Showing results by narrator "Simon Mattacks" in All Categories

Eighty-one-year-old Eddie Wakefield is found brutally murdered at the nursing home where he lives. Crudely carved into his flesh—while he was still alive—is the number fifteen. Detective Jack MacIntosh and his team are determined to track down the ruthless killer of this frail elderly man. But the investigation is leading nowhere. Then the second body is discovered. The victim was stabbed to death in their own home. Again, the number fifteen is etched into the dead man's flesh.

Olivia and Julian are enjoying lazy days in their Spanish villa, a well-deserved break from their busy lives. Especially for Julian, who after a lifetime as a carer was thrust into the public eye following the tragic murder of his first wife. The languid heat and peace of the villa is broken only by clifftop walks, sun-drenched lunches and cooling swims. Until a chance encounter with Gabriel—an attractive man, many years their junior—changes everything. Soon their idyllic break turns into a dangerous, high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse. Will any of them get out alive?

It looks like a regular advent calendar. Until DC Becky Greene starts opening doors...and discovers a crime scene behind almost every one. The police hope it's a prank. Because if it isn't, a murderer has just surfaced - someone who's been killing for 20 years. But why now? And why has he sent it to this police station? As the country relaxes into festive cheer, Greene and DS Eddie Carmine must race against time to catch the killer. Because there are four doors left, and four murders will fill them....

The Realm of Dreich is a getaway for the rich and powerful, a medieval-inspired town in the middle of a vast frozen wilderness. Now it’s the site of a wedding, intended to join two feuding families who have spent centuries in an uneasy truce with each other. When Tommy Carpenter asks his best friend, Nate Garrett, to help him with the security of the wedding, Nate reluctantly agrees, knowing that it will be a long weekend of work and, in all probability, treachery.

DI Nick Dixon is on the hunt for a vicious serial killer, following a trail of fingerprints and DNA across west Somerset. When the body of a young woman is found on the building site of a nuclear power station, work grinds to a halt. The body bears all the hallmarks of yet another random murder at the hands of the escaped killer. Then Dixon finds a motive. Fighting for his place on the Major Investigation Team, he soon uncovers a family’s desperate search for the truth, exposing a web of corruption and death that will shake the billion-pound construction project to its foundations.

Winters End should have been the perfect place for me and my husband Neil to start again. To leave the terrible secrets and guilt of our past far behind us. But from the moment we arrived in the small, isolated community, it becomes clear to me that we are not welcome here. That someone wants us to leave…

November 1940. Darkness descends, and another anxious night begins for those tasked with guarding the industrial heartland of London from enemy attack. As a policeman patrols the Royal Albert Dock, something catches his eye - a man is sprawled awkwardly across a nearby barge, a dagger lodged in his back. Detective Inspector John Jago of West Ham CID discovers the victim was a dock worker by day and a Home Guard volunteer by night - and there are things even his wife doesn't know about his past.

The flame-haired virago bearing down on Ross MacKenna was far too shapely to be a seasoned warrior, but she was just as deadly. As she engaged him on the battlefield, Ross knew her for a MacKay, long-time enemies of his clan. What he didn’t know was that she would soon be his wife, given to him by her father in a desperate effort to end generations of feuding.

Lord Lyon of Normandy had saved William the Conqueror from certain death on the battlefield, yet neither his strength nor his skill could defend him against the defiant beauty the king chose for his wife. Ariana of Cragmere lost her lands and her virtue to the mighty warrior, but the willful beauty swore never to surrender her heart.

He rode into Chirk Castle on his pure black destrier. Clad in black from his gleaming helm to the tips of his toes, he was all battle-honed muscles and rippling tendons. In his stark black armor he looked lethal and sinister, every bit as dangerous as his name implied. He was a man renowned for his courage and strength, for his prowess with women, for his ruthless skill in combat.

Tom Harrison is the Tick Tock Man. He has the most dangerous job in Britain: defusing terrorist bombs. A job that demands nerves of steel and courage to match. But his skill is being tested to the limit by a new IRA bombing campaign. It's different from the others, each device more deadly and cunning than the last, each more difficult for him to neutralise. It's almost as if someone is testing him, trying to find his limits - a long-dead adversary reaching out to him from beyond the grave.

Cursed by witches centuries ago, Remy Roax was content with living his long life as a half-man/half-fox. But when he learned he had had undiscovered powers, he had no choice but to learn how to use them. After relocating to North Dakota in order to practise his new-found abilities, he soon finds himself in the targets of Louis Bonne, a man who wants to understand how the curse placed on Remy worked, so that he can use the souls of innocent people to make himself immortal.

September 1940 is finally drawing to a close. With London having endured the Blitz for nearly a month, people are calling for vengeance: Britain should retaliate even harder with their own bombing campaign in enemy territory. But once again the night heralds more destruction. At Custom House, anxious residents dutifully head to the nearest public air-raid shelter as the warning siren wails. When dawn brings the all-clear people disperse, but one man remains - he's dead, stabbed through the heart.

In a world rife with willful chaos, how can order be restored? Philosopher Thomas Hobbes’s answer, composed amid the violence of the English Civil War, revolutionized political thought. His solution was a commonwealth, or Leviathan, a body politic ruled and protected by an absolute sovereign. Its power would be dependent on the people to exchange their freedom for the security and order of a common law. Only with this social contract, Hobbes argued, can civil peace be established.

In 1995, 12-year-old Sidney Parsons was savagely murdered by two boys his own age. No reason was ever given for this terrible crime, and the 'Demonic Duo' who killed him were imprisoned until their release in 2002, when they were given new identities and lifetime anonymity. Online journalist Scott King investigates the lead-up and aftermath of the killing, uncovering dark and fanciful stories of demonic possession, and encountering a village torn apart by this unspeakable act.

October, 1940. Bombs are falling on Stratford when air-raid warden Sylvia Parks sees a house with a light shining like a beacon to the enemy aircraft overhead, violating the strict blackout regulations. With no answer at the door she manages to break in, only to discover the body of a young woman – and she's been strangled with a stocking. For Detective Inspector John Jago, the scene brings back memories of the gruesome Soho Strangler, who murdered four women in the mid-1930s but has never been caught. Is there a connection?

When a woman's body is found in the grounds of a ruined priory, Detective Imogen Evans realises she is dealing with a serial killer - a killer whose victims appear to die in a state of bliss, eyes open, smiles forever frozen on their faces.

When the body of a teenage girl is found in a London hotel, DI Patrick Lennon is mystified. Nobody saw her or her killer enter the hotel, and there is no apparent motive - until a second teenager is found and Lennon realises somebody is targeting fans of the world's biggest boy band.

Rock climbers can’t afford to make careless mistakes. But Detective Inspector Nick Dixon’s former climbing partner, Jake Fayter, died doing just that. Or so it seems. Dixon suspects foul play, but his only leads are unreliable accounts of something odd happening in Cheddar Gorge seconds before Jake fell. The more Dixon learns about Jake’s life, the more he realises that Jake hadn’t been quite the man he remembered...and a lot of people could have wanted him dead. Once Dixon gets too close to the truth, those people will emerge from the shadows and kill to protect their secrets.

Rory Connor was a gambling man and he had a gambler's luck. From the day he was born, his mother had known that Rory would be the one to make something of his life. At seven years old he was earning money from odd jobs and by 14 he was in full-time work. By the time he was 19, he had escaped the factory to become a rent-collector. Now, at 23, ambition was in full flow and he was always looking to bigger and better games to play.