George Gently
31 total works
She was the most alluring murder suspect he'd ever dealt with, but Gently knew Mimi Deslauriers was key to the execution of an underworld crime boss, and he was determined to prove it.
The unflappable Inspector George Gently has become a household name through the hit BBC TV series starring Martin Shaw. These are the original books on which the TV series was based, although the George Gently in Alan Hunter's whodunits is somewhat different to his TV counterpart. He is more calculating, more analytical, and his investigations are even more enthralling.
This first volume of the Inspector George Gently Collection comprises the original two novels that established Gently as one of Scotland Yard's fictional finest.
These are the stories on which the hit BBC TV series was based, written with a charm that conveys Alan Hunter's love of the East Anglian setting and demonstrating his expert use of dialogue to keep the plot moving along at a cracking pace.
The first of Gently's cases, Gently Does It, has him enduring the holiday from hell when he is caught up in a mysterious murder and locks horns with the local police over their handling of the affair. In the second book, Gently By The Shore, other people's holidays are disturbed when Gently is called in to investigate the discovery of a body on a pleasure beach.
Willows, waterlilies, gliding sailboats . . . the Norfolk Broads in summer seem the perfect place for novelist Stella Rushton to recover her equilibrium after being agonisingly and humiliatingly jilted. An aquaintance, the elegant, musical-comedy writer Simon, who has a house full of visiting theatre folk, lends Stella his riverside cottage and a boat; but it is Keith, one of Simon's house-guests, who best restores Stella's shattered pride.
Keith, young, vulnerable and awkward, falls instantly in love with Stella, watching her with tongue-tied yearnings as their boat skims up the sunlit Broad, and swimming alone down the dark waters to catch a glimpse of her at midnight. Stella remains cool and amused, but Keith's uncontrollable passion is a balm to her wounded heart.
Her detachment, however, is brought to an appaling end when a tragedy occurs on the Broad. It is compounded by the realisation soon afterwards that what happened was not a accident.
As Stella, horrified, comes reluctantly to suspect the one person she likes, she has no one to turn to for advice but the big, quiet, pipe smoking man who sits fishing on a houseboat moored nearby. Chief Superintendent George Gently, though on holiday and incognito, finds once again that crime seeks him out . . .
There was no sign of a struggle, no wounds or bruises. To Gently, it looked like Vivienne had simply lain down and died, yet he knew she had been murdered.
The Chief Inspector George Gently Case Files
Alan Hunter
The unflappable Inspector George Gently has become a household name through the hit BBC TV series starring Martin Shaw. These are the original books on which the TV series was based, although the George Gently in Alan Hunter's whodunits is somewhat different to his TV counterpart. He is more calculating, more analytical, and his investigations are even more enthralling.
In a lonely thicket of gorse near the Suffolk coast, a man lies dead on a summers afternoon: Frederick Quennell, amateur yachtsman and head of a successful local firm of printers. Later examining the site, Chief Superintendent Gently (newly married to Gabrielle Orbec, and reluctantly in charge of the investigation) wonders who wanted Quennell dead.
There is no shortage of suspects, as the Suffolk police point out. Quennell's neglected wife is deeply in love with an artist - a man moreover, who's been suspected of murder once before. What about Raymond Tallis, who headed the printing firm until Quennell took his place? Tallis's own family affairs are complex: his brother Arthur drowned in a yachting accident, with Tallis and Quennell both on board at the time, and Tallis then married his brother's widow . . .
In the tranquil Suffolk countryside, scented with heather and sea-breezes, Gently sets to work to disentangle the emotional bonds - the jealousy, love, hatred, and remorse - that enmesh the dead man's family and friends. And he starts by contemplating not just one previous death, but two . . .
This was no suicide, however it looked - too many people wanted Adrian Stoll dead. From an embarrassment of suspects, Gently had a very tangled tale to unravel.
The unflappable Inspector George Gently has become a household name through the hit BBC TV series starring Martin Shaw. These are the original books on which the TV series was based, although the George Gently in Alan Hunter's whodunits is somewhat different to his TV counterpart. He is more calculating, more analytical, and his investigations are even more enthralling.
