Showing results by author "Ed James" in All Categories

DI Sam Winter is pulled into the abduction of Barnaby and Marina Harkness, taken while their father—MSP Chris Harkness—sat in a Holyrood committee room, doing his best to shield a billionaire from a financial scandal that could bring them both down. Harkness wants the police kept close enough to look cooperative and far enough away to be useless. The press want access. And the powerful men circling the family want the whole thing to disappear quietly.

A newborn is taken from a locked house in Edinburgh. No ransom. No witnesses. Just an empty cot and parents with power to burn. DI Sam Winter is called into the abduction of nine-week-old Kai Drummond, taken while his wealthy parents were out celebrating the launch of their high-profile charity foundation. The family want results fast, the press want blood and the politicians circling the Drummonds want the story buried.

Met cop DI Rob Marshall is hot on the trail of the serial killer known as the Chameleon, who has abducted, tortured and killed a series of young women in Northwest London. As they close in, the Chameleon—who switches identity to get close to his victims—shoots Marshall’s partner and escapes.

During the Edinburgh Festival, DCI Rob Marshall answers a call that lures him to Duddingston Loch, where he witnesses a woman drowning. At the exact same time and hundreds of miles south in London, Met DI Sam Winter takes the exact same call–and can't save a man from burning to death near the Notting Hill carnival.

As Acting DC Scott Cullen works with DC Craig Hunter to track down a witness who didn’t show during a court case, they stumble upon another crime–two homeless women, dying of a suspected heroin overdose. As they investigate, they uncover a far-reaching criminal empire, dealing death and misery to Edinburgh’s underclass. And come across another investigative team who may not be exactly on the same side. As the case brings two cops together and drives a wedge between another pair, can Cullen and Hunter rescue the witness and bring her assailant to justice?

Ten years ago, Marshall profiled a serial killer the press had dubbed the Shadow Man, who killed six young athletes at remote sites in cold blood, and he worked with Northumbria Police to catch the perpetrator. But the Shadow Man kept the burial locations of the final three bodies to himself. Tired of the passivity, Marshall quit profiling and joined the police. Now a detective inspector in Police Scotland’s Borders Major Investigation Team, Marshall is summoned to HMP Frankland in County Durham, a.k.a. the Monster Mansion.

DI Rob Marshall is stuck in Gartcosh, leading the new Behavioural Sciences Unit – a staff of one and a third – where he’s executing a fruitless hunt, profiling every single murder in Scotland just in case they’re serial cases. But when a young Peebles woman’s body is discovered in Neidpath Tunnel, disused since the sixties, Marshall is called in to consult on a case on his old home turf. Paired up with his replacement, a cop who’s disinterested in the work, Marshall must tread a line between helping and not jumping to conclusions.

Holly Fenwick thought she had left her nightmare behind. Twelve years ago, she narrowly escaped the clutches of a brutal serial killer. Now, while she films a documentary in Eyemouth in the Scottish Borders, to recover from her ordeal and rebuild her life, she spots a figure eerily similar to her former captor. She rushes in, only to find no trace of the man but a chaotic crime scene–and a missing woman.

On a cold Christmas Eve in Edinburgh, Detective Constable Scott Cullen investigates the gruesome murder of a local businessman. Battling a brutal hangover and with the lure of a promotion dangled in front of him, Cullen has the lingering feeling his days as a cop might just be numbered.

Meet PC Craig Hunter of Edinburgh's Local Policing Unit. Ex-Army. Ex-CID. Back in uniform. A straightforward domestic call out twists out of control when 16-year-old schoolgirl Stephanie Ferguson alleges her stepfather, Doug Ferguson, has been abusing her. Hunter is soon working with DS Chantal Jain of Police Scotland’s Sexual Offences Unit to kick off the prosecution. But before a full statement can be taken, Stephanie disappears from hospital.

A broken body. A secret with deep roots. Just months into his new role, Detective Sergeant Scott Cullen of Police Scotland’s Edinburgh Major Investigation Team is torn by the trials of being a manager. Working a series of serious crimes in Edinburgh puzzling police, assisting the new Sexual Offences Unit, Cullen struggles with his own personal demons. When a bloodied corpse is found in the shadow of Edinburgh’s Dean Bridge, Cullen is back to his bread and butter. But all he has are questions. Who is the victim? Did he fall or was he pushed? And why is he handcuffed?

When campaigner Heather McGill forces Police Scotland to reopen the cold case murder of a local sex worker at Scott's View, a beauty spot in the Scottish Borders, she sets off a chain reaction that threatens to unravel decades of secrets. DCI Rob Marshall is tasked with investigating the crime his predecessors failed to solve–but the evidence leads back to the group of teenagers who found the body, now all grown up with new lives of their own.

When Mandy Gibson, a teenage schoolgirl, disappears in the affluent East Lothian town of North Berwick, DC Scott Cullen finds himself caught in the cross-fire of competitive police politics. When her body is found, the heartbroken parents don’t hesitate to point the finger of suspicion at young Jamie Cook, a tearaway teen with a long history of run-ins with the police. But where is he now?

Reeling from a recent shocking revelation, DI Simon Fenchurch is struggling to hold it all together. Over a decade of tension, pain and fury could make him explode. When a university student is found strangled to death in her bedroom, Fenchurch is called in to investigate—and the case strikes dangerously close to home. On the surface, the victim was a popular, high-performing student. But as Fenchurch investigates, he uncovers secret grudges against her. And evidence that she was living a double life, working on explicit webcam sites for a seedy London ganglord.

Fear stalks familiar ground. Acting DCI Rob Marshall is back in the Borders with a permanent promotion dangled in front of him – but storm clouds are gathering, with his new boss eyeing cutting Marshall’s Major Investigation Team. When a seventeen-year-old boy is found murdered in Hawick, Marshall finds a community on the edge. As his team struggles to connect the dots, what seems like a straightforward case unravels into something far more sinister – the details echo another investigation and Marshall finds himself following a trail of secrets hidden in plain sight.

DC Scott Cullen of Lothian and Borders CID has only been in the job three months. Young, eager to please and desperate to do good. So a missing persons should be an easy case to solve. Right? Fresh from a messy divorce, Caroline Adamson’s future is finally looking up. Her son seems happy and she’s dating again. Trouble is, Cullen can’t find Caroline or the man she met on Schoolbook, the latest social network taking Edinburgh by storm.

Fresh from his recovery from knee surgery and an ordeal that took him to the brink, DCI Simon Fenchurch is back on the job with renewed vigor...and a new boss.

When a leading Scottish politician doesn't turn up at work one morning, it seems like a simple missing persons case to Brian Bain. But then a big news story lands and things don't seem to be so clear cut. Meanwhile, the discovery of a body in Midlothian's Gore Glen leads DI Scott Cullen on a wild chase through nearby Gorebridge and across southern Scotland, while the press close in on Cullen over choices made on a previous case, unearthed during a new mysterious podcast about the police.

The disappearance of a Dundee-based dog breeder sets DS Vicky Dodds and her team on a desperate hunt through the city and the surrounding Tayside. But soon other crimes are committed, with clear signs of escalation, and as the perpetrators' message becomes clearer, Vicky begins to question where her own sympathies lie.

Hogmanay. New Year's Eve. A dead teenager, another missing. One hell of a case. Meet DS Vicky Dodds. Settling down for a nice Hogmanay with her daughter and her best friend, a phone call pulls DS Vicky Dodds into work and to a deadly new case. A teenage girl, her body cooling in a cold, dark supermarket car park. Found next to her friend’s car, but the driver’s missing too — has the killer taken her? Or is she the killer?