Out of Hours

A series of events takes us away from our quiet Welsh seaside town, Barry Island, to several countries across Europe. Aided by London’s notorious East End gangster, Bootsie Burns, and Isobelle Omerta, who runs her West End escort agency to help us recover our stolen diamonds back from Romanian criminals on the Isle of Dogs with brutal consequences.

A chance meeting in Milan with Jacques Couture’s friend, Oralik Kalashnikov, both ex French Foreign Legionnaires, Oralik proposes a daring heist on the Musée du Louvre. But there are obstacles to overcome first. Testing times call for drastic measures and our gang is going to be tested to their limits as situations start to spiral out of control crossing paths with a Russian mafia boss.

Myself, Bernie, Mick nor Melody with her narcissistic behaviours which are becoming progressively more pronounced couldn’t  have prepared ourselves or foretold how these events would unfold over the coming year to the extent that we would have to go too to gain what most of us love the most, money. In these series of enduring events that will emotionally detach each of us from our civilised society with each of our lives becoming more infested, more barbaric, more bizarre with each unexpected turn of events and the extreme lengths that we will have to go to hold onto our freedom, our sanity, our morals, ethics and principles that will strain, drain, frighten, sicken and at times demoralise our very souls as they will yours.

Prince of Wales Lane, SC3

When a young French student had parked his old, dented 2CV, in front of an estate agency in a small seaside town on the East coast of England, he had an absent-minded look at the properties on offer in the window. When he realised how ridiculously low the asking price of a grand palatial house was, he walked in, asked to view the house, and bought it on an impulse, to the shocked horror of his mother and friends. Little could he guess that he was hopping into a trap that would cause him to be followed by the police in several countries, and even offer him an opportunity to discover what it was like to be remanded in custody, all that without ever realising what he was wanted for. Meanwhile, he had made friends for life in the town, and would never be able to stay very long away from his family, his friends, his lovely house, his job a couple of miles down the road, or the local garden fête.

Psychopath in Town!

Skeletal remains are found under the town’s sports ground goalpost. Young Wallis Brown, who is the daughter of a police sergeant now deceased, meets Sergeant Sam Watson. He tells Wallis of a psychopath in town. Her long-time friend Cherie Winters is bashed by her husband Neil Winters, who blames Wallis for his job loss and marriage break-down. Wallis discovers a man’s body: Sam says “Stay home at night!” Police hunt to arrest Neil for murder. Wallis, now fearful for her life, runs the short way home through the dimly lit laneway. A man wearing a cap is running after her with a knife! She screams and then falls into oblivion.

Rame

This gripping story is set in the secretive, dark days of smuggling Cornwall. One family falls foul of the violent men who will stop at nothing to get what they want. Dom, his friends and family are caught up in the deadly rivalry of the two connected villages. Murder and mystery threaten their challenging lives where even the sea can be an unpredictable rival. However, when a deadly plague occurs, it is a force beyond their control; all are endangered; none are safe. In the final conflict can love overcome hatred or will violence and greed destroy love?

Redemption

When cyber security expert Jack Neild goes missing in London it appears to be a straightforward missing person’s case. As the situation unfolds, Justin Kell’s sighting of an adversary from his past makes it clear that kidnap and organised crime are involved. 

With the authorities struggling to make progress in finding Neild and suspicion of a critical event with a global implication increasing, Kell puts his relationship with his longstanding girlfriend on the line as he becomes central to the investigation. 

When information from an unexpected source changes the dynamic of the operation, and with the body count increasing, the security services make their move, but will it be too late?

Rogue Justice

Someone disillusioned with the criminal justice system has decided that there is only one option available to prevent the scales of justice from tilting in favour of those that carry out heinous crimes. Believing the system broken, he ruthlessly dispenses his own brand of retribution.

Cutting a swathe through a rural community, he subjects his hapless preys to unimaginable cruelty in twisted games of cat and mouse before executing them in escalating brutality.

Detectives Englund and Hicks are tasked with tracking down a killer amidst their close-knit community, seemingly without motive.

