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The Lover
by Laura WilsonShortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award and the CWA Ellis Peters Award for Historical Crime Fiction. It is the autumn of 1940, and London is in the terrifying grip of the Blitz. An unidentified female corpse is discovered in an alleyway in Soho - the fourth to the have been found in a matter of weeks. The women - all prostitutes - have been horribly mutilated. Rene is a Soho prostitute with a young son to support. She's learnt to cope with the air-raids, but each night on the streets is a terrifying ordeal as the killer begins to pick off her friends. Lucy is a young, middle-class office worker living with her family in Clapham, her head full of romantic notions of how love ought to be. She struggles to make sense of things as her peaceful suburban life degenerates into chaos while London burns and crumples under aerial bombardment. Jim is a fighter pilot, handsome and much admired for his heroism in battle. The killer instinct makes him perfectly suited to the daily challenge he faces above the skies of southern England, but the strain is beginning to tell. In ordinary circumstances, their paths might never have crossed, but in war-torn London, anything can happen, and one night a bomb falls, with terrifying consequences for them all...
My Best Friend
by Laura WilsonA quiet Suffolk village, 1944: Fourteen-year-old Gerald Haxton is a lonely boy who regards his still-born twin brother Jack as his only friend. His mother, a famous children's writer, guards Jack's memory jealously, claiming him as the model for the boy detective in her series of adventure stories, and Gerald, disturbed and unpopular, has no hope of ever measuring up to him. Playing in the woods near his home, Gerald discovers the body of his elder sister buried in a shallow grave. She has been beaten to death with a wooden stake and her boyfriend, a young G.I., is hanged for the crime. London 1995: As the country prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of VE Day, Gerald, who remains a loner, is nearing retirement. Obsessed by routine, he still talks to his dead brother Jack. Surrounded by nostalgic artefacts at the TV prop-hire company where he works, he is constantly reminded of the past, and, with it, his sister Vera's death. Hoping to escape his lonely existence, he takes to following Mel, the twelve-year-old daughter of a colleague. A few days later, Mel, who bears a striking resemblance to Vera, disappears...
The Other Woman: An addictive psychological thriller you won't be able to put down
by Laura Wilson'Brilliant twisty dark farce' ERIN KELLY'A nail bitingly tense and original book' SHARON BOLTON'Compulsive, horrifying and irresistibly funny' VAL MCDERMIDShortly after Christmas, a message arrives at Sophie's house, scrawled across her own round robin newsletter: HE'S GOING TO LEAVE YOU. LET'S SEE HOW SMUG YOU ARE THEN, YOU STUPID BITCH. Perhaps she should ignore it, but she ignored the last one. And the one before that. Now it's time to take action.But when a simple plan to identify and confront the other woman goes drastically and violently wrong, Sophie must go to extreme lengths to keep her life and her family together - while never letting on her devastating secret.
The Riot: DI Stratton 5 (DI Stratton #5)
by Laura Wilson1958: Notting Hill is sweltering in a heatwave. It's DI Stratton's new manor and a powder keg of racial tension. A rent collector is stabbed and a series of street fights between teddy boys and Caribbean immigrants sparks further unrest. Young runaway Irene, on the verge of prostitution, finds her loyalties lie on both sides of the fight. A race riot breaks out - the worst Britain has ever seen. Stratton must tread a path through the violence and prejudice to find the killer and save Irene before Notting Hill explodes.
Stratton's War: A Gripping Historical Crime Thriller: DI Stratton 1 (DI Stratton)
by Laura WilsonLondon, June 1940. When the body of silent screen star Mabel Morgan is found impaled on railings in Fitzrovia, the coroner rules her death as suicide, but DI Ted Stratton of the CID is not convinced. Despite opposition from his superiors, he starts asking questions, and it becomes clear that Morgan's fatal fall from a high window may have been the work of one of Soho's most notorious gangsters.MI5 agent Diana Calthrop, working with senior official Sir Neville Apse, is leading a covert operation when she discovers that her boss is involved in espionage. She must tread carefully - Apse is a powerful man, and she can't risk threatening the reputation of the Secret Service.Only when Stratton's path crosses Diana's do they start to uncover the truth. But as they discover Morgan's connection with Apse and their mutual links to a criminal network and a secretive pro-fascist organisation, they begin to realise that the intrigues of the Secret Service are alarmingly similar to the machinations of war-torn London's underworld.
