-
The Emigrant’s Return
The gripping tale of a less than innocent – yet far from guilty – man unfolds as fifty-year old Pat Donaldson returns to Ireland, the land of his birth. Framed and imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, he finds himself the unwitting victim of Dublin’s most ruthless drug baron, a man who acts with impunity from behind a shield of propriety, all the while aided from a cabal of corruption.
All seems lost for Pat until one sole glimmering light of hope, in the form of a young and honest guardian of the law, breaks through the seemingly impenetrable mantle of fate to secretly champion his cause. Good deeds and intentions must combine perfectly with the finesse of legal machinations to triumph over what, on the face of it, seems to be the perfect stooge caught in the perfect set-up.
-
Watching
ANCOM, a dormant committee of secret service and police representatives, is brought back to life under the leadership of Group Captain Reginald Young. As the manager of a new biowarfare research centre, Young is thrown into a dangerous game of espionage and deception when a member of ANCOM is murdered. Teaming up with MI5/6, Young sets out to uncover the truth and stop the misappropriation of crucial British defence information. The investigation takes him from the North Norfolk Coast to Oxford and Kenya, leading him to cross paths with international financiers and high-level government officials in Whitehall.
-
Tunnel Vision
Three men gathered in an up-class night club bar. Each has a chequered past that they can’t escape from. They agreed to meet when released from prison. The plan was in front of them. A plan to steal millions from a holding bank, one of the largest bank robberies in history. At first, it seemed impossible. After a week, it all came together. This is a gripping intelligent thriller, based on true facts of a master plan to rob this holding centre bank.
-
Things That Go Bump in the Night
ONE CITY. TWO KILLERS
A serial killer and a supernatural killer terrorise a city. One kills willingly preying on adulterers and the other unknowingly with no memory of being a monster. The city knows about the serial murders committed by the Sin Killer, but unaware of the shape-shifter whose murders are blamed on the Sin Killer. The captain of police is related to one of the killers. -
The Scales of Justice
Nobody on her college staircase seemed able to understand how Rowan came to be in the Intensive Care Ward following an overdose, nor could Rowan. She could remember nothing leading up to her admission. Over the next few weeks, as first one, and then another of her college acquaintances was murdered, Rowan began to vaguely recall some of the events, but there was always a block to fully remembering what happened on that fateful afternoon and evening.
Detective Inspector Jerry Gregory and his team investigating the murders linked them to a drug dealing syndicate based around Cambridge and London, and to the back story of one of the murder victims.
-
The Man who Cleaned Gravestones
Why would a retired detective be cleaning gravestones? Bob Macinaly had to retire from the job he loved after having been shot by a bank robber. He had taken a holiday in Mallorca trying to get his life back together. By chance, he found himself in a Salvation Army charity shop and purchased a second-hand book. A letter hidden inside changed his life forever. As a police officer he moved from one case to another and very seldom could he follow up on the unseen victims left behind, namely the close families who would suffer forever whilst the convicted murderer would live out life in, some would say, comparative luxury.
From now on this would be different; he would become close to human trafficking and the evil controllers and the crime lords making millions at the cost of human lives.
-
The Lawyer's Last Words
Upon his release from a prison in the South of France, Marlon Crappy, a daunting and fierce behemoth of a man, unexpectedly discovers he’s now a wealthy heir, courtesy of his late brother’s estate. This sudden fortune, including a luxury yacht, only fuels his thirst for revenge. He’s convinced that the affluent owners of a grand chateau are responsible for his brother’s tragic end.
However, the chateau’s proprietors are not to be trifled with. Comprising an ex-US Navy Seal, a formidable Dutch Judo Champion, and the enigmatic Eva, a former French Secret Service agent, they are a force to be reckoned with. When tragedy strikes the chateau’s youngest members, and with Parisian politicians entangled in the fray and an unknown thief plundering Crappy’s newfound riches, the trio must delve deep into their formidable pasts to face this escalating threat. The battle lines are drawn, and in this high-stakes game, every move could be their last.
-
The Identity Kit
Josh is an eminent professional in the world of finance, managing ultra-wealthy clients at a hedge fund in Mayfair, London.
The stakes are always high. His savvy clients invest millions with his firm in the expectation of lucrative returns. However, a business meeting with a very important client goes horribly wrong! Josh becomes the centre of a fraud case and its prime suspect. Suddenly, his comfortable lifestyle changes for the worse.
Pursued by the police, he has no choice but to operate above the law in order to prove his innocence. Developing the mindset of a criminal, he embarks on a hazardous journey to identify the real perpetrator. His every move is followed! But not just by the police…
Josh desires revenge for his client but more importantly justice, aiming to uphold his reputation and that of his firm. Endangering his life is just a small price he has to pay.
