Showing results by author "Andy Maslen" in All Categories

DS Kat Ballantyne came to the crime-writing festival for an escape. Instead she’s walked straight into a murder scene. Moments before he’s due on stage, a famous novelist is found dead in a locked room. It looks like natural causes, but Kat sees tiny clues that suggest murder. As she investigates, she uncovers literary rivalries, personal vendettas and hidden agendas. Is there anyone who didn’t have a motive to murder Mark Swift?

Fifteen years ago, a serial killer was on a rampage murdering young women in Middlehampton. Then, suddenly, the killings stopped, and the murderer was never found… So when the body of another young woman is found bearing the twisted killer’s unique hallmark—the overpowering stench of lavender and an origami heart—DS Kat Ballantyne knows this can only mean one thing: the killer is back.

Barely a month since his promotion to Inspector, DI Ford is called in to investigate the murder of a young nurse and her son in a small flat in Salisbury. There are few clues, and no apparent motive, but Ford can sense that there's a serial killer at work. After all, he knows from brutal personal experience how killers cover their tracks.... It's been six years since Ford lost his wife in a climbing accident - an accident he caused. He is desperate to keep the truth hidden, especially from his son, Sam.

After a dog walker discovers human remains in a badger sett in the idyllic Salisbury countryside, DI Ford is called in to lead the ensuing murder investigation. When a second victim turns up in a nearby pond, Ford is determined to find the connection. Both victims met their fate near the sprawling Alverchalke Estate, ancestral home of a decorated war hero and his family. One was a dogged eco-activist and vocal critic of Lord Baverstock. The other was a petty criminal and poacher, youngest brother of a notorious local crime family.

As bogus corruption charges loom over her, DS Kat Ballantyne finds herself deskbound and stuck with cold cases. Her hated boss, DI Carver, has given her just one week to explain how £50,000 found its way into her bank account. If she can’t, she’ll be lucky to have a desk at all. Then a close friend calls her from a murder scene, claiming to have strangled a local gangster’s wife. Kat has no choice but to disobey orders and investigate. Despite overwhelming forensic evidence supporting her friend’s confession, something still doesn’t add up…

DS Kat Ballantyne is still reeling from a revelation that turned life as she knew it upside down. But when a dog walker discovers the body of a woman among the standing stones known locally as the Three Sisters, there’s no time to focus on her own troubles. Kat is drawn back to work to investigate. At first, the death appears to be an accident. But then Kat discovers an infinity symbol branded onto the dead woman’s abdomen.

When you want to take power, call the SAS. A right-wing billionaire is standing for Parliament. He enlists the help of ex-SAS soldier, Gabriel Wolfe. Gabriel left the Army after a covert mission went disastrously wrong and has sworn never to cause another man's death. It quickly becomes clear that Sir Toby Maitland's ambitions extend far beyond a seat as an MP. When an ex-contact in Swedish Special Forces, now working for MI5, contacts Gabriel, he realises he has little choice but to try to stop his employer.

A bomb threat at Middlehampton’s Powerhouse music venue sends DS Kat Ballantyne spiralling into a nightmare—her husband and son are inside. As the city reels in terror, Kat fights to keep her family safe while being pulled into another deadly case that may well be connected… A journalist investigating a controversial football club takeover makes a chilling 999 call before collapsing. Hours later, he’s dead. His apparent murder marks the beginning of a dangerous trail of corruption leading to a foreign royal family. Or is the killer closer to home?

A young female soldier is found on Salisbury Plain, her throat cut and a bloody knife in her dead hand. Everyone assumes that she killed herself. But something doesn’t feel right to DI Ford; the whole scene seems staged. Convinced of foul play, and despite fierce opposition from the army brass and his own superiors, Ford launches a murder investigation.

Things have been difficult for Annie since her husband left; her teenage daughter, Isla, has become a ghost of her former self. Annie's terrified that Isla might hurt herself, and she'll lose her, too. So when Annie receives a video of herself crying at Isla's funeral, she's immediately sick to her stomach. Confused and horrified, Annie races upstairs to check on Isla, who is perfectly alive and well. The video has been faked. But who sent it and what do they want?

