebusting duo DI Jackman and DS Evans are back, solving another crime that will make your skin crawl. Police detective Carter McLean is the only survivor of a plane crash that kills his four best friends. He returns to work, but he is left full of guilt and terrible flashbacks. So for each of his four friends he decides to complete something that they left unfinished....

Detective Sergeant Chris Waters got the call at 05.29 that July morning. This is it, said DCI Reeve, you'll be first there, it's all yours, you're the crime scene manager. Suddenly, after months of waiting and wondering, Waters finds himself in at the deep end, and alone at the scene of a puzzling murder. As the investigation proceeds, the detectives at Kings Lake Central find themselves visiting familiar places and talking to some familiar faces, while old enmities reappear in the incident room. Before this is over, Chris Waters will need to make a career-changing decision.

Some lines should never be crossed. Police corruption, an investigation that ends in tragedy and the mystery of a little girl’s silence – three unconnected events that will prove to be linked by one small town. While detective Cormac Reilly faces enemies at work and trouble in his personal life, garda Peter Fisher is relocated out of Galway with the threat of prosecution hanging over his head. But even that is not as terrible as having to work for his overbearing father, the local copper for the pretty seaside town of Roundstone. 

The story opens with the apparently accidental drowning of a sixth form student in the Norfolk countryside. As a matter of routine, or so it seems, the case passes across the desk of Detective Sergeant Smith, recently returned to work after an internal investigation into another case that has led to tensions between officers at Kings Lake police headquarters. As an ex-DCI, Smith could have retired by now, and it is clear that some of his superiors wish that he would do so.

The new Kings Lake Central murder squad is about to spend its first morning on team-building exercises and reviewing cold cases when the call comes in that the body of one of the city's rough sleepers has been found in a shop doorway. It happens, someone says, he isn't the first to die on the streets and he won't be the last, but the story the new team begins to uncover is far from routine.  

"Jack's in charge," said his mother, as she disappeared up the road to get help. "I won't be long." So 11-year-old Jack and his two sisters wait on the hard shoulder in their stifling, broken-down car, bickering and whining and playing I-Spy until she comes back. But their mother doesn't come back. She never comes back. And after that long hot summer day, nothing will ever be the same again. Three years later, Jack's 15 and still in charge.