You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Recently-widowed Richard Hamilton makes love to Mandy Phillips not realising that she is virtually the same age as his son - not yet sixteen. This horrifies him and he commits suicide. His death transforms Mandy from rebellious teenager into a focussed and hard-working young student. On the day of her graduation she consummates a longstanding friendship with fellow student, David Watkins. David and her parents are killed in a horrific accident and she gives up a promising career to look after her younger brother. That leads to further experiences, including one with Richard's son, that have deeply distressing outcomes. Out-of-the-blue, Mandy receives an invitation to join her former tutor at a lecture he is giving at Nottingham University. He confesses that his invitation is a cover for a much deeper purpose and he proposes marriage. At last happiness seems to beckon but might her relationships be cursed by an African wedding bracelet she has worn since the day before she met Richard?
Peter Sinclair is a reasonably intelligent, fairly sociable, retired business executive, a family man attempting to carry on leading a full life, travelling and seeking safe adventures as befits his years. Family holidays should be pleasant, fun-filled times. Unfortunately, although he does not seek it, trouble seems to be attracted to Peter - not the what-a-pity sort of trouble you might expect of someone of his age and experience but serious trouble which might lead to his ultimate downfall. Crisis in Croatia sees him falling foul of a paramilitary group determined to achieve independence within Croatia; in Jewels of the Canaries he gets drawn into an attempt to smuggle stolen diamonds into Spain; in The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Sea Salt he gets lost in a maze of smugglers' caves on the North Yorkshire coast; and, in Old Man of Hoy, he stumbles across an illicit Orkney whisky distillery with consequences far beyond his, and perhaps the reader's, expectations.
When Sarah Stephenson is found murdered and sexually abused in the Tyne-valley market town of Hexham, suspicion falls initially on her husband, George, and then on her lover, Tony Raine. The brutal murder and sodomy of a man with sexual connections to George's lover, Jenny Maxwell, bears some similar hallmarks and links to the first death. When Tony Raine is murdered, all the evidence points to his minder, Ivan Petrovski, an illegal immigrant, but Elspeth decides that they have arrested the wrong man.