Kasym brings the long-bladed knife up so Chloe can see the orange glow of the passing streetlamps reflected in the polished steel. The move works. It usually does. She becomes completely still. Sarah, Chloe's mother, stares open-mouthed at the blade. It has a very narrow tip and glints viciously along its stone-whetted edge. So begins the kidnapping that plunges Gabriel Wolfe into a search and rescue mission in the Baltic state of Estonia.

A suicide bomber boards a crowded bus in central London. Ex-SAS captain Gabriel Wolfe is having a coffee just yards away. In the ensuing carnage, Gabriel is plunged into a bloody memory of his last, botched mission. Plagued by visions of the dead comrade he left behind, Gabriel now freelances for The Department, a secret British Government hit squad. He wants to take out whoever ordered the attack. Gabriel's desire for vengeance leads him to Eden, the Brazilian rainforest compound of a religious cult called The Children of Heaven.

When he hired an assassin to kill Gabriel, Russian crime boss Max Novgorodsky made a big mistake. The assassin’s bullet missed Gabriel but took the life of one of his closest and dearest friends. Now the former SAS member has one thing on his mind. Vengeance. Halfway round the world, Colombian cartel boss Martin Ruiz sits down in a Japanese tea house to be served by his favorite geisha. But only one of them will leave in one piece.

A debt of honor owed to a triad boss. A desperate search for his missing sibling, kidnapped as an infant. Both urgent. Both dangerous. Both drawing on all his resources as an ex-SAS member. Gabriel Wolfe feels his loyalty pulled in opposite directions.

Detective Inspector Stella Cole was a rising star in London’s Metropolitan Police. Then a hit-and-run driver killed her husband, Richard, a human rights lawyer. Grief drove her to booze and pills. Back at work after a year’s compassionate leave, Stella secretly re-investigates his death and begins to suspect a cover-up. Freelance journalist Vicky Riley was working with Richard to expose corruption buried deep inside the legal system. Unaware that powerful people are out to stop her, she contacts Stella.

A dead man crucified on an oak tree used by pagans. A pentagram carved into his chest. Antlers adorning his lifeless body. A horrific discovery in the autopsy room. All hallmarks of infamous serial killer Ulrik Ahlgren—the "Brain Surgeon." It should be an open-and-shut case. Except Ahlgren is currently locked up in Kumla Bunker, Sweden's secure prison for its most deranged killers.

A former Swedish ambassador lies dead in his swanky Mayfair flat. With his tongue torn out and placed on a Bible. Competing theories swirl. A religious maniac? A psychopath? The truth is far darker than either. DCI Stella Cole’s search for the killer takes her to Sweden. There, she discovers a horrific chapter in the country’s history that throws the case into turmoil. And then more people start dying.

Detective Inspector Stella Cole has almost completed her bloody quest to avenge the hit-and-run killings of her husband and daughter. Only one member of the legal conspiracy who murdered them remains. But he happens to be her boss: Detective Chief Superintendent Adam Collier. And he’s not going to go down without a fight. His first move is to have Stella sectioned. While she’s incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital, he hires a Maltese woman to kill her.

Detective Inspector Stella Cole has only one case: to find - and kill - the remaining members of a legal conspiracy who turned her world into ashes. But their leader, Adam Collier, is her boss. And he’s pulling in friends from the underworld to take the fight to Stella. Chief among them an Albanian drug lord nicknamed The Shark. Regrouping in Spain, Stella makes contact with an old adversary. A retired gangster named Ronnie “The Razor” Wilks. He proposes a deal that tests Stella’s resolve to the limit.

When Gabriel Wolfe, a government assassin afflicted by PTSD, travels to Africa to recover the body of a former SAS comrade, he has the backing of the British prime minister. But every favor comes at a price, and now Gabriel has to complete another hit before he can continue his search for salvation. What he discovers next shakes his faith in everything he trusts. He has marched headlong into the heart of a corrupt web of land deals, blood diamonds, and the global arms trade.