When student Meg Hands is found drowned in a Manchester canal, the authorities are only too anxious to classify her death as yet another sad result of alcoholic overindulgence. Dave is unwilling to probe but tentative enquiries reveal a hidden world of vice behind the fashionable screen of Manchester's free and easy drinking scene.
and gradually turns into a twisted path right to the heart of police corruption. As Dave find himself drawn further and further into a web of deceit and danger, he realizes that someone will stop at nothing to find Rachel before he does.
Billy Fox has disposed of fourteen women and gruesome evidence provides an open and shut case. But when David Cunane is employed to help research Billy's 'true life' story he soon reckons that nothing is what it seems. Somebody is trying to beat Billy's total. Or have the police - headed by Chief Inspector Sinclair - got the wrong man?
A baby girl is kidnapped and GBP500,000 is demanded for her return. Due to the unusual nature of her father's work, he refuses to contact the police, but attempts to handle the situation himself. A famous international footballer hires Dave Cunane, head of Pimpernel Investigations, to track down the girl's kidnappers.
Christmas morning greets Dave Cunane sourly. Often known to take the law into hi own hands, he now finds himself in the hands of the law. Framed and arrested for a cold-blooded murder, Cunane turns to the ever-tricky Delise, his part-time lover and full-time assistant, to save his neck and find out who the real killer is.
Maverick detective Dave Cunane steps in when he sees a thug knocking Marti King around, but his actions are misinterpreted not only by her heavy-duty relatives but also his own nearest and dearest - Marti's one of those girls you shouldn't get involved with.
When Fred Travis, multi-millionaire and eccentric political leader, is found with his throat cut and private eye Dave Cunane's card between his fingers, things quickly go downhill for the Manchester detective.
The year is 1847 and the Irish potato crop has failed for the third year in succession. 'Irish Jack' Spellman a highly successful ganger on the vital West Coast railway line from the South of England to Scotland has decided he must go home to County Roscommon to protect his family.Once in Ireland he is arrested for murder and is certain to hang. Joseph Locke, the engineer building the line has a lot at stake but not as much as Irish Jack. Without Irish Jack the line won't be completed on time and Locke's reputation will be ruined.More than prestige is involved, Irish Jack's female friend, Grace Savage, offers herself to Locke in an attempt to win his help. Locke is a well known Liberal Member of Parliament and Grace believes he can tip the scales in Irish Jack's favour but Locke is married and Victorian 'respectability' is in full swing.Enamoured of Grace, Locke sets off. In Ireland he finds problems beside which railway building in rough country is child's play.There is rebellion and intrigue on all sides but with millions dying from famine and disease all around him Locke faces the greatest task of his life to win justice for Irish Jack. Frank Lean has previously published seven novels about Manchester Private Eye, Dave Cunane that are available on Amazon. Frank Lean's crime fiction has received critical acclaim and he was the runner up for the Golden Dagger award of the Crime Writers Association.
* Organisers, are you stuck for an ENTERTAINMENT IDEA for your students, parishioners, social group, society, choir or whatever? Why not try an improvised murder mystery play? With a mid performance break for refreshments it's a pleasant way to pass an evening and even raise some funds * You will need a cast of twelve players (NO ACTING ABILITY is needed) and one of the twelve to be the MC to steer events and guide the audience. The twelve (apart from the MC) are all SUSPECTS in a murder investigation.* Each character is given his or her 'part' but not those of other actors. There are NO LINES TO LEARN. The part is a complete description of where the character was when the murder took place and lots of suggestions and clues so that he or she can throw suspicion on the others and clear himself. The character is NOT ALLOWED TO TELL LIES.*ONLY the actual murderer CAN LIE and this is how the audience become suspicious. Only the murderer knows that he or she is the murderer. The other actors don't. So don't pass the complete script around.* FUN It's fun dressing up and speaking with different accents.* A MURDER MYSTERY evening will draw your group together and improve group interaction. Strictly speaking no rehearsal is necessary IF EACH PLAYER is prepared to master his CHARACTER (not his lines) and dress and speak in the role. It goes better with a rehearsal because it improves the performers confidence.* It's a game of two halves The first half is the performance, the second is the audience voting. The MC describes the crime and then the other eleven say their pieces. No scenery is necessary but that's up to you Improvise Then there's a refreshment break during which the actors circulate to each table and answer questions in character.* Instructions and voting slips are supplied with the script.
