The idyllic peace of a remote Scottish anchorage is shattered by an explosion aboard a luxury cruiser, which kills the woman on board and brings to an abrupt end the restful holiday which Clio Marsh prescribed for her detective husband Harry. Was the wreck of the "Skara Sun" an accident? Was Ali...
Detective Superintendent Frank Shapiro finds himself weaving down a dark and twisted trail of human foibles that begins with his own Sergeant Donovan. When Mikey, the son of a local crime boss is found beaten and then dies, suspicion falls on the hothead Irish sergeant. Shapiro and Inspector Liz ...
I really enjoyed Jo Bannister's Castlemere series but I had a few reservations about trying other books by her in case I didn't find them as interesting or gripping. I think I was wrong to be worried but I still didn't like this as much as I do the Castlemere series.This book is about what happe...
Brodie Farrell's life, on the surface, is unremarkable. A single mother to one daughter, five-year-old Paddy, in a small seaside town, she spends her days running a "finding agency"---helping clients locate items that have proved elusive by more conventional methods. She has a healthy relationshi...
In one 48-hour period, detective Frank Shapiro sets up a sting to trap a team of train robbers while detectives Graham and Donovan go undercover--she as a decoy for a rapist, he as a new recruit to a vicious dog-fighting ring. Then it gets personal. One becomes a victim and the other is seduced b...
Another excellent book, the sixth in the series and the third I've read. I'm now actively searching for the first three books about the Castlemere detectives which all seem to be out of print.Bannister's talent is to bring large events to a small town and yet make them seem realistic there. Other...
The English village of Castlemere is being rocked to its roots by a series of deaths. In the first, Detective Inspector Alan Clarke is a victim of a hit-and-run. Also gravely wounded is Detective Sergeant Cal Donovan. Donovan is convinced that this was no accident but rather a cold-blooded murde...
A seemingly random group of six Londoners shows up for a retreat weekend at an almost-completed new luxury hotel. Each believes he or she is there for an intense group therapy session on how to pick up the pieces after a tragedy. As they begin to open up to one another, it slowly becomes clear th...
But instead of driving off he found himself indulging in some outside-the-box thinking. If Terry Walsh had done what Deacon wanted him to have done, he must have had a damn good reason. It had been out of character: first, to have any dealings with a jumped-up mugger like Bobby Carson; secondly, ...
“I can walk.” “I have to go anyway. I have to talk to Mr. Fountain.” Ash regarded her with concern. “Is that wise?” She managed a nervous smile. “I think it’s necessary. I have information about a murder that probably no one else has. I have a theory that could explain what happened. I can’t keep...
Patience disappeared into the rhododendrons, on the trail of a rabbit. Ash was quiet. There was nothing unusual about this. But Hazel was learning to read his silences as you might read another man’s body language. Sometimes he was silent because he was thinking, sometimes because he didn’t want ...
Brodie weighed up the chances of someone coming by in the next hour to offer her a valuable commission, and deciding they were slim she shut up shop. She thought she’d take Daniel out to lunch and quiz him discreetly about all the mistakes he was making with her business. She didn’t know she was ...
At other times, though, she planned her moves meticulously, working through all the possible combinations—of what might happen, how people might react, what she should do and say next—in the hope of being able to respond effectively whatever turn events should take. Before coming here she’d consi...
One after another they wandered in and took a place at Sarah Turner’s table as if they ate there every night: Dr Chapel, bent and elderly, a dry stick of a man; Mr and Mrs Vickery, he the foreman at The Flower Mill, she the local shopkeeper; Alan Hunsecker who maintained the machinery on which th...
The man froze where he sat, twisted round from the monitors, and the rigor went all the way from his eyes into the depths of his soul. For ten, maybe fifteen seconds—which is a lot longer than it sounds when you’re waiting—he didn’t move and he didn’t speak. He didn’t even blink. Then he did. A m...
Danny Vanderbilt, regarding him woodenly across the acacia expanse of the desk, was conscious for the first time of the actual size of the office, the size of the furniture, most of all the size of the vacancy left by the man by whom and around whom the department had been constructed. But he nod...
She lay still for a while, hands behind her head, watching the sunlight strengthen through the flimsy curtain, her mind stumbling over a confusion of images drawn from her work and her marriage. She was unhappy about both, in oddly similar ways. There was too much happening under the surface, uns...
And came up trumps. There was a glow in his eyes and a kind of suppressed excitement in his voice when he hurried round to DI Hyde's office. ‘I called the marina. Apparently, people file the equivalent of a flight-plan when they're going to be out overnight. It's a safety measure – it means someo...
‘We seem to have been discovered. I wonder how that happened.’ ‘Don’t look at me,’ Daniel said quickly. ‘I don’t know where we are, and I’ve no way of telling anyone if I did.’ ‘Nevertheless, we are no longer alone.’ ‘Poachers?’ hazarded Daniel, without much hope. ‘I think we should assume it’s t...