Showing results by author "Wendy M. Wilson" in All Categories

Sergeant Frank Hardy is an ex-soldier from Her Majesty's 57th Regiment who is scraping out a living in a small New Zealand settlement by driving a coach and playing rigged card games. But he's haunted by nightmares of things he's seen and done in wartime. When he's asked to find two missing Scandinavian settlers, he refuses - until he catches a glimpse of the cousin of one of the missing men.

In late 19th-century New Zealand, Sergeant Frank Hardy, ex-British soldier, battles for survival and for his own life as he carves out a new existence for himself and his family in the prehistoric but stunningly beautiful bush. An atmospheric and engaging series.This audiobook includes three captivating historical mysteries from New Zealand. The audiobook includes: Not the Faintest Trace, Recalled to Life, and A Dark and Painful Mystery.

After escorting a prisoner down from the front, Sergeant Frank Hardy of the 57th Regiment ("The Diehards") is ordered to return north to Woodall's Redoubt to bring a murder witness back to headquarters. A retired major and his wife, relatives of the new governor, have been shot to death on their farm near the redoubt.

After a reclusive Maori on the run from the police leaps onto the back of his spring buggy, retired coachman James Hardy discovers he has stumbled onto a murder scene. While tracking a gang of lumber thieves, police have found the body of a young housemaid beside a log. The local hermit is hunched over the corpse, clutching a knife with ties to the past, but did he do it? And why does he claim he took the knife for the major? When the inspector in charge of the case asks Hardy for assistance, in the mistaken belief that he is a retired Scotland Yard detective, he agrees.

When Sergeant Frank Hardy's father, James Hardy, arrives from England, he's accompanied by a woman he met on the voyage. In forced quarantine on Somes Island in Wellington Harbor, Frank is visited by a man claiming to be a detective from the Chinatown Squad in San Francisco, who warns Frank that his father is in deep trouble. The woman has enemies, and they are on the way to New Zealand to find her and kill her. If James Hardy gets in their way, he's a dead man.

Sergeant Frank Hardy and his wife Mette travel to the southernmost point of New Zealand to chase gold thieves and to retrieve a manuscript for Mette to translate. But they have chosen to travel on an ill-fated voyage. Twenty miles from Bluff, on the south coast of the South Island of New Zealand, the SS Tararua hits a reef and sinks, with massive loss of life. This real event was the second-worst maritime disaster in New Zealand's history, in a country heavily reliant on shipping at that time. But the couple has more than a shipwreck to deal with.

Trapped by floods on their horse farm, Frank and Mette Hardy offer shelter to two other families. But when one of their guests is found with a carving knife from their own kitchen in his neck, they must keep themselves alive until help comes. Who among the small group of people trapped on the farm by floods is the killer? It seems that everyone has a reason to kill the man who died, and when Frank is sickened by poison, he makes a decision that almost kills his pregnant wife.

The temperance movement has taken hold in New Zealand, and the country is locked in the depths of a depression as a new land war threatens. When Sergeant Hardy and his new wife find themselves in financial straits, Hardy takes on Dead Shot, a thoroughbred stallion from a town near the front. But the horse has been targeted by a brutal Australian gang trying to take over the racing world. Murder soon follows. When Hardy's wife disappears, apparently kidnapped by the gang, Hardy must track down the mysterious leader of the gang and take him out of commission.

In the gold mining town of Greymouth, where drunks fell asleep smoking and burned down their houses, the town was constantly inundated with floods, and 57 hotels had sprung up in a year to accommodate the hordes of miners and gold thieves, Inspector William Henry James was tasked with keeping the town safe with a small force of troopers. In 1888, forced into retirement by government cuts, James walks home beside the Whanganui River remembering his association with a series of murders by the notorious Burgess gang: back in 1866 he had forced the gang to leave Greymouth.

In 19th century New Zealand, the Land Wars have finished, but life is hard. Cashiered from the British Army after years fighting in India and Crimea, Sergeant Frank Hardy awakes in an underground prison with no idea where he is or how he got there. As he searches his memory for clues, his partner and his fiancee search for him. The answer is buried in the past and he will have to to dig it up before he can be free.

Sergeant Frank Hardy and his new wife Mette attempt to solve two real mysteries from 19th century New Zealand: the whereabouts of Peter Kane who left his home to look for work and did not return and the brutal murder of an accommodation house owner who was splitting palings in the bush. Were they connected? If so, how?

After Sergeant Frank Hardy watches the invasion of a peaceful Māori village by the Armed Constabulary, with crops destroyed and innocent men imprisoned, he lays down his rifle and swears never to shoot in anger again. Then he learns that a contract killer has come from America to avenge the death of a crooked detective from San Francisco. The killer is targeting the Hardy family. Can Frank save his wife and children without relying on his weapons?

New Zealand, 1882. When Constable Foster catches a young, blond boy who runs with a gang of Maori boys, he discovers he speaks only Maori, even though he is clearly Scandinavian. Inspector Scully, busy with a body that has recently been discovered in the marshes of the lagoon north of Napier, asks James Hardy to investigate. The trail leads back to the Seventy Mile Bush, where a broken family shows no interest in a missing child. But will it also lead back to the body in the swamp?

Join Sergeant Frank Hardy and Mette Hardy in three more gripping mysteries set in late-19th-century New Zealand: Dead Shot, Lying Under Water, and Come to Grief.

A body plunging off a cliff, a new craze for pedestrianism or race-walking with gambling, a constable willing to make a gruelling 90 miles through the tree-covered ranges without a break, and a testing undercover assignment for Mr. Hardy.