John Raven
16 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.
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.
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.
John Raven - the ex-cop with a taste for exotic adventures and voluptuous adventurers - is unexpectedly thrust into the thick of the action.
His Andalusian holiday turns out to be no picnic when he finds himself at the crossroads of the snow-white heroin trail and the blood-red trail of international murder . . .
'A swift, stylish novel' Publishers Weekly
Zaleski is a middle-aged philanderer determined to retrieve the Virgin's Dowry, a jeweled monstrance worth £500,000, which has reappeared for display in an art gallery in Conduit Street in London.
This ageing Polish patriot carries out the crime but in doing so becomes the target for Detective Inspector John Raven of the CID - one of the most ruthless and capable policemen on the force.
'Perfectly fascinating and perfectly written' Chicago Sun Times
Terminally ill Polish refugee Henryk Lamprecht, a decoder for British Security, has a score to settle with the Russian who killed his wife and daughter. As he is close to death, he has no time to lose when an opportunity he has been waiting for turns up.
But now, through a chance meeting with his old friend Zaleski, ex-cop John Raven is involved, and so is Lamprecht's English sweetheart. And so the game of cat-and-mouse begins . . .
'Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller' Guardian
Ex-cop and investigator John Raven becomes involved with a killing carried out in England but arranged by US Intelligence services with the connivance of their English equivalents. And it just so happens that it is a friend of Raven who is manoeuvred by these faceless government agents into carrying out the murder.
When Raven starts asking questions about why his friend has been led into this mess, he discovers that to question such forces is a very dangerous occupation . . .
When a bent London policeman carries out two ruthless murders, it is with the goal of making himself rich through the sale of stolen diamonds. And to cover his tracks he sets up an ingenious labyrinth of false covers and alibis.
But when ex-cop John Raven is brought into the case by accident, it becomes a whodunit with Raven as detective in an exhilarating race against time.
When John Raven is somehow connected to the case of a criminal abortion that ended in death he finds himself embroiled with his old nemesis, former Chief Superintendent Drake of Scotland Yard. But what Drake doesn't realise is the death is only incidental to the plan for a million-dollar heist.
Soon Raven is involved in rescuing a damsel in distress, saving his own skin, preventing a bank robbery and foiling the relentless machinations of his old enemy.
'Expertly plotted' Publishers Weekly
'The action is violent and intricately plotted, but it is completely convincing' Spectator
John Raven - the ex-cop with a taste for exotic adventures and voluptuous adventurers - is unexpectedly thrust into the thick of the action.
His Andalusian holiday turns out to be no picnic when he finds himself at the crossroads of the snow-white heroin trail and the blood-red trail of international murder . . .
'A swift, stylish novel' Publishers Weekly
London's favourite anti-establishment sleuth, John Raven, visits his photographer-girlfriend Kirstie in Paris. Kirstie, it seems, has inadvertently photographed three men involved in a high-class, multi-million-dollar forgery - the mastermind, financier Kent Tyler, sometime actor Rod De Wayne, and forgery expert Paolo Scotti.
The threesome tries to retrieve the incriminating film, which sets Raven on their trail. And by the time Raven and Kirstie track down the villains, ringleader Tyler is set on eliminating his co-conspirators . . .
'Starts off fast and keeps speeding up' Los Angeles Times
When Kirstie Macfarlane's younger brother is framed for stealing a Van Eyck portrait, she puts the case in the able hands of ex-Scotland Yard Inspector John Raven.
Seduced away from his quiet life on the Thames, Raven dives back into the seamy London underworld filled with police corruption and high-handed swindles. Kirstie and Raven soon realise they have more than one opponent and their lives are perilously on the line.
'Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller' Guardian