Showing results by narrator "Gordon Griffin" in All Categories

From his childhood love of animals, through his training and first steps in the profession and the pressures and challenges faced by vets, dealing with unexpected exotic pets - and handling excitable humans too - Julian Norton has seen all sides of the veterinary world and writes about it all with humour and affection. Just as happy calving a cow, treating a dehydrated chameleon or tending to the overgrown teeth of a rabbit, his passion for his work shines through in every chapter.

A fifties murder mystery set in Malaya from author of the popular Crowner John books. Arriving in Singapore, newly-qualified pathologist Tom Howden soon discovers that his new home is a hotbed of scandal and intrigue. When an English planter is attacked one night, the finger of suspicion points at local bandits. It soon becomes clear, however, that the situation is far more complicated - and deadly - than it first appeared. Tom Howden's newly-acquired forensic skills are about to be put to the ultimate test.

A note that is discovered hidden in a wall cavity of a London hotel leads Detective Inspector Harry Vicary and his team to a burial site containing the charred bones of two men. Their investigation into this startling find quickly leads them into a dark and brutal world, where men and women are used and abused by those who rule through fear and intimidation. But who were the dead men and how did they meet their fate?

When a deep grave containing five skeletons is discovered in the corner of a field, DCI Hennessey and his team of officers from the Vale of York Police are called in to investigate. The burial site had lain undiscovered for over 20 years and was only found after a chance conversation between two old friends revealed the possibly sinister reason for the area of disturbed soil that they had both noticed during their last summer of innocence. The resulting police inquiry soon uncovers a multiple murder that seems to have its roots in a legal dispute between two families which can be traced back to the aftermath of the English Civil War.

Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, 1736. A foggy September evening. When a child is killed by an unknown horseman, musician sleuth Charles Patterson, the only witness close enough to see that the collision was no accident, vows to hunt down the rider. But there are distractions. Richard Nightingale, a fashionable “ladder-dancer”, arrives from London to cause havoc with the ladies.

Ex-Met officer John Cannon is entangled in trouble from the moment he vaults a stile on an early morning run and becomes ensnarled in a discarded fishing-line. The macabre discovery at the far end of this lines leads John into a search for a missing au pair, conflict with the local newspaper and international crime. He follows the trail of a ruthless Portuguese businessman who owns a local Health Spa, where much is concealed and a team of security guards with dogs patrol the grounds.

British organised crime has changed beyond all recognition over the last five years. Youth violence, the drug trade and rising levels of gun crime are rarely out of the news. Beginning on the troubled streets of the inner cities, Gang Land takes its readers on a journey up through the underworld hierarchy until it finally reaches the very highest levels, occupied by shadowy ‘Mr Big’ characters.

When a skeleton is discovered in a deep grave at the edge of an area of woodland, the police discover that it is one of their own officers who disappeared whilst on duty some 30 years earlier. DS Harry Vicary and DI Archibald Dez have little evidence to go on, but as the investigation unfolds they meet ex-police men and women who left the force at the time of the DC’s disappearance, and did so in fear of their own safety, and who, even after all this time, are reluctant to talk.

Surprises are guaranteed, as elephants appear in a London side street; a gang of geriatrics goes on a hearing aid heist and an underworld boss searches for a harp. Join the author in a brush with Adolf Hitler and take a walk on Beachy Head, the UK's favourite suicide spot.

A tip-off leads police to dismantle a pile of rubble in the village of Pendwick, in search of a hidden body. As expected, a corpse is found and is identified as being that of a local businessman who has been missing for 10 years.

Hennessey and Yellich - along with an ever-expanding team -head up the ensuing murder investigation. And then two further bodies are discovered - along with a particularly nasty brand of political extremism involving just a few too many respected local businessmen.

Between 1881, when Churchill was just six, and 1921, the year of his mother's death, Winston Churchill and Jennie Jerome were prolific and energetic correspondents. Their exchange of letters has never before been published as a volume of correspondence, and many of these intimate letters - between two highly gifted writers - are being published here for the first time. A significant addition to the Churchill canon, Darling Winston traces Churchill's emotional, intellectual and political development as confided to his main mentor.

On a dark November evening, Sir Wilfred Saxonby is travelling alone in the five o'clock train from Cannon Street, in a locked compartment. The train slows and stops inside a tunnel, and by the time it emerges again minutes later, Sir Wilfred has been shot dead, his heart pierced by a single bullet. Suicide seems to be the verdict, even though no motive can be found, but Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard thinks again when he learns that a mysterious red light in the tunnel caused the train to slow down.

The decaying body of a woman is discovered in a suburban house in South Devon, following an anonymous tip off to the police. DI Wesley Peterson has problems establishing the woman's identity and, as he begins to investigate her death, another disturbing case arises. Two teenagers are found shot dead at the foot of a cliff. The teenage victims had taken part in an online game called Blood Hunt and it seems they may have been persuaded to play a sinister real-life game, which ended in their murder.

There was a time when Simon Knapp wouldn't have dared go near Edgfield House. As a teenager, he'd only had the nerve to snoop around the grounds. But now, returning 50 years later, he marches straight up to the derelict 18th-century stately home and pushes open the front door. But curiosity killed the cat. When the police arrive, it is with a similar carefree spirit that they carry out a routine search of the house. And they, too, come across something they were not looking for.

A police officer finds a badly injured man lying in a street in the centre of York in the early hours of the morning. The man subsequently succumbs to his injures without regaining consciousness. Hennessey and Yellich are brought in to investigate, along with the other members of the team, Ventnor and Pharoah.

When Matthew Hopkins left his hellhole council flat to seek out funding for his heroin addiction, he spotted a plastic bag on the landing outside. Pouncing on it hopefully, he found it contained only a number of bones. Human bones, but from a number of different people, all victims of the same killer. Both the bags and the bones open up more than enough avenues of investigation for Chief Inspector Hennessey and Sergeant Yellich.

George Hennessey is beginning to accept the inevitable - that age is catching up with him and he needs to delegate to his young up-and-coming team. But there is no substitute for experience as he marshals his troops to investigate two parallel murders committed 20 or so years apart. First, a young man limps back from his father's funeral to report a murder he only now feels able to disclose. But naturally things are not quite as straightforward as they seem.

When a deathbed confession leads to the discovery of a body in Foxfoot Wood, a 20-year-old missing person's case is now a murder investigation and a link is made with a bikers' gang, the Dungeon Kings.

The discovery of a human skeleton and a red rucksack amongst the roots of a fallen tree jolts memories for DI Wesley Peterson: a hitchhiker who went missing in 2008 and was never found. Meanwhile, in the small Devon village of Petherham, a famous TV psychic is the main attraction at a supernatural weekend. But when the psychic dies in suspicious circumstances Wesley discovers a connection between the dead man and the vanished hitchhiker. But was he responsible for her murder? Or has a shady organisation called The Burial Circle been revived in the present day?

When Mike Wakefield's business partner absconded with all the firm's money, Mike and his wife Stephanie feared bankruptcy. Detective Inspector Sloan is at first tasked with solving what appears to be a cut-and-dry case of embezzlement, but that is before unsettling events - tyres slashed, bricks through windows - make it clear that someone is gunning for the printing firm. Mike Wakefield is determined to finish a job that had been in hand for a while in time for a launch party at the grand surroundings of Ornum House. All is going according to plan until one of Mike's employees is found dead.