Jane A. Adams Livres

Britain's nature year, from the first flower to the last leaf

The new Naomi Blake mystery - A teenage boy is found drowned in a canal, just hours after telling his mother that he killed a man. There seems to have been no link between them, and the boy was a model student, never in trouble with anyone. Naomis friend Patrick knew him, and when he turns to Naomi for help, it becomes clear that the case has complex, tragic roots in the past.

Victor Griffin seemed to be one of the good guys, but that didn't stop someone coming to his home and killing him and his wife. Naomi and Alec find themselves drawn back to face events that happened when Naomi was still a serving police officer - just before the accident that blinded her - and which have now led to murder.

1929. Clive Mason is devastated when his wife Martha is found dead in a horsebox at Southwell Races, her handbag stolen. As DCI Henry Johnstone and Sergeant Mickey Hitchens investigate, it's clear this wasn't a robbery gone tragically wrong - Martha was deliberately murdered. Who was Martha Mason and what was she involved in that led to her murder?

January 5, 1930. On a winter morning, a man dumps a body on Bournemouth beach. The dead woman is Faun Moran, a wildchild in her twenties who was supposedly killed in a car crash the previous autumn. So who was the young woman in the car, and where has Faun Moran been all this time? DCI Henry Johnstone returns to work to solve this baffling mystery.

1930, Leicestershire. Local miscreant Brady Brewer is convicted and hanged for the brutal murder of Sarah Downham, despite his protestations of innocence and his sister's pleas for DCI Henry Johnstone's help. Two weeks later, the body of another young woman is found nearby. Is a copycat killer on the loose, or was Brewer innocent after all?

1928. When two bodies are found washed up in the Kentish marshes, DCI Henry Johnstone and DS Mickey Hitchens recognize one of them as being a known associate of one of the East End's most notorious gangsters. But what were the victims doing in this remote and desolate spot? Is it a set-up? A revenge attack? Or something even more sinister?

The discovery of the bodies of two retired policemen, Walter Cole and Hayden Paul, sounds warning bells to DCI Henry Johnstone. Their deaths were staged to look like suicides, and Hayden left a note containing two words: old sins. Henry is forced to relive an old case he worked on with Cole and Paul. Is someone playing a deadly game with Henry?

1928. A rising star of the silent screen, Cissie Rowe had a bright future ahead of her in the new talking pictures. Not any more. Cissie had died, tragically, many times on screen - but this time it's for real. When Cissie is found brutally murdered in her own home, DCI Henry Johnstone and DS Mickey Hitchens are despatched to the seaside town of Shoreham-by-Sea to investigate. Famed for the quality of its light, Shoreham is home to a film studio and thriving theatrical community. But who among them would want the popular young actress dead? The two London detectives soon discover that no one, including the victim, is quite what they seem - and that the make-believe continues both on and off the famous glasshouse stage.

Retired actress Rina Martin gets tangled up in the brutal murder of a seemingly innocent widow Who would want to kill widowed mother of two Ellen Tailor, a seemingly innocent, inoffensive woman, and leave her body for her children to find? Rina Martin's policeman friend Mac can't find anything that looks like a motive and not much more in terms of suspects. While it is true Ellen didn't get on with her mother in law, it seems hard to believe their arguments escalated into a brutal killing. A former abusive partner seems a more likely suspect, but unfortunately for Mac he seems to have a watertight alibi. But just as the case goes cold, there is a second killing. Are the two linked? Rina thinks so - and Mac has long since learnt that, unfortunately, Rina is often right . . .