Showing results by narrator "Robert Glenister" in All Categories

It's 1996. Detective Sergeant Tom Thorne is a haunted man. Haunted by the moment he ignored his instinct about a suspect, by the horrific crime that followed and by the memories that come day and night, in sunshine and shadow. So when seven-year-old Kieron Coyne goes missing while playing in the woods with his best friend, Thorne vows he will not make the same mistake again. Cannot. The solitary witness. The strange neighbour. The friendly teacher. All are in Thorne's sights. This case will be the making of him...or the breaking.

It's rare for a young woman to die from a stroke, and when three such deaths occur in short order it starts to look like an epidemic. Then a sharp pathologist notices traces of benzodiazepine in one of the victim's blood samples and just traceable damage to the ligaments in her neck, and their cause of death is changed from 'natural' to 'murder'.

Luke Mullen, sixteen year old son of a former high-ranking police officer has disappeared, presumed kidnapped. While no-one quite dares to voice the fear that he could also be presumed dead, Detective Inspector Tom Thorne is brought in to beef up the squad dedicated to locating the missing boy.

With his face swaddled in bandages, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses and his hands covered even indoors, Griffin—the new guest at The Coach and Horses—is at first assumed to be a shy accident-victim. But the true reason for his disguise is far more chilling: he has developed a process that has made him invisible and is locked in a struggle to discover the antidote. Forced from the village and driven to murder, he seeks the aid of his old friend Kemp. The horror of his fate has affected his mind, however—and when Kemp refuses to help, Griffin resolves to wreak his revenge.

An acclaimed novelist, short story writer and critic, Leslie Poles Hartley is best known for his 1953 novel The Go-Between, which won the W. H. Heinemann Award and was adapted as a BAFTA-winning film starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates. Included here is a radio dramatisation of that classic tale, alongside adaptations of three further novels and five short stories.

"Delivering the death message". That's what coppers call it when they have to tell someone that a loved one has been killed. Now DI Tom Thorne is receiving messages of his own: photos of murder victims sent to his mobile phone.

Someone, a woman or somebody pretending to be a woman, is writing to convicted rapists in prison, befriending them and then brutally killing them when they are released. DI Tom Thorne must discover the link between these killings and a murder/suicide that took place twenty-five years before; a tragedy to which the only witnesses were two small children, now adults and nowhere to be found. How can you escape a past that will do a lot more than just catch up with you?

A gripping BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation based on the second novel in C. J. Sansom's best-selling Tudor crime series. Summer, 1540. It has been three years since the terrible events at Scarnsea monastery, and lawyer-detective Matthew Shardlake is living a quiet life in London - until a summons from Cromwell sees him embarking on another dangerous secret assignment.

In a vicious, calculated murder, a victim is selected at Euston Station, followed home, and strangled in front of her child. When a second body is discovered, killed in the same way at King's Cross station, DI Tom Thorne comes to a horrifying conclusion: this is not one killer, but two.

Kahlil Gibran was Lebanese by birth but spent a major part of his life in America in the early part of the 20th century. He wrote many collections of stories with a wise or whimsical tone, but none more popular than The Prophet, his first collection, or The Wanderer, his final anthology.

Written by an anonymous storyteller in the 13th Century, and describing events between 960 and 1020, Njáls saga is one of the great works of medieval literature. The longest and most celebrated of the Icelandic sagas, it deals with family honour, vengeance and a vicious blood feud spanning almost 50 years. Based on the classic translation by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson, this gripping dramatisation centres around two friends.

Three women go missing without trace. A week is enough for the psychopath known in the press as the 'the Soul-Breaker' to destroy them. By the seventh day the women are psychologically dead, like bodies without a soul. Shortly before Christmas, the Soul-Breaker strikes again, this time in an exclusive psychiatric clinic. The clinic has been cut off by a snowstorm, and the Soul-Breaker is in their midst. Trapped in the clinic, staff and patients band together to protect each other, but in a night of unimaginable terror, the Soul-Breaker shows them that no one is safe.

Glenda Jackson stars in this compelling drama series inspired by Émile Zola's Rougon-Macquart series, highlighting different aspects of contemporary Britain. In 2015, double Oscar winner Glenda Jackson made a triumphant return to acting in Radio 4's Blood, Sex and Money, a radical reimagining of Émile Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle. Now, she reprises her role as matriarch/narrator in this eclectic mix of dramas inspired by Zola's novels, but set in modern Britain.

As a young man, Leon Nader suffered from insomnia. As a nightwalker, he even turned to violence during his nocturnal excursions and had psychiatric treatment for his condition. Eventually he was convinced he had been cured - but one day, years later, Leon's wife disappears from their flat under mysterious circumstances. Could it be that his illness has broken out again? In order to find out how he behaves in his sleep, Leon fits a movement-activated camera to his forehead.

First published in monthly parts between October 1846 and April 1848. Mike Walker's adaptation of Charles Dickens's classic tale of family relationships tells the story of Paul Dombey, head of the House of Dombey, who lacks a son and cannot reconcile himself to his only daughter.

When Donna Langford receives a very recent photo of her ex-husband in the post, she gets the shock of her life - because she’s just spent 10 years in prison for organising his murder. When her daughter goes missing, Donna believes there can only be one man responsible and hires Anna Carpenter, a determined young private investigator, to find him.

In the late seventies an extraordinary document came to light which for fifty years had been held on deposit by the bankers of the deceased John Herbert Watson MD - better known to devotees of Conan Doyle as Dr Watson. A continuous narrative in the doctor’s own hand, the story opens in the East End of London in 1888. Three women have been savagely murdered by Jack the Ripper.

Tom Thorne's career is on the skids. Depressed by the recent loss of his father, berated for overstepping the mark on his last case, he's been 'encouraged' to take leave. It's a fairly dire situation. But not as dire as the situation for London's homeless. Three vagrants have been found murdered in the last month. Were they just random jetsam, or were they targeted for a reason?

The year is 1967. Thirteen-year-old Maisie is at her decaying family home, once a medieval abbey. Lucas, an artist and friend, is painting a portrait of Maisie and her sisters. Maisie embarks on a portrait of her own: telling the story of herself, her sisters and their lovers, and of her friend, Daniel Nunn. Twenty-three years later, Lucas's now-famous portrait features in a retrospective of his work. Daniel, obsessed by the sisters and determined to understand what happened that summer at the abbey, pursues answers.

Anthony Trollope was one of Victorian England’s most popular and prolific authors. He worked for the Post Office while establishing himself as a writer, and is credited with introducing the pillar box to Britain. Best known for his ‘Barsetshire’ and ‘Palliser’ novels, he wrote over 50 works in total, including short stories, travel books, biographies and a posthumously published autobiography. Collected here are a selection of superb adaptations of his much-loved novels, as well as a fascinating documentary and an original radio play by Patricia Cumper.