Kirjahaku

Whilst escaping from the police an elite gang known as The Phantoms callously kill an innocent family which brings them into contact with Lee Kemble, a Special Operations Operative and relative of the murdered people, who had been specifically chosen to find and eliminate them.He soon learns that he has not been told everything and finds that there is more to the case than was first thought for in the grounds of each of the houses robbed by The Phantoms the police had found a corpse, and the murdered people all had similar and unusual burn marks to their bodies.As Kemble gets closer to the gang he discovers that they are being paid by a mysterious woman who has a fixation with the number six and that everything is somehow linked to a letter written on the eve of his death in 1918 by a British soldier who had been charged with cowardice and sentenced to face a firing squad despite the fact that he was the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice and should have been feted as a hero. When he finally identifies the gang members, some of which were ex-colleagues, Kemble is shocked when they too are mysteriously killed and uncovers the unpalatable fact that the person who has taken it upon themself to exact revenge on the relatives of those people held responsible for what took place 1918 starts to take things further and what is more puzzling and disconcerting is the knowledge that his is the last name on a delayed retribution list.Kemble soon learns that friends and enemies can often be interwoven and that ultimately nobody can be trusted when one's life is in danger.

Two things happened to Martin Miller within the space of a few days. First he learned that his ex-wife Stephanie was wanted by the police for her involvement in a multi million pound fraud and then that she had purportedly been drowned whilst trying to flee the country. Although her body was never found and their married life had been proven to have been nothing but a sham, Miller still mourned for her even though they had lived totally different lives.However months later he is involved in an minor incident in London which is followed up by a mysterious telephone call from someone purporting to be Stephanie, pleading for his help. Although sceptical he agrees to meet and to his surprise learns that she is still alive and had arranged her own death in order to escape both the police and the other members of the group involved in the fraud. These men had now found out that she was still alive and were after their share of the stolen cash.Despite his best intentions not to get too deeply involved Miller finds himself giving her aid and assistance and in the process is drawn into a world where murder and destruction are the norm and that the people after her will let nothing stand in their way to get what they consider is theirs, but once again he finds that she has duped him and abruptly leaves his life.Determined to forget about her Miller ploughs himself back into his work when a letter from a French notary arrives, advising him of the death of a Juliette Lafitte, a woman who he does not know. He is advised that there are some papers for him to collect personally and a transaction that can only be concluded in person.Out of curiosity he goes to Normandy and on arrival eventually finds out that the mysterious Lafitte was in fact Stephanie.Certain that she is finally dead Miller is torn as to what to do as even from the grave she will not let him go for she begs him to avenge her but wanting to dissociate himself from everything she was associated with completely refuses to countenance such actions until events in England, when his best friends are murdered, force him to abandon his stance.Vowing to find their killer he learns that danger lurks around every corner and that sometimes things and people are not all that they seem, that deception and crime go hand in hand and that there will always be secrets between a man and his wife

When he learns of the death of an old friend Matt Shepherd decides to attend the funeral service despite having been out of the country for over twenty years following an operation in Helsinki to recover stolen NATO documents which had nearly gone disastrously wrong because of his serious error of judgement. That together with the death of his wife whilst away had resulted in him questioning his capabilities and priorities and resigning he had walked away from his old life and friends preferring his own company and the occasional bottle.Whilst at the crematorium he meets up with Don Collins who had been his partner in Helsinki and discovers that he now heads a secret Government Department. Collins shows him positive proof that his friend had not drowned in an accident on Menorca as reported but had actually been murdered by a clandestine group that deals in anything ranging from gun running and drugs right through to promoting international terrorism. Finding out the friendship between the two men and knowing that Shepherd is probably his last chance of finding the people behind the group Collins entices him to find out who was responsible and hopefully lead to them being apprehended.Shepherd is a man who believes that fate governs your life and as there is nothing that one can do to alter things always knew that one day he would have to re-enter the secret and dangerous world that he had escaped from and agrees but on the proviso that he is allowed to do it on his own terms without interference. With the help of an old friend and a mysterious woman who insists she owes him a debt from his past he follows a series of obscure clues that are related to old Slavic Pagan Gods and Roman Emperors and by a process of elimination as well as luck manages to uncover the identities of those people responsible for the murder but before he can get to them they are themselves all killed.Realising that whoever runs the group is trying to close down the organisation by liquidating anybody who could identify him Shepherd knows he is in a race against time and his determination to succeed leads him to uncover some unpalatable truths and worse still that one can never be certain who are friends and who are enemies.

