Showing results by narrator "Peter Wickham" in All Categories

In the final days of Henry VIII, one man is there to witness the demise of a legend... Master historian Paul Doherty weaves his magic in an epic tale of murderous schemes and a blood-smattered political order.King Henry VIII, a fearsome figure of power and stature, lies upon his deathbed diminished by sickness and haunted by ghosts from his past. Only Will Somers, long-serving jester and confidant, sees all. While Henry is confined to his chamber, Will begins a journal that will document his King's last turbulent days.

With girlfriend DS Jacquie Carpenter back at work, and baby Nolan rapidly growing into a feisty toddler, Peter "Mad Max" Maxwell, Head of Sixth Form at Leightford High, hires an au pair. But one afternoon Max returns home to find that the exotic Juanita seems to have disappeared into thin air. Meanwhile, two walkers are surprised and disturbed when their Border collie digs up an arm on Dead Man's Point.

1949. An unsigned letter arrives on the desk of Chief Inspector Derry of the Canterbury police. Enclosed is a jade pendant, identical to the one that went missing from the body of an actress murdered a decade previously. The case had been shut quickly at the time - the accused vagrant gave a written confession and was sentenced to the gallows - but the necklace was never recovered. Until now. Inspector Madden is asked to investigate the letter's worrying claims by his old friend....

The worst has happened. On the eve of their return to Blighty, Brigg and his fellow National Servicemen find themselves sentenced to another six months in Panglin Barracks. Many of the surviving characters from The Virgin Soldiers live again in these pages: dogged Tasker, the odious Sergeant Wellbeloved, the vulnerable Colonel Bromley Pickering and the comically touching Juicy Lucy.

Published in 1789, The Natural History of Selborne was written by Gilbert White, an English naturalist and clergyman. It comprises White’s letters to fellow naturalists and friends, documenting the flora and fauna of his home town in Hampshire.

It is 1921 and a terrible discovery has been made at a manor house in Surrey - the bloodied bodies of Colonel Fletcher, his wife and two of their staff. The victims have all been stabbed and the lack of disturbance in the house suggests that the attack was one of terrifying speed. The Surrey police force seem ready to put the murders down to robbery with violence, but Detective Inspector madden from Scotland Yard sees things slightly differently.

Queen Elizabeth I is dying, and the king of England’s oldest and bitterest enemy, Scotland, is poised to take the throne. With all her old allies and advisors dead, she turns to the only man she can trust: Henry Gresham. Gresham finds himself unwillingly dragged into the political manoeuvring that will decide England’s next ruler. Involved in the race to be the first to tell James VI of Scotland that Elizabeth has chosen him as her successor, Gresham faces savage attacks on his home and those he loves.

Through a particularly tragic series of events, couch potato Maeve Kelly has been forced to sign up for the Other Half, Bath's springtime half-marathon. What Maeve doesn't know is just how brutal some of the other runners are. As race day draws closer, an Albanian refugee named Spiro makes a run for freedom on the other side of town, escaping the chain gang that has held him hostage and its murderous foreman, who is known to his charges as 'The Finisher'.

It is 1932, and John Madden, former Scotland Yard inspector, is now a farmer in the peaceful Surrey countryside. However, his peace is shattered when he discovers the disfigured body of a young girl hidden in a wood and is convinced the killer has struck before.... When a second body is found, Madden knows there is a multiple killer at large. Allying himself with his old colleagues, and against the wishes of his anxious wife, he immerses himself in one more case.

Bath's top detective, Peter Diamond, doesn't believe in jinxes. So when he's asked to investigate a top TV show plagued by a series of misfortunes, Diamond is unmoved. He's no fan of the show—which glorifies criminals and mocks the police—and the incidents were spread across six years. It's clear this is the press making a sensation out of nothing. So Diamond puts the junior member of his squad on the case. But when young officer Paul Gilbert goes on location with the TV unit and witnesses another near-death incident, Diamond is forced to take an interest.

When Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell takes his kids from Leighford High on an archaeological dig, they uncover a grave. But the corpse was not Saxon, and it wasn’t a king - this was an altogether more recent death. Then a policeman on the case is found dead at the wheel of his car. What knowledge did he possess that led to his death? And does his colleague, Maxwell’s partner, Jacquie Carpenter, unwittingly have the same information? Maxwell locks horns with the great and not so good in a vicious world of skulduggery, academic backbiting and religious mania which can only end in murder.

Haunted by the brutal killing of his UN interpreter wife in Bosnia, ex-SAS operative Ed Coltrane is consumed with the need to hunt down her murderers. Drinking too much and spending too much on his search, his life is going into meltdown. Just as it seems he can fall no further, a former colleague informs him that one of his wife's killers is in London, as a guest of the British government. Certain unofficial figures in the corridors of power would like to see this man disappear, and they'd like Ed Coltrane to accept the contract.

They are the Pessarane Behesht. Sons of heaven. Spawned in war-torn Beirut. Nurtured in revolutionary Iran to wreak vengeance on the enemies of Allah. When the freighter Clarion Call disappears mysteriously in the Gulf, she is carrying a secret consignment of French arms for the Pessarane Behesht in return for the release of a diplomat held hostage. Ex-SAS Major Robert D'Arcy, whose international security firm was protecting the ship, finds himself in the midst of a deadly battle of wills.

Bursting with life and bawdy humour, National Serviceman Brigg is now a Regular Army sergeant defending the Empire in the beds and bars of Hong Kong. Peace-time diversions include sensual fireworks with a pair of delicious Chinese twins and a tender, erotic affair with the lonely wife of an American serviceman.

Julius Hutch has planned to spend his retirement years 'pottering' and worrying about his bills, but wakes one morning to discover a foreign merchant bank has put four million pounds into his account—and won't take it back. So Julius, a humble man, sets out to spend the money helping other people, and wooing Pauline, the local bank teller. Up against an enormous banking corporation and an unsavoury property developer, Julius soon discovers that rather than being crushed by these financial giants as he would have been in the past, he is rendered rather more delightfully impervious.

During a blackout on the streets of London in late 1944, a young Polish land girl, Rosa Nowak, is suddenly and brutally killed. But the police, their resources already stretched by war regulations and the thriving black market, cannot find any reason why someone would want to murder an innocent refugee. For the former police inspector John Madden, the crime hits close to home. Rosa was working on his farm, and he feels personally responsible for not protecting her.

When Alan left school at fifteen little was expected of him. An 'O' level in art is not the most obvious passport to success, but in the ancient greenhouses of the local nursery Mrs T's little lad found his spiritual home, learning his trade and the strange ways of human nature. But

World War Two has ended, but the peace is threatened when a shocking murder takes place in the Sussex countryside. Before long, police discover a link to another killing hundreds of miles away.... Scotland Yard detective Billy Styles is on the case, but a strange twist of fate brings former DI John Madden into the investigations. As the victim count rises, it becomes clear that to catch this serial killer they must act quickly.

The Beecheys were a close-knit family, eight brothers and five sisters under the loving eye of their widowed mother, Amy. As the First World War raged across Europe and beyond, the brothers were one-by-one swept up into its devastating path.

Dave Aston is a dead man walking. He was a member of the elite British SAS. Black Ops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Until that final mission into bandit country. Unauthorised, with no back up. That was when his luck ran out ...Now, he's returned home to an alien civilian life. Everything is lost: his marriage, his home and his self-respect. Down and out on the cold, mean streets of his homeland. There he discovers that the astonishing circle of deceit is complete. But is he just too far down to fight back against a new evil force at work in his own back yard?