The criminals in a northern English city are asking for it. A feeble law enforcement establishment is being run ragged. The family of a hospital pathologist, Jack Preston, is killed by a drunken criminal driving the wrong way up a motorway exit. The culprit, Darren Darnell, receives a derisory sentence because the trial judge makes an excuse for him Hard line Detective Hugh Mason, whose own career is on the skids, senses that Jack Preston isn't the usual grieving victim. He manipulates Preston who kills Darnell in a totally unexpected way. Mason's career then takes an upward path but so does Preston's. Previously content with domestic obscurity, he wins a professorship in charge of a modern 'profit generating' path lab at the local university.This leads him to the Old Bailey where he proves the guilt of a policeman, Morton Horder, in a high profile murder case. The guilty copper's defence counsel, Rose Elstein, a Liberal Democrat candidate, latches onto Jack. Mason is far from happy that Preston has helped to convict a fellow policeman. He wrongly believes Jack is a master of secret methods of poisoning.Mason goes on to blackmail Jack into 'removing' a succession of serial killers and paedophiles . . . To save his ongoing romance with Rose Jack is driven to helping Mason. A killer George Bosniak is removed. A blackmailer finds himself choking, is saved by Preston but loses his blackmail material. Jeff Dibutt, head of a paedophile ring is forced to disclose where his latest still living victim is hidden. Finally, Jack's greatest struggle is against former Iraq War soldier Dieter Jenkinson who covets Jack's friendship with Rose and plots to kill her.
Peter Scattergood is the kind of boy that everyone knows is going wrong, very wrong. He hasn't met anyone that he can't defy and insult or any rule that he can't ignore. Then he causes a nasty accident and seeking to escape hides in a deserted cellar underneath his school.The cellar is occupied by a dormant being of unknown origin. The being, which calls itself an eidolon, denies that it is any kind of ghost, spook, spirit, angel or anything supernatural. It insists that it is part of nature like the trees and hills.Peter rouses it from its dormant state. It became dormant after an incident in which a long ago headmaster of the school mysteriously vanished and now believes that it shares the thoughts and feelings of that headmaster, Mr Thane. It tells Peter that Mr Thane is its MATRIX and it takes up the mission to reform Peter by any means in its power as Thane would have.Immoveable force has met irresistible object and the book is the story of how that battle is resolved.The book is the first in a trilogy about Peter Scattergood.
Local author Frank Lean whose 'Dave Cunane' private eye novels set in Manchester and the North West were optioned for TV by Ian McShane has released an eighth book in the series as an e-book. The previous seven were published by Random House and are available on Amazon.The eighth book in the series 'KILL ME IF YOU CAN' finds Dave being propositioned by a High Court judge to kill highly placed villain who is plotting to overthrow the British constitution. The problem is that the man the Judge intends as Cunane's target is a) anonymous and b) has contacts at the highest levels in the police and security services. Naturally Cunane refuses the Judge's offer but merely by calling on him the Judge has implicated Cunane.The plotters must kill him by any means they can.The Judge is killed by beheading in what Cunane decides is a 'false flag' operation to implicate the British Muslim community.The violence ramps up when Cunane's home is attacked by men throwing Molotov cocktails, men with the bearing and attitude of ex-police or military definitely not Islamic jihadis The plot involving a dissident section of MI5 thickens when Cunane finds that they intend to set off a dirty bomb to poison the North of England with radiation and create the panic they need to seize power.
