Showing results by narrator "Peter Wickham" in All Categories

Teenage girls are being picked up on the seafront, and two of them are found dead. DI Jacquie Carpenter-Maxwell has barely set foot on her old patch before she is up to her jet-lagged neck in somebody else’s tragedy.

Having had his retirement snatched from him by malfunctioning technology, Peter “Mad Max” Maxwell finds himself facing yet another year at Leighford High School. His wife, Jacquie, is further annoyed when a family holiday quickly becomes an impromptu Year Seven trip to the Isle of Wight. The situation takes another turn for the worse when the wife of Tom Medlicott, the new Head of Art, goes missing.

Drake: Shakespeare is ordered to protect him. With Drake on land fitting out his ships, he is frighteningly vulnerable. If he dies, England will be open to invasion. In a London rife with rumour, Shakespeare must decide which leads to follow, which to ignore. When a high-born young woman is found mutilated and murdered at an illicit printing house, it is political gunpowder - and he has no option but to investigate.

No death could have been more welcome than Evan Morgan's, or more fitting for the Welcome Home celebrations in the village of Llanddewi. For Morgan had spent the war making money and enemies down in the Vale of Glamorgan with about equal facility. In fact, on the night, it seemed as if a whole posse of murderers had beaten a path to the door of the Manor House.

England, 1659: Captain Kit Faulkner's house is prospering; his eldest son recently returned from a profitable trip to Jamaica, and his daughter has made a suitable match with a young sailor. But the resignation of the Lord Protector, Richard Cromwell, throws England into uncertainty. Will the republic flourish, or will a King return to the throne? Kit is content to let matters take their natural course, but his younger son, Henry, is an idealist with political ambitions. It soon becomes clear that Henry is in much deeper than Kit first realised, and his actions may threaten everything that Kit holds dear.…

History teacher Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell, a bit of a maverick, is sent on a short-term swap with another teacher at a nearby private school, Grimonds.

The school outing to the Museum of the Moving Image is not an unqualified success. For in the darkened cinema complex of MOMI, two members of the party disappear without trace....

There comes a time in every teacher's life when he must face his nemesis - the Ofsted Inspection. On the third day, with the atmosphere at Leighford High decidedly fraught, one of the Inspectors is found stabbed to death. Events move quickly, and the Head is arrested on suspicion of the murder. But Peter Maxwell, Head of Sixth Form, cannot help but notice that Sally Meninger, the Ofsted Humanities expert, is not as distraught at her colleague's death as one might expect....

Winner of the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger, the Barry Award and the Macavity Award. 'Darling, if ever I've met a group of potential murderers anywhere, it's the Bloodhounds.' Thus says one of the members of the Bloodhounds of Bath, a society that meets in a crypt to discuss crime novels. But to their latest recruit, they seem just a gaggle of dotty misfits, until one of them reveals that he is in possession of an immensely valuable stamp, recently stolen from the Postal Museum.

1592. England and Spain are at war, yet there is peril at home, too. The death of her trusted spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham has left Queen Elizabeth vulnerable. Conspiracies multiply. The quiet life of John Shakespeare is shattered by a summons from Robert Cecil, the cold but deadly young statesman who dominated the last years of the Queen's long reign, insisting Shakespeare re-enter government service. His mission: to find vital papers, now in the possession of the Earl of Essex.

While riding the Wild Water, a man is killed in the float ahead, and Max and the girls become witnesses to murder. The corpses multiply as Maxwell nears the end of his search for the truth - but will one of them be his own niece?

The Fischer House was the scene of a vicious crime in the 1920's-a crime which still resonates as the century turns. At its heart was a beautiful, enigmatic woman called Pandora Gibson-Hoare, a photographer of genius whose only legacy is a handful of photographs and the clues to a mystery. Paul Seaton was lured to the house 10 years ago and escaped, a damaged man. Now three students will die unless he dares to go back. But this time he has ex-soldier Nick Mason at his side.

When a severed hand from the vault of Bath Abbey Churchyard arrives on Peter Diamond's desk, he is delighted to hear that, far from being a medieval relic, it is from the 1980s. But the vault is part of the house where Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was written, and a fanatical American professor is thwarting their investigation. Events are complicated even further when the professor's wife goes missing....

A young woman emerges from a coma. Who is she, and why was she dumped unconscious in a hospital car park upon a dark night? She is unable to recall anything, even her name. Then Ada Shaftsbury, a boisterous shoplifter she meets in a homeless hostel, takes up her cause and names her Rose. Peter Diamond is already investigating a suspicious death - a woman has plunged from the roof of Bath's Royal Crescent during a party, and none of the guests seem to know who she is.

Of all the weird characters Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond has met in Bath, this one is the most extreme: a 21st-century private eye called Johnny Getz, whose office is over Shear Amazing, a hairdressing salon. Johnny has been hired by Ruby Hubbard, whose father, an antiques shop owner, has gone missing, and Johnny insists on involving 'Pete' in his investigation. When Diamond, Johnny and Ruby enter the shop, they find a body and a murder investigation is launched.

Peter Diamond, the Bath detective brilliant at rooting out murder, is peeved at being diverted to Professional Standards to enquire into a police car accident. Arriving late at the scene, he discovers an extra victim thrown onto an embankment - unconscious and unnoticed. Diamond administers CPR, but no one can say whether the elderly tricyclist will pull through. But why had the man been out in the middle of the night with an urn containing human ashes?

A wrecking ball crashes through the roof of a terraced cottage in Bath and exposes a skeleton in 18th-century clothes. Can these possibly be the remains of Beau Nash, the so-called King of Bath, whose body is said to have ended up in a pauper's grave? Peter Diamond, the city's most experienced detective, is ordered to investigate, but grappling with historical events causes ructions in his team until everyone is diverted by a modern killing during a fireworks display on the Royal Crescent lawn.

At Leighford High, Peter “Mad Max” Maxwell is temporarily promoted to Head of History when his colleague is chosen for an American exchange. His counterpart is Hector Gold, who is accompanied by his eccentric family including his in-laws, Jeff and Alana O’Malley.

As a New Year begins in Bath, Ben Brace proposes to his long-term girlfriend, Caroline. The problem is that she's the daughter of notorious crime baron Joe Irving, who is coming to the end of a prison sentence. And Ben's father George is Bath's Deputy Chief Constable. But mothers and sons are a formidable force: a wedding in the Abbey and reception in the Roman Baths are set in place before the career-obsessed DCC can step in.

As Head of Sixth Form at Leighford High and a new father, Peter "Mad Max" Maxwell is a very busy man. Despite this, he still finds time for some amateur sleuthing, even though his policewoman "Significant Other", DS Jacquie Carpenter, has decided that, this time, he's leaving any murder investigations to her. But how can he refuse when the school photographer asks for his help after accidentally photographing a murder on the beach?