Crime Fiction
I’ve always been fascinated by what drives people to commit the most heinous of crimes. There is always a reason for it. A reason that comes out of a very twisted mind but a reason that they can use to justify their actions. Crime transcends every social class, every race, gender, sexuality, religion. It’s one of the few things where it can be said that we all think the same. Now I love giving you a great plot with believable characters who find themselves in rather awkward situations, with lots of twists and turns to keep you guessing for as long as I can. A lot of people ask how a nice guy like me can come up with such brutality and wickedness in my crime fiction stories. Well, that’s for me to know and for you to hopefully never find out about.
Beginning with 'In the Shadow of the Tower' DI Layla Khan investigates crime in Britain's premier holiday resort where life for some carries no more value than a bag of fish and chips. The murder of a teenage prostitute begins to take DI Khan and her team on the road to uncovering local council corruption and the devastation caused by a prominent but dysfunctional Blackpool family. The twists and turns continue in 'Murder of the Unwanted' in which a fire at a hotel housing refugees and asylum seekers raises community tensions in the town and the murder of a retired teacher leads DI Khan to making some explosive connections as the murder count rises further.Both available worldwide on Amazon as a kindle and a paperback.
Farrell is a senior detective with the New South Wales police in Australia and when we first meet him, he’s been sent out to the fictional town of Kingsbrook to take over as lead officer at the local cop shop. He brings his daughter Sapphire with him. She’s just finished school and wants to take a year off being starting university. She gets a job in a local café. His wife is a make-up artist on film and TV sets and is often working away. They’ve both strayed off the beaten track in their marriage and one of the reasons he’s been sent out to Kingsbrook is because he recently had an affair with his area commander, a woman who doesn’t take kindly to him choosing his marriage over her. But he has the last laugh on her because he’s immediately given a case that rattles the cage of some senor regional officers who he finds to have been corrupt, and at the end of book one ’The Final Hours’ he realises that he’s quite settling down in Kingsbrook and intends to stay. The second book is called ‘Destined for Murder’ the third, ‘The Darkness in Him’, and the forth, 'Don't Answer the Phone'.
WHO ARE THE BAD GUYS?
A Senator in the US planning to use the UK to achieve her religion inspired political aims in the Middle East? Surely not. But when a terrorist attack rips through Manchester's Piccadilly station, DCI Lauren Blake begins to suspect she's being fed a pack of lies by the security services. But why? And why has a leading journalist who may know the answer disappeared?
A VERY PERSONAL MURDER
Danny Holdsworth never met his father and when his mother left him to start a new life in the US, she dumped him with her friend Joyce for her to bring him up. His best friend Nigel is murdered when they're about to go off to university and, thirty years later, when Danny has an established career as a TV journalist and presenter, he returns to Cheadle to try and finally find the answer to the still unsolved crime of Nigel's murder. But when he does find all the answers he needs, he wishes he'd left well alone.
THE WILD HEART
When Mark and Iain catch each other's eye, Mark has no idea that Iain is carrying a very dark secret. A former memberof a loyalist paramilitary gang in Belfast, he turned informer on his comrades to escape a murder charge. MI5 moved him over to Manchester and gave him a new identity. Mark finds out that Iain isn't his real name and that he continues to work for MI5. They give him one last job to do and then he can be free to start a new life with Mark. But when his former comrades in the gang find out where he is, their aim is to kill him. Mark insists that Iain shows him how to use the gun he keeps inhis flat. And then it becomes a game of cat and mouse as to who gets to who first. And will Mark and Iain be able to start that new life?
Barton is with the Greater Manchester police and there are fifteen titles in this series.Jeff leads a varied team of detectives solving crime in and around Manchester and though he comes across as a genial man, his instincts as a senior police officer are as sharp as steel. He’s a single parent of his son Toby and has a male nanny, a ‘manny’, called Brendan who not only looks after Toby but is also Jeff’s housekeeper. Jeff’s wife died of an aneurism when Toby was a baby. She was of Chinese heritage and Jeff has made sure that Toby has a good relationship with his grandparents who’ve also taught him to speak Mandarin. Jeff has had the odd girlfriend here and there, but he’s never got over his wife’s death. Not really. Not where it counts. And he’s more or less decided to wait until Toby is grown up and on his own way before he turns is attention back to his personal life. When you meet him in the pages of each book, I’m sure there’ll be ladies out there who would want to ‘rescue’ him. But sorry girls, he doesn’t need it. Life for him is bringing up Toby as best he can, being the best police detective he can be, and it’ll be a while yet before he pays any attention to his own personal needs.The last one in this Barton series will be out next year and I think that the story I’ve come up with will provide a fitting end to a character who will always remain one of my absolute favourites.
But who knows, after the last one, he might be back one day
