Murder Room
36 total works
George Drake, the former Commander at Scotland Yard and nemesis of John Raven, is out of prison having served a sentence for police corruption. In court, Drake vowed retribution on Raven, who was instrumental in his conviction, and now he's out to snare him.
When heroin is planted on Raven's houseboat and in his wife Kirstie's camera both husband and wife are arrested, but what will it take for John Raven to clear their names?
'Quick moving and sure footed, with sharp, realistic London details' Times Literary Supplement
While John and Kirstie Raven are in Paris they come across an old college friend of Kirstie's, Kirk Cameron. Learning he is coming to London in an attempt to raise some funds, Kirstie insists he stay with them on their houseboat in Chelsea.
What Cameron doesn't tell his hosts is that he has agreed to help a casual acquaintance in a little 'industrial espionage': and what Cameron hasn't been told is that he is to be involved in robbing a safety deposit box . . .
When Martin Mallory falls in love with a beautiful student, he has no idea the trouble it will cause. Suddenly Li Cho disappears from the secretive Wycherly Foundation for Religious Studies. The principal, Ludovic Lambert, says she has been transferred, but won't say where.
In desperation, Mallory arranges for an ex-con friend to break into Lambert's safe where he has heard the transfer list is kept. But the piece of paper they find is far more sinister than a simple list of student transfers.
Ritchie Duncan, a convict, is released from prison and decides to go clean. But when he is handed some top secret film containing electronic data by a girl in a bar there ensues mayhem and murder. The film is the property of her communist agent boyfriend, and when she refuses to surrender it her connection is killed and she is kept quietly alive in a nursing home until Duncan can save her.
'Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller' Guardian
Gerry Steel's loyalty to the man he worked for is total, and he will stop at nothing to ensure that Sullivan, on trial on an attempted murder charge, goes free.
Once he has fixed the jury, and is assured that it will hang, Steel assumes there is nothing standing in the way of Sullivan's freedom. And there isn't - apart from the man himself . . .
Paul Gregory, a Canadian confidence trickster operating in London, targets a wealthy Canadian woman in Britain to sell her collection of valuable coins. When she agrees to give him legal control over the sale, he completes the deal without her knowledge, stashes the proceeds in a safe deposit box, and then deliberately waits to be caught by the police. Gregory plans on getting a five-year sentence, with time off for good behaviour, and then collecting his loot when he is released.
But when the judge hands Gregory a ten-year term, his only way out is escape...
The charge against Shane Stafford was assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Stafford had attacked gossip columnist Gavin Legge. Legge had been engaged to Shane's twin sister. In Shane's view Legge had not just let down his sister, but had hounded her to suicide.
It was the custom of the Stafford clan to stick together. Shane's attack on Legge had been public and conspicuous. The police believed they had an open-and-shut case. But did they?
Scott and Usher both need money, and they need it badly. One to save his farm, the other his future. Usher is an experienced criminal and housebreaker, but Scott is a rookie - he's desperate for cash, but petrified of the implications that his actions might have.
To make enough money for their purposes, the pair must commit at least two burglaries - but when things go wrong they discover themselves capable of a degree of violence and level of treachery that lead to a climax of nightmarish proportions.
It was largely chance that took Dougal Macneil to the empty racetrack that morning, but when he inadvertently sees - and photographs - something he shouldn't he is soon under threat from a seemingly omnipotent force.
Colonel Weber, head of police of the tiny Central American country of Montoro, is sheltering a former Nazi whose name is high on Israel's most-wanted list. And on the face of it he holds all the cards: control of the police force, the trust of government officials - and Macneil's wife, whom he is holding in 'protective custody'. But Macneil is not an adversary to be underestimated . . .
Neil MacFarlane, a gentleman gambler on the French Riviera, is caught in a run of bad luck. His only chance to recoup his losses lies in gaining admittance to a private game, far from the eagle-eyed supervision of the Cannes casino croupier. But by the time he has succeeded in extracting an invitation from the rich Whitakers to dinner and a friendly game at their house, he is completely cleaned out. His hotel room is locked against him, and the angry manager refuses to open it until his bill is paid.