When a young girl is kidnapped, coinciding with the release of a notorious paedophile, Englund is forced to evaluate his own position and question what justice really means.

Will Englund and the enigmatic Hicks catch the killer before the town implodes and takes justice into its own hands?

Or will they become another statistic in an ever-increasing body count?

Running for His Lives

Dennis ‘Dutch French’ was determined to rid himself of the nightmare memories of his childhood; orphaned as an infant when his father was killed in action, his mother’s subsequent suicide had a profound effect. Constant bullying and humiliation, combined with a disadvantaged lifestyle throughout his early years, caused his behaviour to deteriorate and cause concern. However, all was to change when, following in his father’s footsteps, he joined the Army, immediately enhancing his life. Due to an unusual but fortunate assignment, he meets and marries Melanie. During years of happy marriage and a long, distinguished military career, a number of near-death experiences fuel an inward belief regarding the myth of nine lives. His sought-after peace is subsequently shattered when his wife is viciously assaulted and raped, triggering a series of fatal events, changing their lives forever.

Secrets in the Attic

Dame Henrietta Copeland in her new role as private investigator finds herself outsmarted by thieves at the local garage sale, when she attends incognito, is wrapped up in a curtain and delivered to a cliff edge, left to perish.

And while it seems like a wild goose chase, she is stalked by an associate of a suspected murdered/suicide victim, who seems to be getting hot under the collar with Henrietta’s enquiries.

She is constantly reprimanded by the magistrate for overstepping the boundaries of the law, while solving cases.

Her devoted family are appalled to find she is befriending an ex-prisoner, the very person who forced her to sell her beloved paddle wheeler after being disgraced for wildlife poaching on the Mighty River Murray.

Undeterred by adversity Henrietta travels to Perth in Western Australia, to assist her prisoned nephew and unwittingly discovers a diamond heist and to Mount Gambier in the Southeast of South Australia seeking a stolen herbal rose formula and inadvertently while sipping tea on her way back to Goolwa, through the Coorong, uncovers a love nest, the cause of an infidelity which she had refused to uncover at the beginning of her new career. There is personal tragedy when news breaks out of the sinking of the paddle wheeler Beatrice Lonsdale, formerly Laurel Wreath which had been moored at Pier 15 on the Goolwa wharf.

There are surprises and disappointments as Henrietta strives to make a living keeping secrets in the attic.

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…

South Island Slaughter

When Detective Superintendent Cully returns to South Island for a long-awaited school reunion, little does he know that the event will swiftly turn into a nightmare. A devastating mass shooting unfolds, and Cully is thrust into the role of leading the investigation. However, amidst the chaos, he battles his own demons, fearing that past abusive behavior will resurface with deadly consequences.

The victims, all connected to Cully’s school days, include Sophie Cairns, a former classmate and his ex-girlfriend, who miraculously survives the tragedy. In her book, a trauma therapist boldly suggests that fatal violence is the only solution to unbearable agony.

As the relentless police team hunts down the shooter, Cully’s path intertwines with that of DC Indah Kasali, forging a close bond. Sophie and Indah find themselves entangled in a battle to win Cully’s affections.

South Island Slaughter is a gripping thriller that explores the harrowing aftermath of tragedy, the complexities of human relationships, and the haunting effects of a troubled past.

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.

Suicide or Murder

Mina, a Lufthansa flight attendant, and Adam, a trainee police detective, establish a loving relationship formed around an astounding story (purported to be true) that boggled police investigators and medical examiners in LA. The story investigates the legal ramifications associated with a bizarre death that was chosen as the most unusual case on record for presentation at the 25^th Anniversary dinner of the American Association of Forensic Scientists.

It may be difficult to envisage a growing romance within the confines of a murder mystery; however, the unusually volatile pressures and emotions that surround this case are, in fact, the perfect vehicle to exhibit the unique personalities of the involved characters. This story is sometimes bizarre and sometimes amusing and it becomes quite difficult to keep in mind that a large part of it is claimed to have really happened.