Karen Sharpe
5 total works
On the day Karen Sharpe is promoted to Detective Sergeant she loses control and attacks a prisoner she is interrogating. Duly suspended, Karen is investigated and seemingly cleared, but more than a year later the incident still casts a long shadow. When the battered body of a young girl is discovered, it kicks off an inquiry which pushes Karen and a trainee DC, Marcus Roth, too close for comfort, both on and off-duty. The investigation leads to Mary Bradley, currently the carer for a helpless six-year-old boy, Andrew Farrar. As the truth of Mary Bradleys violent past emerges, the inquiry becomes a race against time before Andrew becomes just another one of her child victims. Meanwhile, with the case holding more and more personal resonance for Karen, Marcus discovers that when threatened she has a tendency to ignore the rule book and act on instinct. Before the scores are finally settled Marcus will be wondering whether Karens legitimate world and Mary Bradleys illegitimate one are really any different
The 8th April 1996 was a bad day for Karen Sharpe, the eighth anniversary of something so deeply buried she had hoped to forget it ever happened. But each year it was there again, pushing to get out. And each year she tried to cope in whatever way she could. Most years she turned to booze. But this year that wasn't going to work. Sometime after midnight Phil Leech, her DS and partner on Operation Anvil, is executed in a military style killing, whilst Fiona Mitchell, his pretty 21 year old informant, ends up face up on a South Pennine moor with bullets through her face and chest. Karen had been due to meet both when drink and memories intervened, preventing her from getting there. The police operation to find Leech's killer - Phoenix - is one of the largest in the history of West Yorkshire. Detective Chief Superintendent John Munro is the Senior Investigating Officer. He thinks two middle tier drug dealers - Coates and Varley - are the most likely suspects. Fiona Mitchell was Coates' girlfriend and both men were the targets on Anvil. There is even a rumour of a deeper relationship between Leech and Mitchell. But Karen isn't sure.Odd details keep pulling her back, forcing her to look inside herself and examine her own unclear memories.
As Munro's enquiry focuses its efforts on Coates and Varley, Karen follows her instincts to different and more disturbing clues, embedded in her own secret history. She must confront her past and act quickly if she is to prevent the seed of destruction planted eight years before from wreaking devastating and brutal consequences.
As Munro's enquiry focuses its efforts on Coates and Varley, Karen follows her instincts to different and more disturbing clues, embedded in her own secret history. She must confront her past and act quickly if she is to prevent the seed of destruction planted eight years before from wreaking devastating and brutal consequences.
Terror is only a footstep away...DC Karen Sharpe is on an emotional precipice. A year and a half ago she was the victim of a terrifying crime. Desperately trying to shelter from its effects she has been working simple fraud and theft cases in West Yorkshire CID. But the brutal murder of a young pregnant woman threatens the precarious wall she has built around herself. Drafted onto the squad to deal with the victim's six-year-old child, Karen finds herself overwhelmed by the devastating nature of the attack. As nightmares from her past start to reoccur, her relationships with those closest to her - her partner, Pete Bains, and her thirteen year old daughter, Mairead - begin to crack under the strain. An illicit relationship with her boss promises excitement and escape - a new beginning without the trappings of past horrors and guilt. But life has a savage lesson in store for her. As West Yorkshire erupts in a summer of explosive race riots, events tip Karen into the depths of the very world she has been fleeing.
The daughter of a Bradford judge is kidnapped and a massive, round-the-clock investigation begins. Knowing the chances of Sophie Kenyon surviving will diminish dramatically after the first twenty-four hours, Detective Chief Superintendent John Munro begins to crack under the pressure of holding together an enquiry swamped with leads. Meanwhile, DC Karen Sharpe is pursuing her own single-handed enquiry into historic child abuse allegations: Pamela Mathews says a local MP raped her ten years before. The task of finding corroboration looks hopeless, but Sharpe keeps at it - anything rather than face up to her own tangled personal life, living with a man she doesn't love and caring for a child who thinks she is her aunt. The truth is more complex and frightening, leading back to still unresolved events from a year before. Karen's enquiry uncovers connections with the kidnapping, and, in an explosion of violence and bloodshed, Karen is left fighting not just to find Sophie, but to save herself.
Friday 31 December, 1999. During the early hours of the morning in a luxury central Leeds penthouse, intruders douse a terrified victim with petrol, set him alight and throw him burning from the ninth floor roof garden. DS Pete Bains is on night duty with CID when the call comes in. The body is quickly identified as Nicholas Hanley, a wealthy property developer, but Bains' attempts to pull together an enquiry stall when he cannot locate Hanley's lover, Anna Hart. Unknown to Bains, Hart and her daughter are less than five miles away, kidnapped at gunpoint and struggling to stay alive. Meanwhile, the security services are looking for DC Karen Sharpe. Eighteen months ago she walked out on Bains without a word of explanation. Now she has disappeared for real. What Sharpe has been doing not only connects her to Hanley's death, but has placed her at the disposal of men for whom human life means nothing. The danger is greater than anything she has faced before. If she cannot pull her shattered personality together, the last day of the millennium will be the last day of her life.