* Organisers, are you stuck for an ENTERTAINMENT IDEA for your students, parishioners, social group, society, choir or whatever? Why not try an improvised murder mystery play? With a mid performance break for refreshments it's a pleasant way to pass an evening and even raise some funds * You will need a cast of twelve players (NO ACTING ABILITY is needed) and one of the twelve to be the MC to steer events and guide the audience. The twelve (apart from the MC) are all SUSPECTS in a murder investigation.* Each character is given his or her 'part' but not those of other actors. There are NO LINES TO LEARN. The part is a complete description of where the character was when the murder took place and lots of suggestions and clues so that he or she can throw suspicion on the others and clear himself. The character is NOT ALLOWED TO TELL LIES.*ONLY the actual murderer CAN LIE and this is how the audience become suspicious. Only the murderer knows that he or she is the murderer. The other actors don't. So don't pass the complete script around.* FUN It's fun dressing up and speaking with different accents.* A MURDER MYSTERY evening will draw your group together and improve group interaction. Strictly speaking no rehearsal is necessary IF EACH PLAYER is prepared to master his CHARACTER (not his lines) and dress and speak in the role. It goes better with a rehearsal because it improves the performers confidence.* It's a game of two halves The first half is the performance, the second is the audience voting. The MC describes the crime and then the other eleven say their pieces. No scenery is necessary but that's up to you Improvise Then there's a refreshment break during which the actors circulate to each table and answer questions in character.* Instructions and voting slips are supplied with the script.
* Organisers, are you stuck for an ENTERTAINMENT IDEA for your students, parishioners, social group, society, choir or whatever? Why not try an improvised murder mystery play? With a mid performance break for refreshments it's a pleasant way to pass an evening and even raise some funds * You will need a cast of twelve players (NO ACTING ABILITY is needed) and one of the twelve to be the MC to steer events and guide the audience. The twelve (apart from the MC) are all SUSPECTS in a murder investigation.* Each character is given his or her 'part' but not those of other actors. There are NO LINES TO LEARN. The part is a complete description of where the character was when the murder took place and lots of suggestions and clues so that he or she can throw suspicion on the others and clear himself. The character is NOT ALLOWED TO TELL LIES.*ONLY the actual murderer CAN LIE and this is how the audience become suspicious. Only the murderer knows that he or she is the murderer. The other actors don't. So don't pass the complete script around.* FUN It's fun dressing up and speaking with different accents.* A MURDER MYSTERY evening will draw your group together and improve group interaction. Strictly speaking no rehearsal is necessary IF EACH PLAYER is prepared to master his CHARACTER (not his lines) and dress and speak in the role. It goes better with a rehearsal because it improves the performers confidence.* It's a game of two halves The first half is the performance, the second is the audience voting. The MC describes the crime and then the other eleven say their pieces. No scenery is necessary but that's up to you Improvise Then there's a refreshment break during which the actors circulate to each table and answer questions in character.* Instructions and voting slips are supplied with the script.
After 1945 the world was dominated by the USA in the west and the USSR in the East. The European powers were eclipsed. All this was decided on the outcome of a single battle: the Battle of France starting on 10th May, 1940.This alternative history charts a different course in which Britain and France decisively defeated Germany in 1940 and the Soviet Union collapsed shortly afterwards.
QUESTIONWhere are the Picts? Where are the 'missing' Anglo-Saxon kingdoms? Where are the ancient monasteries which represented the start of a new civilisation in Britain after the fall of Rome?ANSWERThose peoples, kingdoms and institutions of learning were destroyed by the second wave of savage barbarians to sweep over the British Isles . . . the Vikings A race of destroyers still so popular that people name rugby league teams after them. Sorry historian Peter Sawyer and inhabitants of Scandinavia and Minnesota: the Vikings really were savage In this book the Vikings are sent back to Scandinavia before they ever get started on their rampage through the Isles.