A Thousand Lies
by Laura WilsonIt's often said that a picture paints a thousand words... but what if every single one is a lie? In 1987, 36-year-old Sheila Shand was given a suspended sentence for killing her father. At her trial, it emerged that she and her mother and sister had been forced to shield brutal sadist Leslie Shand while he subjected them to a reign of terror, daily beatings and sexual abuse. Years later, journalist Amy Vaughan discovers a newspaper cutting about the Shand case while clearing out her dead mother's flat. Concluding that they are related, she decides to visit Sheila's mother Iris, who is in a care home. Amy is curious about the elderly woman who pores endlessly over an album of family snaps because she has known, from an early age, that photographs tell lies. Her own mother, who suffered from Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy, used snaps of the daughter she'd made sick to try and keep the affections of Amy's father, a charismatic but elusive conman. When she begins to investigate the Shand case, Amy realises that there is more to the murder of Leslie than the police ever unearthed, including two long-buried skeletons in woods near the family's home...
A Willing Victim: DI Stratton 4 (DI Stratton #4)
by Laura WilsonLondon, November, 1956. DI Ted Stratton is tasked with investigating the murder of Jeremy Lloyd, a strange young man with a taste for esoteric religion. Stratton's enquiries lead him to Suffolk, where the mysterious Mr Roth has founded a Foundation for Spiritual Understanding. Apparently Lloyd had believed himself marked out for great things. But at the Foundation, Stratton meets twelve-year-old Michael who is proclaimed as the next incarnation in a long line of spiritual leaders that stretches back to Christ and Buddha. He is rumoured amongst Roth's disciples to have been immaculately conceived, but the woman who is said to be his mother, and whose photograph was cherished by Lloyd, has disappeared. When a woman's body is found in woods nearby, Stratton initially assumes he has found 'the mother', but the reality turns out to be far stranger and far more terrifying...
The Wrong Girl
by Laura WilsonA sudden death exposes three generations of family secrets in this gripping, atmospheric psychological thriller for fans of Clare Mackintosh, Belinda Bauer and B A Paris.Janice Keaton is living a quiet, easy life when a longed-for reunion with the daughter she gave up for adoption several decades earlier drags her into a lethal confrontation with her past. Did her brother, Dan, die a natural death? Is Joe, her former lover, really an acid casualty, or was there another reason for his abrupt withdrawal from public life? And what is her granddaughter, Molly, hiding? As she struggles to come to terms with a series of shocks, Janice realises that her recollections of the past hold a sinister secret - one with deadly consequences. And then Molly disappears...
The Borgia Chalice (Tim Lacy Artworld Mystery Ser.)
by Mr Derek WilsonOne of the most fabulous treasures of the Renaissance, the Borgia Chalice, carries with it a dark aura - for legend has it that the notorious Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, could use this cup to poison his enemies, yet drink from it himself without harm.Security expert Tim Lacy has no superstitious fear of the chalice's supposed powers, and nor do the six people who drink from it after Lacy buys it for a client. But within the hour, four of those people are dead, all of them art critics who had mercilessly attacked the chalice's late owner, Gregor Santori, as a fraud. Yet Santori's son and daughter, who also drank from the cup, are unaffected.Is it possible that this is revenge from beyond the grave? Lacy sets out to unearth the truth in Rome, where revelations of sordid Vatican politics have remarkable contemporary echoes. Before long Lacy finds himself racing between the art establishments of two continents in pursuit of a criminal more ruthless than he could ever have known...
The Camargue Brotherhood (Magna Large Print Ser.)
by Mr Derek WilsonAt a meeting in East London, art dealer Catherine Lacy is shown six paintings from a previously undiscovered artist, Aristide Bertrand, who moved in the same circles as Van Gogh. She is enormously excited, but her husband, security expert Tim Lacy, is less than thrilled when the agent concerned is fished out of the Thames.Despite the danger, and swayed by the potential importance of this discovery, Lacy finally agrees that their new associate, Emma Kerr, should go to Provence - with veteran George Martin to keep an eye on her. Within days, Emma is abducted, and Lacy himself must go looking for her. But each time he gets a step closer to finding Emma, a new mystery comes to light, and finally he is faced with a terrifying new foe: the Camargue Brotherhood, who are prepared to protect Bertrand's work at any cost...
