Showing results by publisher "BBC Audio" in Thriller & Suspense

It is 1962: the height of the Cold War and only months after the building of the Berlin Wall. Alec Leamas is a hard-working, hard-drinking British intelligence officer whose East Berlin network is in tatters. His agents are either on the run or dead, victims of the ruthlessly efficient East German counter-intelligence officer Hans-Dieter Mundt.

BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of three of Eric Ambler’s best-selling spy thrillers, plus Nick Perry’s play The Battle of San Pietro and a bonus documentary, Ambler at 80. Eric Ambler has been hailed as ‘the father of the modern spy story’. His tense, gritty thrillers introduced a new realism to the classic espionage mystery, and influenced novelists from Graham Greene to John le Carré. This collection brings together three of his best-known novels, adapted for radio with a full cast.

Acclaimed as 'the most thoroughly European of British crime writers' (Guardian), Nicolas Freeling was well known for his novels featuring Dutch sleuth Van der Valk and French policeman Henri Castang. Included in this collection are six stories showcasing both detectives, as well as a bonus programme exploring Van der Valk and his creator.

Patrick Hamilton is renowned for his gritty, slice-of-life tales chronicling the hopes, dreams and obsessions of London's working class in the inter-war years. This collection brings together his key pieces, together with some lesser-known classics and a bonus 2004 documentary exploring his achievements and legacy.

The time, now - the place, outside your window. Three surveillance operatives are on an unspecified job, working for an unspecified employer. Together, they are Beagle Team. Good surveillance operatives have patience, alertness and discretion - this is a series about the other type of surveillance operative. 

Described by H P Lovecraft as 'the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere', Algernon Blackwood (CBE) was the acclaimed and prolific author of numerous ghost stories and horror tales. Throughout his lifetime, he wrote 14 novels, several children's books, a number of plays, and over 200 short stories. This anthology opens with a selection of stories featuring his most influential character, occult detective Dr John Silence.

Alison Steadman and Sue Johnston star as world-weary hack Dee T. Mitchell in these two mystery thrillers set in South Wales. These two gripping crime dramas follow the dogged, imaginative and impressive investigations of Dee T. Mitchell, a reporter on a local Swansea newspaper, as she attempts to uncover the murders of two individuals and in the process exposes deep secrets and cover-ups across the Gower peninsula and beyond.

1546, and the great heretic hunt is underway across England. The radical Protestant preacher Anne Askew has been arrested and condemned to death and Shardlake is ordered to attend the burning. It's a grisly, cruel spectacle that leaves him feeling disturbed. Rumours are circulating that Anne had connections to his protector, Queen Catherine Parr - and if she falls, he could be next.... His unease deepens when a messenger arrives from Whitehall Palace: the queen is in trouble and asking for his help. 

A collection of taut psychological dramas from one of radio’s leading thriller writers. Simon Passmore is an acclaimed author and scriptwriter, who has also produced numerous films and TV series including Foyle’s War. This box set features all six of his compelling, character-driven radio dramas, each writhing with twists and heavy on menace.

A dying woman confesses a terrible secret to her priest along with a cryptic list of nine names. Before he is able to uncover anything more, the priest is struck dead in the fog and the police discover the list in his shoe. Our hero Mark Easterbrook, a historian, learns of a secretive organisation known as The Pale Horse and of their supernatural connections in the village of Much Deeping. The list of names seems to foretell the deaths of several people and Mark must piece together the clues and unearth the connections between them all.

One of the leading ghost story writers of the Victorian era, Sheridan Le Fanu is renowned for his chilling tales of mystery and horror. His pioneering lesbian vampire novella Carmilla was a major influence on Bram Stoker's Dracula, and spawned numerous film adaptations including Hammer Horror's Karnstein Trilogy. Opening this anthology is a dramatisation of that classic tale, starring Anne-Marie Duff as Laura, the lonely girl living in a solitary Austrian castle, who strikes up a dangerous friendship with the mysterious, bewitching Carmilla. 

Kenneth Cranham and Alex Lanipekun star in these 15 hard-hitting crime dramas. Chalk and cheese coppers Max Matthews and Sean Armitage are from different generations and different worlds, but together they make a remarkable team. In this powerful, unconventional police procedural, we join the detective duo in the interview room as they practise their unique style of interrogation in a bid to extract a confession....

It's the summer solstice weekend, and 150,000 people have descended on a farm in the northeast of England for an open-air music festival. Reporting on the event is journalist Zoe Meadows, who files her copy from a food van run by her friends Sam and Lisa. When some of Sam's customers get sick, it looks like food poisoning, and it's exacerbated by the mud, rain and inadequate sanitary facilities. It's assumed to be a 24-hour thing until people get home and discover strange skin lesions, which ulcerate and turn septic. More people start getting ill - and dying.

A master of the psychological crime genre, Patricia Highsmith is most famous for her quintet of best-selling Ripley novels, and her groundbreaking thriller Strangers on a Train (notably adapted as a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock). This extensive collection encompasses her best-known works, as well as selected short stories and three programmes about the author herself and her greatest creation, charismatic anti-hero Tom Ripley.

Christopher Marlowe turns government spy in these four comedy crime dramas. Murder and intrigue are all in a day's work for Kit Marlowe, England's leading playwright and undercover agent in Her Majesty's Secret Service. Amid the squalor and splendour of Elizabethan London, he probes a series of baffling mysteries, aided by his trusty underworld accomplice Bartholomew Ratsbane.

Paul Sellar is an award-winning playwright working in theatre, film and radio. This compulsive collection brings together four of his gritty, modern thrillers, set at the intersection of the murky worlds of corrupt business and criminality.

A gripping BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation based on the second novel in C. J. Sansom's best-selling Tudor crime series. Summer, 1540. It has been three years since the terrible events at Scarnsea monastery, and lawyer-detective Matthew Shardlake is living a quiet life in London - until a summons from Cromwell sees him embarking on another dangerous secret assignment.

Jack Higgins (the pen name of Henry Patterson) was the internationally bestselling author of 85 novels. He shot to fame with The Eagle Has Landed, which sold 50 million copies worldwide and became a hit film. Adapted for radio, it is included here, together with its gripping sequel The Eagle Has Flown and the sensational Falklands War thriller Exocet.

Inventive, intriguing and atmospheric, this eclectic selection of crime, mystery and psychological dramas immerses us in a series of diverse worlds where nothing is what it appears to be, and nobody is quite what they seem. Wide in scope and disparate in style, the stories range from a police procedural and a dark, dystopian eco-thriller to a shocking tale of modern-day slavery, based on real-life events. Created by a host of writers, including BAFTA Award-winning playwright Neil McKay, they are by turn chilling, surreal, haunting and darkly comic.

Jack Frost is disheveled, disorganised and disrespectful. His superiors don't like him. He has a habit of doing things his way - and getting results. But when Denton CID is faced with a spate of major crimes, Frost finds himself under pressure. A young woman becomes the sixth victim of a multiple rapist, a teenage girl goes missing, there's a robbery at the Purple Parrot nightclub, and an old man is injured in a hit-and-run. With all this on his plate, Frost has little time and less patience for paperwork.