Discover the first four titles in the George Gently series at an unmissable price
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GENTLY DOES IT
The last thing you need when you're on holiday is to become involved in a murder. For George Gently, it is a case of business as usual. The Chief Inspector's quiet Easter break in Norchester is rudely interrupted when a local timber merchant is found dead. His son, with whom he had been seen arguing, immediately becomes the prime suspect, although Gently is far from convinced of his guilt. Norchester City Police gratefully accept Gently's offer to help investigate the murder, but he soon clashes with Inspector Hansom, the officer in charge of the case. Locking horns with the local law is a distraction Gently can do without when he's on the trail of a killer.
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GENTLY BY THE SHORE
In a British seaside holiday resort at the height of the season, you would expect to find a promenade and a pier, maybe some donkeys. You would not expect to find a naked corpse, punctured with stab wounds, lying on the sand. Chief Inspector George Gently is called in to investigate the disturbing murder. The case has to be wrapped up quickly to calm the nerves of concerned holidaymakers. No one wants to think that there is a maniac on the loose in the town but with no clothes or identifying marks on the body, Gently has a tough time establishing who the victim is, let alone finding the killer. In the meantime, who knows where or when the murderer might strike again?
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GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM
Time spent messing about on the river isn't supposed to end with a brutal murder. The staff at Stoley's Boatyard were used to holidaymakers returning their pleasure cruisers a little late after a week or so exploring the network of waterways around Norchester. They were not used to finding their yachts burned almost beyond recognition with the charred remains of a client still aboard.Taking on the murder investigation, Chief Inspector George Gently faces an enquiry like no other. Somewhere beneath the lies of the victim's wife, somewhere obscured by the brittle edge of her daughter's fear, somewhere hidden by her son's hysteria, lies the truth. Gently's only hope is to sweep aside the litter of chaos and confusion to uncover the identity of the killer.
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LANDED GENTLY: Having been invited to spend Christmas in the country, fishing for pike, Gently finds himself hunting a completely different predator when a guest at Merely Hall, a nearby stately home, is found dead at the foot of the grand staircase on Christmas morning. At first the tragedy is assumed to be a simple accident, but Gently is not one to jump to conclusions and is soon in no doubt whatsoever that this was murder. Merely produces the finest tapestries in England but the threads that Gently must unravel in his investigation are more complex than any weaver's design, with everyone from the lord of the manor to his most lowly servant falling under suspicion.
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'Charming whodunnit'
When a dilapidated cargo ship sinks, killing the illegal immigrants packed in below decks, the man responsible goes free, but not for long. Two weeks later hi is found dead in bed with a knife in his back.
Human trafficker Thomas Blackburn lived and died in the heart of London's West Indian community and, when the attitude of the local murder squad Chief Superintendent is deemed likely to aggravate race relations, George Gently is called in to oversee the case.
But as tempers flare within the community, fuelling the fires of racial conflict, time is not on his side . . .
Trouble seems to follow Chief Superintendent George Gently even on a French vacation. While day-dreaming by the quaint old harbour in Honfleur, violence strikes. First he is thrown into the water, then shortly afterwards someone tries to shoot him, narrowly missing him on two occasions. Gently is mystified, as are the Honfleur police. He knows of no enemies, French or English, or of any reason why anyone should be after him. Local police think he may have upset the plans of a thief stalking the Antiques Fair just opening in Honfleur, but senior officials from Paris have a much graver theory.
In company with the charming Gabrielle Orbec - who may or may not be an accomplice of Gently's attacker - Gently plays the role of decoy. Apparently just a sightseer on the beaches of Normandy and in the sunlit, cobbled market squares, Gently, with the French Surete close behind, lays a trap for a very much wanted man.
The burning of a light aircraft in a lonely field in Scotland and the daring kidnap of French industrialist Hugo Barentin are, on the face of it, two unconnected incidents. But there is a tenuous link: the mysterious Gabrielle Orbec has suddenly checked out of her home and disappeared. Chief Superintendent Gently, shortly back from France himself, is called on again as events from the 'Hornfleur Affair' are thrown into a new, and painful, relief.
Is Gabrielle still involved? And, if she is, will Gently be quick enough to beat her to the showdown and to deflect his colleague, Empton, from precipitating a bloodbath? With no time to spare Gently pits himself against the hooligans on both sides of the law, and against a woman determined to sacrifice herself to save a man who was kind to her and to salvage her conscience.