Showing results by narrator "Judy Ford" in All Categories

When newly-qualified nurse Susan Parry is found dead in her bed in the nurses' home, her colleagues call the police to investigate and Detective Constable Peter Johns finds himself involved in a murder enquiry for the first time in his career. It is not just his career, however, which is dramatically affected by the events that follow.

Peter Johns is just a green young police constable walking his beat in a suburb of Oxford, but when a child goes missing, he becomes involved in a criminal investigation that radically changes the course of his life.

Three young mothers take their infants to an Oxford park, but only two of the babies return home. When six-week-old Abigail goes missing from her pram, the race is on to find her before she comes to harm. Who would want to steal a baby girl? And why? Are other children in danger? Is Abigail's distraught mother as innocent as she appears? DCI Jonah Porter has a tough assignment to find little Abigail and reassure Oxford mothers that their families are safe.

The police are reluctant to believe young Lucy Paige when she tells them that she saw two men chasing a woman across a field. They suspect her of inventing a mysterious stranger, who hit her, and then ran away, in order to protect her friend Martin, from accusations of child abuse and assault. But they have to reassess her story, when a woman's body is found a few days later, and Lucy recognizes it as her attacker. Who is the corpse in the graveyard? Why was she running away? And who were the men that Lucy saw chasing her?

A second marriage after the first ended in tragedy is bound to have its challenges. In the case of DI Peter Johns, his new wife, "Our Bernie", is very different from Angie, the love of his life. This short story plots the path of their friendship from first encounters to final commitment.

You would think that the easiest crimes to solve would be the ones where you have several eyewitnesses who saw what happened and are willing to tell the police about it. However, as DI Peter Johns discovers in this short story, witnesses don't always always remember what they saw - and sometimes they even remember things that they did not see!

Detective Sergeant Peter Johns is resentful of the young PC who catches the attention of his friend and boss, DI Richard Paige. Richard encourages his new protégé to apply for promotion and Peter fears that he is being left behind. They go their separate ways, but then fate throws them together again. Peter now has the upper hand. How will he treat his erstwhile rival?

Newly promoted Detective Inspector Andy Lepage is in charge of a murder investigation for the first time. It looks like a routine street crime, but how did it come about on the doorstep of one of Oxford’s ancient colleges? Who is the victim, and why was he out on the streets without a coat on a cold November night? Then an unexpected twist makes it a more personal affair, and Andy is forced to face difficult questions about his own identity.

The police are called when a young man is found dead in the garden of his family home. It looks like an all-too-familiar story of depression and despair, but when DCI Anna Davenport starts asking questions, a few things don’t quite add up. Short-staffed and with an important court case looming, she calls on her trusted assistant DI Andy Lepage to help to untangle the mystery.