-
The Heroes
Spring 1968
Formerly inseparable, five boys, known affectionately as ‘The Heroes’, all of them eight years of age, school together, play together and explore together. One day in the spring term, one of them dies suddenly, in the arms of his teacher and their headmaster goes missing without a trace.
May 2019
Fifty years later, local private investigators, Robert Fox and Rosemary Bennett are engaged by the dead boy’s sister to find out if the headmaster is still alive, because he may hold the key as to why her brother, Derek, died.
Everyone says that he died of natural causes, but the boy’s sister believes it is something more sinister.
The two private investigators seek out the four remaining boys and their teacher, to help them in their quest for the truth about what happened to her brother and of the headmaster’s disappearance.
But they are not the only ones seeking them out.
The boys each have held a chilling secret, and someone wants to keep it that way, no matter what it takes.
Will Fox and Bennet find out what the boys know before someone else does?
-
Stumped
The brutal murder of a young married woman during an annual cricket match in the sleepy countryside village of Bundary near Bristol forms the backdrop to a novel of illicit affairs, an escort agency and the attempted break-up of an international drug smuggling ring based in the Balkans and operating in Britain and Eastern Europe.
Solving the murder involves cooperation between the Avon and Somerset Police and officers from the West Midlands who are working with The National Crime Agency to discover how drugs are being imported into Britain from The Balkans.
The visiting cricket team captain is a known drug dealer from the Wolverhampton area who is offered amnesty of a potential prison sentence if he will go undercover to try to break up the drug ring.
This brings him into contact with one of the suspects for the murder as he travels to Dubrovnik and Montenegro, where he meets up with the operators of the drug cartel who own a vineyard near Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro.
-
Some Service to the State
The year is 1925. In the borderlands of a newly partitioned Ireland, a doctor new to Northern Ireland begins a search for a missing patient, a young girl who has fallen pregnant.
Meeting a wall of silence, she enlists the help of a local, a former IRA volunteer recently released from jail. Their enquiry brings them into contact with a community still suffering from the wounds of civil war. More worrying for them, they find they are beginning to rattle skeletons that some powerful people would prefer went undisturbed.
As they slowly begin to unravel the truth of the girl’s fate, they find that the traces they are following lead to some crimes more monstrous that they ever previously considered.
“Some Service to the State is a superb book with dialogue that would not be out of place on the stage of the Abbey Theatre. Mick McAlinden is a former IRA man caught on the wrong side of the border and the wrong side of history: a law student who ends up working in an abattoir. Aidan McQuade has created a character whose travails highlight the thwarted dreams and the tragedy of partition for so many people in post-revolutionary Ireland.”
- Ronan McGreevy, journalist and author of Great Hatred: the Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson.
“Like Graham Greene, Dennis Lehane, and Louise Penny before him, McQuade takes the humble crime story and uses it like a scalpel to probe and expose the darkness in human souls and human society.”
- Martin W. Sandler, National Book Award-winning author and historian.
“The sparring sparky dialogue is a delight and never fails to vivify the darkness. McQuade shows prodigious skill in shining a spotlight on the scandal of mother-and-baby homes and in brilliantly imbuing the past with his own potent blend of heart, soul and wit.”
- Rosemary Jenkinson, multi-award winning playwright and author of Marching Season.
-
Shoot for the Face
Jason Rogers couldn’t remember the last time he had slept soundly. After surviving 20 years in the high-octane world of Russian investment banking, he knew that his time there as the high-flying international banker to the oligarchs was coming to an end.
The bank he’d built from scratch in the 90s, Falcon Capital, his pride and joy, was being assailed on all sides by shadowy forces in Russian society with impeccable government connections, the “siloviki”. To compound matters, his chief risk officer had approved a loan to an oligarch, Ari Kandinskiy, who was down on his luck and had all but gone broke. His efforts to recover desperately needed funds from the stricken oligarch would pit him against powerful interests in Moscow – including Ruslan Akhmatov, the mercurial emissary of Russia’s most troublesome regional governor.
Desperate times would call for desperate measures. Jason Rogers would have to call one final time on the services of Dmitry Ovchinnikov, the Siberian hitman who was a little rough around the edges and dressed like an American cowboy – but who had proved so terribly effective at neutralising his client’s enemies over the years and despatching them to cemeteries all over Russia.
Dmitry Ovchinnikov’s capacity for violence and appetite for dispensing his own, unique brand of “justice” would result in some of Moscow’s most bloody executions in recent memory. It would trigger an orgy of revenge killings which would see the body parts of prominent members of the Russian underworld scattered all over the white tablecloths of that city’s finest restaurants.
Would Jason Rogers come to regret the murderous gang war that he had unleashed on the streets of Moscow? Would he become one of its victims?
Only time would tell…