Hope to Die

From the best-selling author of Cry Baby, the beginning of a brilliant and gripping police procedural series set in Liverpool, perfect for fans of Peter James and Mark Billingham. A woman at home in Liverpool is disturbed by a persistent tapping at her back door. She's disturbed to discover the culprit is a raven and tries to shoo it away. Which is when the killer strikes. DS Nathan Cody, still bearing the scars of an undercover mission that went horrifyingly wrong, is put on the case.

It’s every mother’s nightmare - the abduction of her baby. That’s how it starts for Erin Vogel when she is attacked and left unconscious in her apartment. When she awakes it is to find that Georgia, her six-month-old daughter, has been taken. But Erin is given a chance to get Georgia back. At an unthinkable price. Like most mothers, she has always said she would do anything for her child. Now the strength of that bond is about to be put to the ultimate test.

After a grisly murder in a shabby New York bookstore, Detective Callum Doyle starts receiving sinister phone calls. Doyle is told more deaths are planned but the caller will give him clues, on the condition that he keeps them to himself. As more vicious deaths follow, the pressure on Doyle to find a link becomes unbearable. Does he continue to gamble with people’s lives? Or should he sacrifice everything to defeat a ruthless and manipulative enemy?

In New York a young girl is brutally raped and murdered. Detective Callum Doyle has visited the distraught family. Now he wants justice. Doyle is convinced he knows who the killer is; the problem is he can't prove it. And the more he pushes his prime suspect, the more he learns that the man is capable of pushing back in ways more devious and twisted than Doyle could ever have imagined.

When terrorists use a drone to bring down a plane on one of London’s busiest shopping centres, it ignites a chain of events that will draw in the innocent and the guilty alike. DC Max Wolfe finds himself caught in the crossfire between a tech-savvy terrorist cell and a revenge-seeking, Bible-quoting murderer called Bad Moses.

Midwinter. A child is found wandering in an ancient woodland, her hands covered in blood. But it is not her own. Unwilling - or unable - to speak, the only person she seems to trust is the young officer who rescued her, Detective Sergeant Lucy Black. Soon afterwards, DS Black finds herself moved from a high-profile case involving the kidnapping of another girl, a prominent businessman’s teenage daughter.

There's a serial killer targeting the streets of Newcastle, seemingly picking his victims at random but subjecting them all to the same torturous end. When the Chief Inspector on the case goes missing, it falls on DCI Ryan to track down the man who is brutally murdering women and goading the police to 'catch me if you can'. As everyone becomes a suspect, Ryan and his team get drawn further and further into the case, but for Ryan the nightmare gets closer to home than he could ever have imagined. 

One year ago Alex Towne's body was found. One month ago his mother saw him on the street. One week ago David Raker agreed to look for him. Now he wishes he hadn't. Mary Towne's son, Alex, went missing six years ago. Five years later he finally turned up - as a corpse in a car wreck. Missing persons investigator David Raker doesn't want the work: it's clearly a sad but hopeless case of mistaken identity brought to him by a woman unable to let go of her son.

Gallows View is the first novel in Peter Robinson's best-selling Inspector Banks series. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks has recently moved to the Yorkshire Dales from London to escape the stress of the metropolis. But he soon finds that life in the country is not quite as idyllic as he had imagined. A peeping Tom is frightening the women of Eastvale. Two glue-sniffing thugs are breaking into homes. An old woman may or may not have been murdered....

Two years ago, Julia lost her family in a tragic accident. Her husband drowned trying to save their daughter, Lily, in the river near their rural home. But the little girl’s body was never found - and Julia believes Lily is somehow still alive. Alone and broke, Julia opens her house as a writers’ retreat. One of the first guests is Lucas, a horror novelist, who becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to Lily. But within days of his arrival, the peace of the retreat is shattered by a series of eerie events.

A skeletal body is unearthed in a wooded area of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. DI James Bliss, together with DC Penny Chandler, investigates the case and discovers that the young female victim had been relocated from her original burial site. A witness is convinced that a young female was struck by a vehicle back in the summer of 1990 and that police attended the scene. However, no record exists of either the accident or the reported victim. As the case develops, two retired police officers are murdered. 

He said in sickness and in health. But after Vicki was attacked at work and left suffering with epilepsy, her husband, Daniel, left her for his mistress. So when Vicki gets a call one day to say that he's gone missing, her first thought is 'good riddance'. But then the police find evidence suggesting that Daniel is dead. And they think Vicki had something to do with it. What really happened on the night of Daniel's disappearance? And how can Vicki prove her innocence when she's not even sure of it herself?

Three very different women come together at isolated Baikie’s Cottage on the North Pennines to complete an environmental survey. Rachael, the team leader, is still reeling after a double betrayal by her lover and boss, Peter Kemp. Anne, a botanist, sees the survey as a chance to indulge in a little deception of her own. And then there is Grace, a strange, uncommunicative young woman hiding plenty of her own secrets. 

Kerry Casey thought she'd made a life away from the dirty dealings of her gangster family. Her father wanted to make them legit - her brother Mickey had other ideas, and now it's got him killed. When Mickey's funeral turns into a bloodbath at the hands of a group of anonymous shooters and Kerry's mother is killed in the crossfire, Kerry finds herself at the head of the Casey family and desperate for revenge.

Accused of grassing up a fellow officer and driven brutally out of home and job, DI Grace Fisher is thankful to survive some dark times and find haven with the Major Investigation Team in Essex. Any hopes of a quiet start to her new life are dashed by the discovery of the body of a female student, last seen at a popular bar in Colchester. Grace has her first case. When a second student, also out drinking, is murdered and left grotesquely posed, the case becomes headline news. Someone is leaking disturbing details to a tabloid crime reporter. Is it the killer? Or a detective close to the case?