London: January 1958. During the past two and a half years a serial killer has been roaming the streets of London torturing his victims by slicing off their left ear before ritually disembowelling them. Detective Inspector Neil Goddard, a lonely man who has never really got over the death of his fianc e in 1951 and assigned to catch the murderer is woken early one morning to be told that another body has been found but to his surprise learns that it is actually the killer himself. Identification is soon established but investigations into what turned the man into such a callous monster and to who had killed him leads Goddard back to old haunts and revives memories of events that happened during the early years of the Second World War. The situation is further complicated when a telephone call is received which states that the revenge killing was a way of repaying a debt owed to him - and evidence points to the debt referring to one specific event seventeen years earlier.Recognising that what had happened during a clandestine operation into occupied France is the key to finding out the identity of the 'vigilante' Goddard soon finds himself immersed in the world of espionage and meets Gerald Fitzroy-Browne, a man who is hiding a secret. During the discussion he learns that the key character is Lionel Preston, a habitual criminal who was recruited in 1940 into a shadowy force known only as Group 'A', part of the Special Operations Executive. Although the unit was supposed to have been disbanded in 1945 this group continued under different auspices without sanction from the Government and Preston, known under many pseudonyms associated with the works of H G Wells, carried out a number of obscure assassinations but latterly seems intent on maintaining his anonymity by killing those few people who can identify him, which includes Winston Churchill.Goddard, realising that time is running out, then learns that the man behind the wheel in the hit and run accident that had killed his fianc e was actually Preston and redoubles his efforts to catch him. But when documents come into his possession that show she was working for the French Government under the code-name The Silent Butterfly and had been close to exposing the truth behind Group 'A' he realises that he had been duped on more than one occasion and begins to doubt all that he had been told as well as Preston's role in it and latterly. In an unexpected finale he finds out he had also been lied to by Fitzroy-Browne and learning that friends and enemies are often one and the same and that nobody can really be trusted he is powerless to stop old scores being settled.

Carol Davis is mourning the death of her fianc e in a car crash and is visited in bizarre circumstances by his brother Greg Farrell who convinces her that the death was not an accident but murder. It appears that in his work as an investigative journalist he was getting close to uncovering a conspiracy in which an eminent M.P. Sir Henry Marshall was heavily involved.Greg Farrell knows more than he is willing to share with Davis, not least that a pair of internationally renowned killers, The Retaliators, have been hired to carry out a double assassination on high ranking officials. Although sceptical and curious as to why he seems to know so much about Mike's work and is always evasive about his occupation, since he is obviously well acquainted with the life they have to enter, she agrees to help in finding out the truth and tracking down the killers. Experiencing new feelings when close to Farrell, she finds life exciting even though it is sordid and deadly and on more than one occasion is forced to kill to stay alive.In their quest they learn that Marshall is one of a quartet of men, led by Simon Parker a rich and powerful entrepreneur, who had hired the assassins but had planned to renege on the deal and have them killed once their side of the contract had been completed.The couple however learn of the double cross against them and in anger systematically kill all those who had become involved, which includes both Farrell and Davis as they are caught in the cross-fire.The clues lead to a farmhouse in Normandy where Farrell faces the killers and thinks his chase has ended when both are presumed to have died but future events prove otherwise and as Davis fights for her life after being shot he has to track them down again and matters are finally settled on an archaeological site in Sicily.

The discovery of a skeleton in a drainage tunnel during a routine demolition of an old tin mine on the Walden Estate in Devon and the army dog tag around its neck sets Joanne Thompson off on a search to try and find out the identity of the man and the reasons for him being entombed in the tunnel. Learning that he disappeared soon after the end of the First World War, during which he undertook many dangerous missions, one of which involved an action behind enemy lines in Palestine in 1917, the trail leads her to David Sumner, the great grandson of the dead man. Between them they try to unravel the mystery and the reasons why only the commanding officer of the patrol from all of those that had survived was still alive after 1920, the rest having died in unusual circumstances.The fact that the accidents could be tenuously linked to the Walden family crest only heightens the mystery when the evidence points to something having happened during the operation, something that has remained a secret for over ninety years, and which involved the ownership of two golden statuettes, which had originally gone missing from Jerusalem during the eleventh century Crusades. When the men involved in the original demolition also die in accidents, Sumner realises that the deaths both in the past and present are related and that there is someone determined to ensure that the secret is not made public and is willing to kill anybody considered a threat.They eventually locate a journal written between 1914 and 1925 that the others were desperate to find to claim what they considered their heritage, and from reading its contents, which help to unravel a number of clues, Sumner eventually understands the identities of those now involved.But because of their investigations he realises that they are in danger and decides to seek the people out, but they are almost killed and in the process lose the journal.Soon after Thompson, who was badly injured, appears to commit suicide.Determined to avenge her and all of the others who had died because of the Waldens and the statuettes Sumner travels to Sorrento where he confronts his adversaries but things do not go as planned and he learns that unbeknown to him Thompson had been hiding a terrible and dangerous secret and her death was not all that it seemed.

