Four Albanian gangsters have infiltrated Edinburgh. They're ruthless operators and deep undercover. MI5 are on their case, and, unknown to Bob Skinner and his men, they've set up a drug-dealing sting to flush them out. The resulting mayhem throws everyone off, but when the dust settles, they real...
Suffering the strains of a faltering marriage, the last thing Bob Skinner needs is for his private life to be plastered on the front pages of a sleazy tabloid. To make matters worse, two brutal murders and allegations about Skinner himself make simultaneous headlines. As the clock runs out, Skinn...
A murder in an affluent Edinburgh suburb leaves Assistant Chief Constable Bob Skinner baffled. Then a case of property fraud takes Skinner in a new direction. Moving from Scotland to Spain to a climax in Edinburgh, this thriller follows a trail involving vice, corruption, and the merchants of death.
As head of Edinburgh's CID, Bob Skinner has seen it all—but even he is shocked by the mutilated corpse discovered in a dark alleyway. The motive for the brutal murder remains a mystery, until an elaborate smokescreen emerges which shrouds an intricate conspiracy.
For Oz Blackstone, the days of getting into trouble for a living, otherwise known as being a private enquiry agent, could soon be behind him. An undercover stint posing as a TV wrestling Master of Ceremonies has convinced him that he might just have a bit of a hidden theatrical talent. So when Oz...
Newly married to his childhood sweetheart and happily settled in Glasgow, private enquiry agent Oz Blackstone is looking for a touch of the unexpected in his life. And when he's introduced to the seven-foot, granite-muscled figure of Everett Davis, champion wrestler and head of the burgeoning Glo...
The fifth novel in the Bob Skinner Mystery series, this thriller follows Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner on his next investigation. After a mid-air explosion of a plane carrying the British and American defense secretaries, those investigating must wade through a vast array of possible suspect...
Every Thursday for 25 years, Skinner and his friends have met for a game of football. Which is why the discovery of Alec Smith's mutilated corpse has hit Skinner so hard. A former policeman, Smith was one of the Thursday Legends. When another teammate is murdered, Skinner realizes it's only the b...
After cracking their first case together as a private investigation team, Oz Blackstone and Primavera Phillips find themselves simultaneously in love and in the money. And where better to lie back and contemplate life than the picturesque village of St Marti, on the rugged Costa Brava. But beneat...
Movie stardom, wealth, a successful marriage—Oz Blackstone is standing on the brink of the Seriously Big Time and life just seems to keep lining up the cherries. He should have known it couldn't stay that good for that long. The first sign of trouble appears when Oz finds his ex-wife Primavera Ph...
Returning to L'Escala, the idyllic Spanish village where they were once so happy, Oz Blackstone and Primavera Phillips are looking to forget the past. But old ghosts are not so easy to placate, and the shadow of Oz's childhood sweetheart Jan, now tragically dead, is threatening to turn their rela...
It’s summertime in Monaco. Oz Blackstone, now an international film star, is sitting on the verandah of his opulent villa—one of three homes—idly gazing at Roman Abramovitch’s luxury yacht as it slips into the harbor. Life doesn’t get much better than this. But somebody knows where Oz lives. A st...
I have mixed feelings about this book, and I think some of the negative feelings I have might have been alleviated had I read the five previous books in this series before reading this one. There are some series, especially in the mystery genre, where a new reader can just jump in wherever they f...
A four-day tournament involving the world's leading golfers is being staged for the opening of a new country club created on his East Lothian estate by the Marquis of Kinture and two partners. But on the Sunday afternoon preceding, one of the partners is found dead in his private Jacuzzi in the c...
Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner has witnessed the aftermath of murder countless times. Yet nothing could have prepared him for identifying the strangled bodies of his wife's beloved parents, killed at their lakeside cabin in New York State. Driven by cold rage, Skinner quickly muscles in on th...
Each August thousands of tourists and performers flood into Edinburgh for its infamous Festival. But this year, on the very first day, an explosion rocks Princes Street and one man is killed. Assistant Chief Constable Bob Skinner, head of CIC, soon learns this was no accident. For, a few hours la...
Oz Blackstone is enjoying the success of his latest smash hit movie. He's moving into a big country house near Loch Lomond with his gorgeous wife Susie Gantry and together they have the lifestyle of everyone's dreams. But when blackmailers threaten Oz's father with a particularly sleazy scam, the...
When PI Oz Blackstone takes on the job of tracking down an insurance company’s missing half million, he finds the corpse of the would–be embezzler with a knife in his back and no sign of the missing money. And just when it looks like Oz is in over his head, in walks Primavera Phillips, the most i...
As these things go, it was state of the art, everything stainless steel and spotless and, most important of all, the air purification system worked perfectly. I’d been expecting Mario to call me the evening before to give me a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’ on whether I could attend, but...
He was visited by Paul Johnston in the early afternoon. ‘The bill of impeachment is prepared,’ the solicitor told him. ‘Irvine will lodge it with the Crown Office tomorrow morning.’ ‘Why the morning?’ Mathew asked. ‘In truth, I do not know,’ the cadaverous Johnston confessed. ‘Are you happy with ...
He promised that he would help them both pack: clothes and Game Boy for Tom, harness, lead and food for Charlie, and passports for them both. I asked him to tell Tom that I would come to Monaco for him as soon as I could, although I had no idea of what that meant in real t...
Leave your prejudices in the corridor outside.’ That CID mantra had been drummed into Sauce Haddock from his first day as a detective constable by some very formidable mentors. The foremost of those had been Bob Skinner, the first chief constable he had ever served under, and the scariest man he ...
Two days later, on the following Monday, I was on a flight to Barcelona, with a one-way ticket. I hadn’t expected to be heading back to L’Escala so soon; my last trip to my Spanish hometown had ended calamitously, and that bad memory was still burned into my brain. &...
. . it’s good for his soul. In fact he wasn’t all that bothered; when he had time to give it a second thought, he realised that another presence at the table could only come between him and his grandpa. The evening did stay warm, so, after Mac had installed himself in the ...
By the time I’d taken it off the hob so that I could wipe off the spillage with a tea towel, an unwelcome smell told me that the sauce had burned itself into the base of its pan. ‘Bugger!’ I shouted, just as Tom came into the kitchen. ‘What’s wrong, Mum?’ he asked. &...
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He couldn’t begin his schedule-planning with Brush until America woke up, but the European Tour press officer had warned him that he might have quite a busy day dealing with media, and so he decided that he’d better grab some relaxation time while he could. We’d spent the rest of our dinner date ...
They were in her office; she held a mug of coffee in a meaty hand, he held a can of diet Irn Bru. ‘I think,’ she began, ‘that I accept his story about the fancy dress. Okay, he knew he was being spun a line, and that he chose not to ask questions, but I don’t believe that Scott Mann would knowing...