Requirements: ePUB Reader | 7.7 MB | Version: Retail
Overview: A pseudonym used by Alan Rustage.
Sally Spencer is a pen name, first adopted when the author (actually called Alan Rustage) was writing sagas and it was almost obligatory that a woman’s name appeared on the cover (other authors like Emma Blair and Mary Jane Staples are also men).
Before becoming a full-time writer, he was a teacher. In 1978-79 he was working in Iran and witnessed the fall of the Shah (see the Blog for what it was like to live through a revolution). He got used to having rifles – and, one occasion, a rocket launcher – pointed at him by both soldiers and revolutionaries, but he was never entirely comfortable with it.
He lived in Madrid for over twenty years, and still considers it the most interesting and exciting city he has ever visited, but for the last few years he has opted for a quieter life in the seaside town of Calpe, on the Costa Blanca.
Alan is a competitive games player who likes bridge and pub quizzes. It is only by enforcing iron discipline that he doesn’t play video games all the time. He now lives on Spain’s Costa Blanca.
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
01 – The Dead Hand of History
The first in a new series featuring Charlie Woodend’s protege, DCI Monika Paniatowski – It will be no easy task to fill DCI Charlie Woodends shoes, the newly-promoted Monika Paniatowski tells herself, but, given a little time, she thinks she can grow into them. Yet, with the discovery of a severed hand, time is the one thing she does not have. When her colleagues prove untrustworthy, the urge to call Woodend for help becomes almost irresistible . . .
02 – The Ring of Death
The second in a new series featuring DCI Monika Paniatowski – Nothing could have prepared DCI Monika Paniatowski for this. It’s not that the man’s throat has been cut, or that he is naked, that shocks her – it’s the way his corpse has been so carefully posed. Is the killer sending a message? If so, to who? Saddled with a colleague she doesn’t trust, and watched by an old enemy, Monika realises that whatever the murderer’s message is, he will not stop killing until she understands.
03 – Echoes of the Dead
When a recently released prisoner claims in a deathbed confession that he is innocent of the rape and murder of a young girl for which he was convicted twenty-two years earlier, DCI Monika Paniatowski is tasked to lead an unofficial investigation into his claims. At first she is reluctant, but when she learns that her old mentor Charlie Woodend was the lead detective in the case, she knows she must do everything she can to protect his reputation…
04 – Backlash
DCI Monika Paniatowski has a bitter personal history with Chief Superintendent Kershaw, but that is not the only reason she doesn’t want the investigation into the sudden disappearance of his wife, Elaine, landing on her desk. A young prostitute, Grace Meade, has also disappeared, and yet all resources are being channelled into Elaine’s case alone. Monika determines to spend time finding Grace, but when a heavily mutilated body is discovered on the moors, it begins to look as if she has made the wrong decision.
05 – Lambs to the Slaughter
Tensions are running high in the small mining village of Bellingsworth. There has been a call for further strikes, and retired miner Len Hopkins, who was known to be against a new strike, is murdered. Detective Inspector Monika Paniatowski learns that Len had been threatened the night before he died by another old miner. Was he killed due to the stand he took against further strikes? Or are there more sinister forces at work? Paniatowski investigates, but finds that she has problems much closer to home…
06 – A Walk With the Dead
A killer who can’t be classified – a killer who can’t be profiled . . . When a young girl, Jill Harris, is murdered, the case soon becomes personal for Monika Paniatowski. She saw the victim looking distressed only hours before she was killed, and Jill was the same age as her own daughter, Louisa. Driven by guilt and pity, Monika throws herself into the investigation, but both the chief constable, who is away, and Colin Beresford – her right-hand man – think she is too emotionally involved to handle it. What none of them know is that the killer is planning to strike again . . .
07 – Death’s Dark Shadow
Before she can even begin to track down the killer of the old woman dumped by the lonely canal, Monika Paniatowski needs to find out who she is – and no one seems to know. Even when her daughter Louisa provides the vital clue, it only makes life more difficult, because the Chief Constable – intent on making Paniatowski’s life difficult – refused to let her follow the obvious trail. And it is not until there is a second, even more brutal, murder, that Paniatowski realizes she will have to call on the help of her old mentor, ex-DCI Charlie Woodend.
08 – Supping with the Devil
Monika Paniatowski’s boss is trying to destroy her career, but the dead end case he assigns her turns out to be something else entirely . . . DCI Monika Paniatowski recognises her latest assignment as advisor to the Earl of Ridley’s rock festival for what it really is – an attempt by the chief constable to destroy her career. Yet it soon becomes apparent that matters are not as simple as they appear. Why, for instance, did the earl choose to employ the notorious Devil’s Disciples motorcycle gang to provide the security for the festival? And to what lengths will his mother, the dowager countess, go to destroy it? But it is when the half-naked body of a tabloid journalist is discovered in the middle of Whitebridge that things really start to hot up.
09 – Best Served Cold
On the night the Whitebridge Players staged their last ever performance, the idealistic young actors in the company resolved that twenty years on they would return to the same theatre and stage the same play.
But two decades later, old resentments have grown and new jealousies have germinated, and it is a very different company that returns to re-enact the Spanish Tragedy. The cast members all have their axes to grind – and some have clear targets for those axes . . .
It is in this world – where normal rules and standards have no meaning – that DCI Monika Paniatowski finds herself, once a tragedy within the Tragedy has occurred. But how can she uncover the killer’s motive when everyone seemed to want the victim dead? And how can she decide who is telling the truth – when all these people lie for a living?
10 – Thicker Than Water
DCI Monika Paniatowski has only been back from maternity leave for three days when she is called in to investigate a nightmare of a case. Not only is the murder victim a mother of three small children, but her husband is a wealthy politician. Monika knows that if she can’t make a quick arrest her career is on the line. It’s lucky, then, that within minutes of meeting Councillor Danbury, she has a bruised face – and is a prime suspect.
But then the case takes a nasty twist, and suddenly the investigation is national news. Monika’s sure she has the right man – but how to prove it? Particularly when she’s under pressure from her superiors to arrest anyone other than Councillor Danbury, president of the golf club and friend of her chief constable . . .
11 – Death in Disguise
When the body of an American woman is found in the Prince Alfred suite at the Royal Victoria Hotel, DCI Monika Paniatowski is faced with one of the most baffling cases of her career. The woman who called herself Mary Edwards had been a guest at the hotel for the past two weeks, having paid cash in advance. But who was she really – and what was she doing in a small town like Whitebridge? If Monika could discover why the dead woman had come to Lancashire, she would be one step closer to catching her killer.
The investigation takes an intriguing twist when Monika learns of a possible link to a fifty-year-old murder – but the only person who could tell her why it’s relevant is lying in a coma.
12 – The Hidden
Monika Paniatowski knows exactly who the killer is – but there’s no way she can tell anyone else! DCI Paniatowski’s team are increasingly convinced that the girl found dead in the woods is the victim of a ritual killing, carried out by a secret society which has been established in the very heart of Whitebridge. Their problem is that without Paniatowski there to back them up, they find it impossible to persuade the ambitious DCI ‘Rhino’ Dixon that treating it as a mere domestic murder will get them nowhere. And so Meadows, Crane and Beresford find themselves out on a limb – cutting corners, ignoring procedure, and running the very real risk that their careers could be brought to an abrupt and dramatic end.Meanwhile, Monika herself knows not only who the killer is, but also that he is stalking Louisa, her beloved daughter. But as she is one of the killer’s victims too, and is lying in a coma – hearing everything, but unable to move or speak – there is nothing she can do about it!
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