Cumberland's Cradle (Magna Large Print Ser. #Vol. 6)
by Mr Derek WilsonLanner Castle is a forbidding gothic building on an island in tiny Loch Huich. The locals know little about its present owner, the reclusive Mr Robertson, except that he is wealthy, writes antiquarian books and owns most of the comprehensive accumulation of torture instruments in private hands. But there are those who know more about Robertson and his past - and of those people he is terrified.When a sudden series of dark omens strikes at the very heart of Lanner Castle, Robertson calls in security expert Tim Lacy to install a state-of-the-art intruder-proof system and goes into hiding. But Lacy cannot prevent the pride of the gruesome collection, Cumberland's Cradle, from being stolen. Two days later, Robertson is found fatally reunited with his property and Lacy must run head-on towards the greatest danger he has ever faced...
The Dresden Text
by Mr Derek WilsonWhen the Dresden Text - a treasured fragment of medieval illuminated manuscript - is stolen from a prestigious New York gallery, its loss hits Tim Lacy hard. His firm was responsible for the safety of the exhibits but even more devastatingly, a colleague was killed during the break-in.Within days the police, acting on an anonymous tip-off, have traced the armed robber. There is a shoot-out and the criminal is killed. But the suspiciously swift wrapping-up of the case leaves too many questions unanswered for Tim Lacy. Why was the Dresden Text stolen when other rarer, more valuable exhibits were on display nearby? Why have the police been ordered to close the file? And where is the Dresden Text now? Convinced that only the answers to these questions will lead to those responsible for his colleague's murder, Tim sets out to unravel a dark and complex mystery...
The Hellfire Papers
by Mr Derek WilsonWhen the Master of St Mary's House, Cambridge, hires Tim Lacy to retrieve a collection of eighteenth-century documents willed to it by a wealthy past member of the college, he omits to mention that these manuscripts have a possible connection with the suicide of the late Dean and that there are those who remain determined to ensure that the documents never reach the College library.Supposedly penned by a scandal-mongering member of the notorious Hellfire Club, these papers, if genuine, could be of enormous historical significance and monetary value. And their significance is not lost on Lacy when an academic friend who has been helping him on the case is murdered. When it emerges that the Hellfire Club has repercussions into the highest circles of the current day, Lacy must fight to reveal a dark, long-kept secret before anyone else pays with their life...
Mammoth Books presents The Bothersome Business of the Dutch Nativity (Mammoth Books)
by Mr Derek WilsonWatson begrudgingly visits relatives in Oxford only to find a case he did not know existed. He learns his dear friend was never at liberty to share the tale. Years have passed since the affair and with Holmes's passing Watson feels obliged to know the story. Watson is taken back to 1873 when Holmes was an undergraduate studying terrestrial science at Grenville College. 'The Dutch Nativity', a painting donated to the university has been missing for three weeks, along with an assortment of other Oxfordiana. William Spooner, a young lecturer in Ancient History recognises Holmes's astute nature and calls on him to investigate.
The Nature of Rare Things
by Mr Derek WilsonWhen paranormal investigator and Cambridge lecturer Dr. Nathaniel Gye is commissioned at a séance to find a dead man's killer, he dismisses the incident as a clumsy fraud by a fake medium. But when Nathaniel's own wife disappears in Italy, an eventuality foretold by the same unquiet spirit, he is forced to look for connections between her predicament and the violent death of a man she never knew.In this dark and fast-paced mystery, the urgent search for answers takes Nathaniel far from his quiet university existence and into a labyrinth of hazardous twists and turns involving a stolen Renaissance painting and the love life of poets Robert and Elizabeth Browning.