The accidental discovery by an archaeologist in Almeria of an ancient manuscript that turns out to be a formula for a virulent poison, much deadlier than The Black Death or The Spanish Lady, brings together a group of people who have a grudge against the Establishment and are not averse to use what they have found for fiscal benefit.After deciphering the hieroglyphics the group produce a small sample of the poison and after successfully testing it on small communities in Mexico and France try to blackmail the British Government, but they are dismissed as harmless cranks. This forces the group to enter into a partnership with others who unbeknown to them have a secret agenda, which is to sell the formulae, known, as The Indalo because of where it was found, to the highest bidder on the open market. These people do not need the others and anybody who knew of its existence are systematically eliminated by Angel, a trained assassin who was an ex-operative of The Firm, a clandestine Government Department that specialises in all the things that others refuse to do on ethical grounds.An e-mail message from the grave of one of the original group to Paula Marshall, also an ex-agent from The Firm, spirals her into a world she thought had been left far behind, leading her into a race against time to locate a second manuscript believed to be in existence which hopefully contains the antidote, and to stop the sale of the formula.In doing so it brings her into contact with people from her past and makes her rediscover herself along the way, finding that things aren't always as they appear and people often lead strange deadly double lives.

After a number of years working for a British clandestine organisation as an operative licensed to kill Brad Spelling has finally decided to call time on his employment and in his own words wants to live a normal life without looking down the barrel of a sniper's rifle. After his last operation in Turkey he tries to hand in his resignation which is partially accepted by his mentor but only on the proviso that he will reassess his options in six months time when, if he then still wants to go nobody would stand in his way.Although adamant that he will not change his mind Spelling has to agree to the terms but starts to make plans for a future which includes caring for his sister who has been in a coma since a car crash in which their mother was killed. Then a mysterious letter arrives from a firm of solicitors advising that he is the sole beneficiary to the estate of the late Thomas Catt ... a man he does not know and has never heard of. As the solicitors are adamant they have made no mistake he visits their offices and realises that the enigmatic Catt is actually an alias for Jimmy Holt, who with his own step-father had been undercover police trying to bring down the Johnson brothers, a notorious crime family based in London.A few years earlier both men had reportedly been killed in what had been classified as separate motoring accidents.Apart from the financial aspect of the estate Holt left a number of documents and testimonies alleging that Spelling's relative was actually killed on the instructions of the Johnsons and that he had been forced to stage his own death in order to try and gain revenge but had not been able to. From the grave he states that he knows that Spelling is the ideal person to take over from him, citing the need for revenge not only for his family but also for the many others who had suffered at the hands of the brothers. He is advised that he would not be acting alone and would be contacted anonymously by someone who would make themselves known by using the codename Pi.Learning that the death of his step-father had been a deliberate murder Spelling decides to find the killer.Unable to tell anybody what he is doing, not knowing who to trust, he is forced to seek out those responsible discovering that people are not all that they seem, that truth is easily corrupted and there is a fine line between honesty and deceit as well as between friendship and hatred. Along the way he learns that friends and enemies are not always clearly defined and can be one of the same and the identity of his step-father's murderer comes as a complete surprise.After completing what Holt had asked of him there is still one final mystery that remains ....who is Pi?

Full Moon KillerLondon January 1960.The murder of a man at the beginning of the year at first glance appears to be a simple case for DCI Neil Goddard and his team to investigate but they are confused because inside the victims mouth is a slip of paper with strange markings and the letter A at its centre. When a month later another man is not only killed in the same manner but also has a similar slip of paper in his mouth, this time with a different letter Goddard realises that there is a double murderer roaming the streets of London. The case suddenly becomes personal when a letter addressed to him is found at the scene which makes it known that the killer knows of him but more worryingly that there will be five more murders in the coming months.Painstaking research into the pattern on the papers and the letters each contains leads to a hypothesis that the killer is killing his victims on the Full Moon days of the month for a specific reason: - but what is it?Even when he finds out the reason why the killings are taking place, who the murderer is and thinks he knows the names of the other victims it soon becomes a race against time to keep them alive but gradually the list continues to grow.When The Full Moon Killer and Goddard finally meet the outcome is not what either expected and when the truth emerges things are not as they seemed.