Then an enigmatic Englishman makes him a curious offer, which he accepts - and is drawn into a game in which the stakes are much higher than he could ever have imagined . . .
Journalist Hamish Hunter finds himself in possession of a film on which the fate of several people and the relations between two countries - Poland and Great Britain - depend. But who can he trust? His girlfriend, Wanda, daughter of a déraciné Polish count, whose loyalties are more complex than they seem? An old friend in the intelligence racket? The authorities?
Soon Hunter finds himself in desperation, hounded on all sides, and in a climax of nerve-racking suspense it becomes finally clear that no on is on any side but their own.
At the age of 63, Philip Drury was 25 years away from his days as a 'boatrider' - a conman afloat. At that time his criminal partner had been a man called Mark Russell. In the years in between Drury had built up a hugely successful stud, and become involved in property speculation - and in doing so had lost virtually everything.
Drury was not a man to accept defeat. He needed to locate Mark Russell and give 'boatriding' one last go. A cruise liner is selected, but in the Caribbean where the ship will cruise, two young American conmen have exactly the same idea . . .
John Raven and his wife Kirstie are holidaying in Lisbon at Ilona Szecheyi's villa when Ilona's father Stephen reveals his well-guarded secret: shortly before the communist occupation of Hungary in 1945, he was entrusted with 17 million in government gold bullion. Now, thirty-seven years later, the courts have awarded him full ownership of the money - and the current Hungarian regime is not pleased.
They will stop at nothing to get it back, and when blackmail and murder strike, Raven can't pull out fast enough before he becomes the main suspect . . .
'Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller' Guardian
Struan Dunbar thinks he'll make his fortune with the sensitive Czech computer discs he plans to sell to an English media mogul. But when he travels to Prague to get them, he suffers a fatal heart attack.
His effects are passed on to his daughter, Catriona, but when her boyfriend decides to finish the job Dunbar started, he is also found dead. A desperate Catriona calls on ex-cop John Raven to travel to Czechoslovakia where more than a murder mystery awaits.
'Eyes of the Goat has all the hallmarks of a good yarn' Evening Express
Newly extradited to England from California on charges of fraud, Philip Page faces a long prison sentence. The police are already convinced of his guilt, having been furnished with apparently watertight evidence by an anonymous informant, but Page believes he has been framed.
Released on bail, he sets about unmasking the mystery witness. When maverick investigator John Raven is called by one of the suspects, Page and Raven soon realise they want the same thing. So begins a gripping race against time to expose the source of the evidence and clear Page's name.
Paul Henderson is a big time jewel thief on a run of bad luck. He has a seven-year-old daughter to support, so when he's offered a partnership in the biggest heist of all time he decides to try to take the baubles and run.
He reaches Switzerland, where the crime is to take place, and wangles an invitation to a gala only to be confronted by a double threat, a double cross and a kidnapping. And all this is before the night of the burglary arrives . . .
'Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller' Guardian
When ex-Detective Inspector John Raven goes on jury duty, the trial he attends is the prosecution of an Englishman and his German girlfriend for heroin smuggling. Raven is convinced the girl has been duped, but she is sentenced while Pelham, her 'lover' goes free.
When the girl commits suicide in jail, Raven is determined to expose the truth. Following the trail of her missing diary and using Pelham as a stalking-horse, Raven unravels a ruthless international conspiracy.
'Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller' Guardian
Every thief dreams of committing the perfect crime. Cameron, Thorne and Gun are convinced that the jewel robbery they have planned cannot possibly go wrong, but jealousy mistrust and fear doom the enterprise from the start.
One of them dies a slow, hideous death; the other two find they have walked into hell. Soon, a beautiful woman and two desperate men find themselves trapped by their own actions. And when the thread of tension snaps they learn that death can indeed be a friend.