Showing results by narrator "Tim Bruce" in All Categories

The ancient curse of Carnaby Castle has begun taking victims again—either that, or someone’s very cleverly done away with the new young bride of the philandering family patriarch, and the chief suspect is none other than Carnaby, London’s finest club steward. Anty Boisjoly’s wits and witticisms are tested to their frozen limit as he sifts the superstitions, suspicions, and age-old schisms of the mediaeval Peak District village of Hoy to sort out how it was done before Carnaby’s served his last scotch-and-soda.

Escaped criminal Eddie Myers has been presumed dead until he is discovered in Spain by ambitious young police officer, Larry Jackson. Jackson's attempt to capture Myers quickly spirals into an obsession. When a nerve-wracking extradition sees Myers back on English soil, he finally agrees to talk - but only to the officer that brought him in. Myers' deadly charm soon brings Jackson into his web, forging a friendship that wreaks havoc on his life and soon leads to fatal consequences...

Every time you hear his voice, another child will die. DCI Robert Kett’s family may be whole again, but he is a broken man. Suspended from duty, he takes his girls out of the city for a much-needed holiday on the Norfolk Coast. Instead of the peace he desperately needs, however, Kett finds a community in chaos. Four teenagers are missing, and time is running out before they meet a horrific fate. Kett must follow a deadly trail of clues left by the man who took them, the only person who knows where they are. There’s only one problem. The kidnapper is already dead.

DCI Kett is back, heading Norfolk Constabulary’s brand-new Extreme Crime Task Force. And it’s just in time. The body of a woman bound in thorns has been discovered in Norwich’s historic Cow Tower. In her mouth is a severed finger wrapped in a scrap of red cloth, and the first few lines of a fairy tale. “Once upon a time, a young maiden waited to be saved from a hideous monster.” The finger belongs to another missing woman, and if Kett, Porter and Savage want to find her alive they must follow a chain of blood-drenched riddles, each victim leading to the next.

Edmund Harkins has gone missing. Few in Bampton liked him, knowing him to be a wife-beater and distinctly unsavory character, so when some hungry pigs unearth his corpse from a shallow grave, there is hardly an outpouring of grief. As bailiff, it is Hugh de Singleton’s duty to bring Edmund’s killer to justice. But where is he to start investigating when almost everyone in the village has a motive? And when everyone is pleased to see the scoundrel dead, who knows how far they might go to help someone get away with murder?

In the middle of one of Norfolk’s most brutal winters, a frozen body is discovered on the legendary Stone of Lyng. With Robert Kett out of action, the case falls to DC Kate Savage and DI Pete Porter, and it quickly becomes clear to them that the young man wasn’t just killed—he was sacrificed. And he isn’t alone. Within a week, another dead man is found on one of Norfolk’s ancient stones with the same unthinkable mutilations. Somebody is acting out a ritual, and if Savage and Porter can’t stop them then many more people will die.

On the Day of the Dead, the citizens of Venice make their way to the cemetery island of San Michele to pay their respects to the departed. When an empty coffin is unearthed in the English section of the graveyard, a day of quiet reflection for Nathan Sutherland becomes a journey into the dark past of a noble Venetian family. A British journalist, investigating the events of 40 years previously, disappears. A young tourist - with an unhealthy interest in Venice's abandoned islands- is found drowned in the icy lagoon. A terrible secret is about to be brought to light.

Master Hugh won the Black Prince’s favor when he helped to ease the Prince’s illness. Now, in the autumn of 1372, the prince is suffering a relapse and sends to Bampton for Master Hugh to attend him. While at dinner in Kennington Palace, Sir Giles, the knight who escorted Hugh to London, is stricken and dies. Poison! Sir Giles is not popular, and there are many who would gladly see the fellow done away with, except for Prince Edward.

When Bampton’s coroner, Hubert Shillside, does not return from a trip to Oxford, Master Hugh de Singleton is called. Concerned for his old friend, Hugh takes to the road to investigate. Travel is safer than in times hence but, out of sight of prying eyes, it is still unwise to travel alone. Hugh finds a body, stabbed and left to rot, but it is not the body he was expecting to find. Indeed, reports of pillage, attacks, and chaos on the roads out of Oxford suddenly seem rampant. Hugh must ascertain whether the incidents are random, or whether something darker is afoot.