Steve Gibbs was what was generally called 'A Fixer.'If you wanted something sorted out he was the man who people called in.He was good at his job, being discreet yet successful, was well respected by his clients and proficient in getting the required results.When his wife became ill after a car accident he gave everything up and vowed never to go back to that way of living but after her death found it hard to find anything to stimulate him so when an unexpected visitor called with a request for his help he decided to do one more job: - that way he would know where his future lay.After seven years he returns to London to find out if William Booth, a noted criminal psychologist, really died as a result of a car accident as his widow had recently received an anonymous letter stating otherwise.As he delves deeper into the circumstances surrounding the accident Gibbs uncovers information that connects it with two other deaths of retired experts who Booth had worked with on a case of triple homicides fifteen years previously.When the name of George Plant crops up it appears that the old case the three deceased had been heavily involved in was about to be re-opened and it soon becomes clear that somebody is trying to prevent it from happening.A shocking revelation for Gibbs is that information comes his way that incontrovertibly links his wife's death with his investigations.

London: March 1966.Despite not being fully fit Detective Chief Inspector Neil Goddard is called back early from sick leave to find the killer of a man found viciously beaten around the head by an unusual weapon in the grounds of Oddhams House where an important conference on Rhodesia and its Unilateral Declaration of Independence is scheduled to begin in a few weeks.In order to guarantee the safety of the delegates and to ensure that there is no link with the dead man he is tasked with solving the case as a matter of urgency before the press get to hear of it, especially as attached to the body was a metal plate marked with the number 2.Fearing that there is at least one more body to be found he has to employ all of his investigative skills honed over many years but in a matter of days is confronted by a further three murders in the same vein with the dead men holding metal plates 1,3 and 4.There are no clues left at either crime scene which offers any hope of getting an early arrest but enquiries then lead him to believe that all of the victims were loosely connected to a 1953 house fire, listed as an arson attack on the wrong property, in which four people, including two young children, were killed.The only person who might be able to shed some light on things is an ex-detective who is suffering from Alzheimer's who had gathered documents about who he thought were six people linked to the blaze but the file has gone missing from police safekeeping.To complicate matters it soon becomes obvious that there are two people responsible for the murders and that as they are using the file to trace their targets Goddard has to race to discover the whereabouts of the last two individuals but fearful of never getting a breakthrough is astonished when it comes from an unlikely source.

Steve Gibbs is what is generally called 'A Fixer.'If you want something sorted out he is the man who would be called in.He is good at his job, being discreet yet successful, is well respected by his clients and proficient in getting the required results.The latest client, Carolyn Forrester, has an interesting proposition for him when she invites him to look into the mysterious death of her husband and the disappearance of another man which happened on the same day, both of whom were pivotal to her life. This happened three years previously during which time she had accepted her fate until photographs emerged of a mysterious man who had the same characteristics as the men he was asked to investigate.His interest is fired when the word 'Ghost' is used and it is enough to tempt him to accept.However, as he delves deeper into the circumstances concerning the events of that fateful day he uncovers information that is contrary to what he had been told and learns that even honest looking people can be economical with the truth.When the German Bundespolizei become interested in his investigations matters take a deadly turn when he learns that one of the men was not who he seemed and being a violent fugitive from most of Europe's police forces was not a person to get too involved with.Having become too immersed into the case Gibbs finds it hard to break away as he never likes to leave loose ends and therefore continues knowing that it could lead him into a deadly game of cat and mouse, the ending of which would only come at a price.

Like any young boy born in the latter years of the Victorian age Albert Young dreamed of adventure and travelling but they were all dashed when an assassins bullet was fired in Sarajevo in 1914 and a world war began.Eager to do his bit for King and Country he joined up but soon learnt the harsh reality of life in the trenches and for the next few years somehow survived where so many of his friends did not. Because of his talent with a Lee Enfield .303 rifle he was seconded to a special unit and was soon in demand as a sniper. He became so proficient that the Germans called him 'Die Viper' but eventually it took its toll and when his last victim was a young boy not old enough to have started shaving or to have known the joy of laying with a woman he asked for a transfer.Due to the compassion of his commanding office Captain Wilkinson he was first sent to a sanatorium and then spent the last few months of the war in a clerical position.Finding work afterwards was not easy but a letter out of the blue brought him back into contact with Wilkinson who had been tasked in setting up a department to deal with terrorism on the British mainland.Young is thrown into the middle of a war with Irish nationalists who are seeking to kill as many of the Cabinet as possible as well as destroying over a square mile of London with explosives that would have dwarfed Guy Fawkes' attempt.