"Adam and Eve and Pinch Me went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve were drowned. Who was saved?" This old nursery rhyme is a favorite of Jerry Leach, a handsome ne'er do well, who sponges off women. Five women, unknown to each other, are his willing victims. But Jerry, almost accidentally, bec[...]
It was some time since Benet had seen her mad mother. So when Mopsa arrived at the airport, looking colourless in a dowdy grey suit, Benet tried not to hate her. But the tragic death of a child begins a chain of deception, kidnap and murder. Domestic dramas exploding into deaths and murders ... thre[...]
The River Brede had burst its banks, and not a single house in the valley had escaped flooding. The teenagers are fifteen and thirteen, the sitter's in her thirties, they can all swim and the house is miles above the floods. There hadn't been anything like this kind of rain in living memory. The Sub[...]
The sixteenth book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford. When a young, black woman goes missing in Kingsmarkham, Wexford must respond to a test not only of his powers of deduction, but of his basic beliefs and prejudices. Only eighteen black people live in Kingsmar[...]
The twentieth book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford. A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The young woman in the car behind is spared. But only for a while...A few weeks l[...]
After ten years in prison for shooting - and permanently crippling - a young policeman, Victor Jenner is released to make a new life for himself. However, he was never convicted for all those rapes he committed. Then Victor meets David, the policeman he shot, and David's girlfriend, Clare. And sudde[...]
'Weeks went by when Ismay never thought of it at all. Then something would bring it back or it would return in a dream. The dream began in the same way. She and her mother would be climbing the stairs, following Heather's lead through the bedroom to what was on the other side, not a bathroom in the [...]
The twenty-first book to feature the classic crime-solving detective, Chief Inspector Wexford. Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something slightly less savoury - a human hand. The corpse, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years or so, wr[...]
No one believed Mr Parsons' fears for his missing wife. Until two days later she was discovered in the woods, her face swollen and her clothes damply clinging to her lifeless body. With no useful witnesses and a victim known only for her mundane life, Chief Inspector Wexford has just one clue: a lip[...]
Wexford believed he'd solved Mrs Primero's murder fifteen years ago. It was no real mystery. Everyone knew Painter, her odd-job man, had done it. There had never been any doubt in anyone's mind. Until now, Henry Archery's son is engaged to Painter's daughter. Only Archery can't let the past remain b[...]
Anita Margolis has vanished. Dark and exquisite, Anita's character is as mysterious as her disappearance. But with no body and no apparent crime, seemingly there's nothing to be investigated. Until Wexford receives an anonymous note claiming 'a girl called Ann' was killed the very night Anita disapp[...]
A man and his daughter lie dead after a car accident. Strangely, no other car was involved and no cause has been found. Wexford's only option is to wait and hope that the one surviving victim - the mother, Mrs Fanshawe - regains consciousness. But when she awakens six weeks later, Wexford's attentio[...]
The discovery of Elizabeth Nightingale's broken body in the woods near her home could not have come as a bigger shock. Called in to investigate, Chief Inspector Wexford quickly determines that the Nightingales were considered the perfect couple - wealthy, attractive and without an enemy in the world[...]
On a stormy February afternoon, little Stella disappeared. There were no clues, no demands and no traces. There was nowhere else for Wexford and his team to look. Just months later, another child vanishes - five-year-old John. Wexford and Inspector Burden are launched into another investigation and [...]
Wexford is sent to London for a break away from the pressures of the Kingsmarkham constabulary. But then he discovers his nephew Howard is heading the investigation into the macabre murder of Loveday Morgan, whose body was found abandoned in Kenbourne Cemetery. Despite opposition from Howard and his[...]
When the body of a brutally beaten girl is found in a quarry during a hedonistic hippy festival at Sundays near Kingsmarkham, Wexford is first on the scene. Through a web of lies and deceit Wexford uncovers a history of love and hate that began years earlier, and he realises that never has he witnes[...]
Angela Hathall is found strangled in her bed but shockingly the death of this meek and solitary woman sparks little emotion from her husband. Called in to investigate, Wexford's curiosity only deepens when he discovers that the Hathall household has been meticulously cleaned but for a single distinc[...]
On a sultry August evening, the bloody body of a middle-aged woman is discovered beneath a hedge by a small boy. The woman turns out to be Rhoda Comfrey, but there's no apparent motive. Wexford's only hunch is that the clues to her murder must lie in her solitary London life. But her existence there[...]
In a college town two schoolgirls live with their widowed father Luke, a gentle well-educated man, meticulous and orderly. Elvira and Spinny are watchful however for Luke plans to remarry and has chosen Mary. The threat to the girls world is removed, however, when Mary falls to her death.[...]
Wexford is brought in to deal with a distraught mother whose baby girl has been swapped with an unknown baby boy. When a local priest discovers the missing baby, safe and sound, on the church steps, the hunt for the missing girl is quickly over. Mother and daughter are happily reunited, but the myst[...]
The tragic death of Manuel Camargue, Kingsmarkham's very own celebrity flautist, is met with a ruling of misadventure. But when, after an absence of nineteen years, Camargue's entrancing daughter Natalie reappears, Dinah, his fiancee goes to Wexford for help. Knowing there is a large inheritance at [...]
The messages were coming in thick and fast. Coded messages that John Creevey should never have seen. But the messages were a lifeline to John - a means of getting back his wife and perhaps a way to harm the man who had seduced her away from him.[...]
'He had never told anyone. The strange relationship, if it could be called that, had gone on for years, decades, and he had never breathed a word about it. He had kept silent because he knew no one would believe him. None of it could be proved, not the stalking, not the stares or the conspiratorial [...]