It’s a classic, manor house, mystery-within-a-locked-room-mystery for Anty Boisjoly when a death is foretold by a mystic that Anty’s sure is a charlatan. But when an impossible murder follows the foretelling, Anty and his old ally and nemesis Inspector Wittersham must sift the connivance, contrivance, misguidance, and faith in pseudoscience of the household and its haunted history before the killer strikes again.

Kendrick Wroe is found dead in the frozen Shill Brook. Most suspect he has been poaching Lord Gilbert’s fish, though Sir Hugh finds reason to believe this may not be so … Then one of Kendrick’s friends is slain; another seems to be in mortal peril, and in an apparent attempt to throw Hugh off the scent, his comely daughter Bessie is abducted. As the town drops all to find her, the tension steadily increases

Bill Wright’s final evacuation is underway. A route to the bastions in the Pacific Northwest has been mapped out. Supply dumps have been created, and the first batch of evacuees have already departed. For those still waiting to leave, there’s little to do and less to eat, so it was inevitable that some might turn to theft and murder. With spies discovered in their midst, and another attack by the Atlantic pirates imminent, it will take all of Bill’s cunning to prevent this evacuation from becoming a rout. After the outbreak, most people either hid in their homes or fled towards safety.

She has to be OK, I pleaded silently to myself. She has to be. ‘We’ve alerted the RNLI and they’re sending a lifeboat out.’ ‘The RNLI?’ I said, surprised. ‘They do that?’ Saved from the Waves is a heart-warming collection of first-hand accounts from RNLI volunteers of the myriad...

Eight months after the outbreak, Bill Wright is trapped in Ireland. Surrounded by the undead, low on food and lower on water, he's been in this situation before. Unlike before, help is only a rifle-shot away. While waiting for the rescue he is sure will come, he records the turbulent events since his last entry.

Keeping watch over the Easter Sepulchre, where the Host and crucifix are stored between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, is considered a privilege. So it is shocking when it is discovered that Odo, the priest’s clerk, has abandoned his post. But as the hours pass and Odo is not found, Hugh de Singleton is called upon. It is Hugh that finds the dried blood before the altar, and fear grows for the missing man … Will Hugh be called upon to investigate another murder, or will the man be found hale and hearty? But if so, where has the blood come from?

In The Case of the Case of Kilcladdich, golden-age gadabout Anty Boisjoly travels to the timeless source waters of Glen Glennegie to help decide the fate of his family’s favourite ferment, but an impossible locked room murder is only one of a multitude of mysteries that try Anty’s wits and witticisms to their northern limit. Time trickles down on the traditional tipple as Anty unravels family feuds, ruptured romance, shepherdless sheep, and a series of suspiciously surfacing secrets to sort out who killed whom and how and why and who might be next to die.

When his uncle is accused of an impossible crime by the wary and weary and ever leery Inspector Wittersham, Anty’s mum sends him to the wilds of Epping Forest to sort out who could have managed to murder the universally disliked taskmaster of a health resort dedicated to the repression and suppression of the best of the seven sins.

Three months after escaping from London, Bill discovers the true extent of the global war that followed the outbreak. Most of the world has been destroyed, but though ruined farmland and abandoned cities are filled with zombies, there are other survivors and there is a safe haven - so he is told - in a small village on the Irish coast.

Scholar Richard Sabyn, a particularly obnoxious fellow, was believed to have been struck by lightning. However, Master Wycliffe believes otherwise and calls upon Sir Hugh de Singleton for help. Sir Hugh shares Wycliffe’s suspicions and launches a private investigation, learning that it might indeed be possible to make it look as though a man has died from a lightning strike. But who would go to all that effort, and why?

Golden-age gadabout Anty Boisjoly, his valet Vickers, the weary and wary Inspector Wittersham, and a passenger list of howling eccentrics find themselves prey to the sway and spray of the Scilly Seas when what at first seems a simple, unexplainable, locked-stateroom murder twists into a tale of pirate treasure, perilous weather and treacherous endeavours at sea.