The discovery of the body of a young, red-haired school mistress, lying in a pig-pen with her face half-eaten away, is the beginning of a new investigation for Charlie Woodend. But it is to be an investigation he is soon ordered to abandon when Helen Dunn, the daughter of Wing Commander Dunn - and a pupil at the school where the dead woman taught - suddenly vanishes into thin air. While Woodend and Rutter race against time in the desperate hope of...

A charred body is discovered in an abandoned cotton mill, and the crime scene presents DCI Woodend and his team with many questions, but very few answers. As Woodend attempts to solve a murder with no clues, he must also battle against a police authority blocking him at every turn. And worse is to follow, because Elizabeth Driver, Inspector Bob Rutter's lover, has almost finished the book which could destroy everything he has ever worked for.

Chief Inspector Woodend is called from London to investigate the murder of a teenage girl in a village in Cheshire.

With the newspapers screaming for a quick solution, this is a case no one wants to touch -- so naturally it is Chief Inspector Woodend who finds himself left holding the baby. With his usual panache, Cloggin'-it Charlie quickly immerses himself of the world of television, meeting people he has previously only seen as characters on the screen, learning that while there may be honour among thieves there does not seem to be much on the set of Maddox...

DCI Monika Paniatowski recognises her latest assignment as advisor to the Earl of Ridley's rock festival for what it really is - an attempt by the chief constable to destroy her career. Yet it soon becomes apparent that matters are not as simple as they appear. Why, for instance, did the earl choose to employ the notorious Devil's Disciples motorcycle gang to provide the security for the festival? And to what lengths will his mother, the dowager countess,...

DCI Monika Paniatowski has a bitter personal history with Chief Superintendent Kershaw, but that's not the only reason she doesn't want the investigation into the sudden disappearance of his wife, Elaine, landing on her desk. A young prostitute, Grace Meade, has also disappeared, and yet all resources are being channeled into Elaine's case alone. Monika determines to spend time finding Grace, but when a heavily mutilated body is discovered on the...

It will be no easy task to fill DCI Charlie Woodend's shoes, the newly-promoted Monika Paniatowski tells herself, but, given a little time, she thinks she can grow into them. Yet, with the discovery of a severed hand, time is the one thing she does not have.

Charlie Woodend has a murder to solve. Trouble is, nobody seems to want him to solve it not Eddie, a Liverpudlian thug sent to threaten him; not DCI Bentley; not Deputy Commissioner Naylor, whose word is law in Scotland Yard; not even the dead girl's mother herself. But Woodend cares. He will find the murderer, he promises himself, even if that means putting his career and perhaps even his own life on the line.

"On the day of her official retirement from the Force, DCI Monika Paniatowski looks at the two men and one woman who are no longer her team and thinks: Whatever the future holds, I will always be proud of you. She raises a toast. And just like that, her career as a homicide detective is over. Then, fifteen years later, Monika's former sergeant, Kate Meadows, makes a terrible mistake. Monika doesn't hesitate when Kate turns to her for help. She owes...