The Triarchs
by Mr Derek WilsonThe first case for Tim Lacy, ex-SAS officer, security expert and well-respected figure in the art world, a circle made up of dubious dealers, unscrupulous collectors, fraudsters, crime bosses and bona fide connoisseurs, all in pursuit of the rare, the beautiful and the valuable.Aspiring artist Venetia Granville has just inherited an historic mansion in Wiltshire. Before long she has also acquired a brutally murdered corpse. She turns to Lacy for help and he soon finds out that the victim - an art dealer who was evaluating the house's contents - had discovered a long-lost masterpiece by Raphael called 'The Triarchs', now worth millions and now nowhere to be found.On his mission to recover the priceless canvas, Lacy finds himself attracting the terrifying attentions of criminal gangs who will stop at nothing to protect their interests...
Tripletree
by Mr Derek WilsonOn a sultry summer night in the Cotswolds, Nathaniel and Katherine Gye are guests at a Civil War fancy-dress party. The theme of the occasion is apt because Tripletree, the Jacobean manor house where the event is being held, is steeped in history and enjoys a colourful past. But at the end of a glittering evening tragedy strikes when the body of a woman is dragged from the lake.As he tries to unravel the truth about the woman's death, Nathaniel Gye, paranormal investigator, finds himself drawn back to the 17th century and the time when the hill above Tripletree manor was the place where the gallows once stood...
Unquiet Spirit: A Nathaniel Gye, Paranormal Investigator, Mystery
by Mr Derek WilsonA haunting in St. Thomas's College, Cambridge bitterly divides the college, and the Cambridge branch of the Psychic Investigation Unit is invited to carry out an experiment to settle the unrest. But when the main opponent of the plan, Professor Hawkridge, insists on being present for the nocturnal investigation and suddenly drops dead that very night the press has a field day and the college needs answersSir Joseph Zuylestein, the College Master, asks Dr. Nathaniel Gye if he can make some discreet enquiries with a view to closing the whole sorry business. But when they receive some disturbing anonymous letters that seem to prove the undergraduate, whose unquiet spirit supposedly haunts St.Thomas's, did not commit suicide ten years earlier, but was murdered, the case suddenly becomes altogether more serious...
The Big Killing
by Robert WilsonAn evocative and atmospheric thriller set along the part of the African coast they used to call the White Man’s Grave, The Big Killing is the second novel to feature Bruce Medway
The Blind Man of Seville (Javier Falcón Bks.)
by Robert WilsonNOW A MAJOR TV DRAMA ON SKY ATLANTIC. The first crime novel in Robert Wilson’s Seville series, featuring the tortured detective Javier Falcon.
Blood is Dirt (The\bruce Medway Mysteries Ser.)
by Robert WilsonThe third powerful and evocative novel in Robert Wilson’s acclaimed West African-set Bruce Medway series.
Capital Punishment (Charlie Boxer #1)
by Robert WilsonA crime thriller to take you on a terrifying journey into London's dark side.Beautiful Alyshia D'Cruz has grown up in London and Mumbai wanting for nothing. But one night she takes the wrong cab home.Charles Boxer, expert in high-stakes kidnap resolution, teams up with his ex-partner, investigative cop Mercy Danquah, who's battling with their rebellious teenage daughter.Alyshia's father hires Boxer, who knows all about the tycoon's colourful career, which has made him plenty of enemies. But despite the vast D'Cruz fortune, the kidnappers don't want cash, instead favouring a cruel and lethal game . . . To save Alyshia, Boxer must dodge religious fanatics, Indian mobsters and London's home-grown crime lords.CAPITAL PUNISHMENT is a journey to the dark side of people and places that lie just out of view, waiting for the moment to tear a life apart.
The Company of Strangers (Isis Cassettes Ser.)
by Robert WilsonStunning European-based thriller from an acclaimed young British author: ‘A class act’ – Sunday Times; ‘First in a field of one’ – Literary Review
A Darkening Stain (Bruce Medway Mysteries Ser.)
by Robert WilsonA stylish, tough and exciting thriller set in West Africa, the fourth in Robert Wilson’s critically acclaimed Bruce Medway series.
The Hidden Assassins (Isis Cassettes Ser.)
by Robert WilsonThe gripping new psychological thriller featuring Javier Falcon, the tortured detective from ‘The Silent and the Damned’ and ‘The Blind Man of Seville.’