Detective Jane Bennett and Mike Lockyer Series

Book 4

'This is just my kind of book' - Ann Cleeves.

The Night Stalker is a compelling crime thriller from Clare Donoghue.

Dead Woman's Ditch. The site of a grisly two-hundred-year-old murder - and a recent hit and run. When a young woman's body is found at the macabre landmark in Somerset's Quantock Hills, DI Mike Lockyer and Sergeant Jane Bennett are called in to investigate.

They find a community gripped by fear and superstition. The locals won't venture out at night, believing there's a man stalking the hills; a phantom cloaked in folklore and legend, keeping the sinister legacy of Dead Woman's Ditch alive.

Confronted by a hostile CID team and a murder victim with close ties to their own squad, Lockyer and Bennett will have to accept what they can't see before they can find what's really there . . .

The Night Stalker follows Trust No One in this compelling crime series.

Never Look Back

by Clare Donoghue

Published 13 March 2014

"Three young women have been found brutally murdered in south London, their bodies discarded in plain view, the victims only yards away from help during each attack. And each time, the murderer gets a little bit bolder. Detective Inspector Mike Lockyer is the head of homicide on the South London police force, and with three bodies on his watch and a killer growing in confidence, he and DS Jane Bennett are frantically trying to find the link between these seemingly isolated incidents. Slowly, the case is also invading Lockyer's life outside the office, and the fact that his daughter matches the victim profile is putting a painful strain on their already fragile relationship. Meanwhile, Sarah Grainger has a shadowy stalker following her every move. Once an outgoing London photographer, Sarah has begun locking herself away, almost too afraid to leave the house. Now her stalker's actions are escalating. He's desperate to tell Sarah a secret...a secret that Lockyer needs to know" --

No Place to Die

by Clare Donoghue

Published 12 March 2015

DS Jane Bennett takes charge of South London's Lewisham murder squad following the temporary suspension of her boss, DI Mike Lockyer. His involvement with a female witness resulted in her murder. Mike returns to work but he's a shadow of the detective he was a few months before.

Bennett gets a desperate call from an old friend to say that her husband, retired colleague Mark Leech, has gone missing. Blood spatters found in the home suggest that she doesn't have long to find him.
When Jane is sent to a site in Elmstead Woods she stumbles upon a sinister murder scene. A tomb has been created, and the body she finds is not Mark's - as she dreaded and suspected - but that of missing university student, Maggie Hungerford. Her killer recorded her last moments, even providing an air supply which was only cut off when the game lost its thrill.

Two men admit to having had a sexual relationship with Maggie. Both deny murder. Someone is lying. And Mark is still missing. When another tomb is discovered, an anonymous tip and mounting evidence suggest a disturbing link which threatens to derail both cases and let a murderer walk free.

Lockyer is shocked into supporting Bennett in a case which becomes ever more ominous and dangerous as the investigation deepens. They know that their hunt is for a killer with a mind so twisted that he, or she, is likely to stop at nothing.

Trust No One

by Clare Donoghue

Published 10 March 2016

Marriage is complicated. It doesn't always work out. Sometimes there are things you discover about yourself and each other which mean the marriage has to end. Sad, particularly when kids are involved - but all pretty normal.

Normal that is, until there's a murder.

DS Jane Bennett and DI Mike Lockyer are called in to investigate one of South London's most difficult and distressing cases yet - where family and friends come under scrutiny in the hardest of circumstances.