Showing results by author "M. W. Craven" in All Categories

Detective Inspector Avison Fluke is a man on the edge. He has committed a crime to get back to work, concealed a debilitating illness and is about to be made homeless. Just as he thinks things can't get any worse, the body of a young woman is found buried on a Cumbrian building site. