Showing results by narrator "Simon Mattacks" in All Categories

Josh is a sweet, well-meaning university student with a big heart. After he impulsively steals two research mice from a campus laboratory, he hides them in the basement of Harewood Hall, a venerable building in the retirement village where he works. The mice are happy, Josh is happy—until he discovers that his charges might be carrying a deadly disease. Enter a curious cat called Harley, a devilish dog called Bobby, the arrival of some mysterious packing boxes and a strange spike in the village's water bill.

As dawn breaks on a chilly morning in November 1940, a car is found ablaze in an abandoned builder's yard a stone's throw from the Regent's Canal in Camden Town. In the burnt-out vehicle police find the charred remains of a body. The victim is Les Latham, a commercial traveller for the Barings confectionery company. He liked to be known as Lucky Les, but it seems his luck has finally run out. DI John Jago discovers among Latham's belongings a mysterious photograph and some suspicious-looking petrol ration books that set Jago off on a murky trail of deceit, corruption and murder.

As children, Gareth and Helen went ignored and utterly unsupervised in their isolated English farmhouse while their mother obsessively tended to her beloved, exquisite garden. When they were little, Gareth would occupy himself by trapping insects under glass and Helen would find ways to entertain herself - but the older they grew, the more sinister their lives became, with no attentive parent to shield them from the predators of the world. Decades later, Helen is in the same crumbling house, unhappily married and looking after their bedridden mother, and Gareth finally returns home.

A man has been mutilated and left to drown on the incoming tide, handcuffed in his van. With the murder bearing a striking resemblance to a string of sadistic killings carried out with surgical precision in 1990s gangland Manchester, it can mean only one thing: the killer is back. Transferred to the Major Investigation Team, DI Nick Dixon is assigned a new partner and sent to Manchester. Meanwhile, the gruesome murders in Somerset continue.

In the early hours of Christmas Eve, the wife of parliamentary candidate Tom Perry is brutally murdered in an apparent burglary gone wrong. With the by-election campaign about to start in earnest, and the festive season in full swing, torrential rain brings with it flood warnings on the Somerset Levels. Suspended on full pay and transferred to the cold case unit, Detective Inspector Nick Dixon is languishing on the sidelines as the investigation into Elizabeth Perry’s murder unravels and the floodwaters rise.

The body of an elderly man is found in an abandoned World War Two pillbox beside the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal. With no obvious motive and no credible suspect, DI Nick Dixon starts digging into the victim’s past. The more he digs, the deeper Dixon is drawn into a case that takes him from the cave systems beneath rural Somerset to the heart of government, and threatens to expose a military cover-up at the highest level. Blocked by a wall of silence, Dixon must unravel a dangerous conspiracy before the killer strikes again.

The discovery of a severed head in a golf course bunker triggers a frantic race to find a serial killer that brings the town of Burnham-on-Sea to a standstill. A connection is made with a series of unsolved murders harking back to the 1970s, and Detective Inspector Nick Dixon finds himself caught in a race against time that takes him the length and breadth of the country.

Isobel Swan, a sixth form student, has been murdered. First, her ring finger is severed, then her throat is cut. With the investigation going nowhere fast, Detective Inspector Nick Dixon is sent undercover as a trainee teacher into Isobel’s boarding school. But to find the killer, he must first confront his inner demons and lay to rest the ghosts lurking in his own past. If he can… As Dixon digs deeper, the stakes have never been higher and a murder has never felt so personal.

A trainee jockey has been kicked to death by an aggressive stallion at the local stables. Deemed an accidental death, the case is closed. But when the jockey’s brother returns from active service, he sparks an armed siege, demanding the investigation be re-opened and the truth uncovered.

As the boss of a high-end nightclub in the West End and with a never-ending string of gorgeous women on his arm, Tony is the darling of the tabloids. However, despite his success, the little boy who lived on the streets is never far away. Desperate for respect, he’s driven to achieve more and more. Most of all, he craves the acceptance of Ralph Gold and to become a bigger part of his extensive web of organised crime.

Princess of Mycenae, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, sister of the sacrificed Iphigenia and the cursed Orestes. Electra is forced to flee her home after witnessing the shocking revenge-murder of her father, by her mother, on his return from the Trojan War. Life beyond the palace is frightening, and the scandalous behaviour of her foreign companions disturbs her, but she needs the help of the Trojan Cassandra, and her two lovers, to survive. Driven by her own desire for vengeance, Electra's life becomes one of adventure, peril, pleasure, tragedy and love.

Princess of Troy, sister of Hector and Paris, Priestess of Apollo. Blessed by the Sun God with the gift of prophecy, and then - for rejecting his advances - cursed by him to never be believed. Diomenes, the enemy Achaean with the healing hands, and Cassandra become puppets of the gods. Their passions are thwarted, their gifts rendered useless for the sake of a wager between two immortals. And now doomed, magnificent Troy is burning. If Cassandra and Diomenes find each other, can their love survive the games of malicious gods, victorious warriors and hated kings?

As a rousing Strauss piece is reaching its crescendo in Maningpool Civic Hall, the talented yet obnoxious conductor Sir Noel Grampian is shot dead in full view of the Municipal Orchestra and the audience. It was no secret that he had many enemies - musicians and music critics among them - but to be killed mid-flow suggests an act of the coldest calculation. Told through the letters and documents sent by DI Alan Hope to his wife as he puzzles through the dauntingly vast pool of suspects and scant physical evidence in the case.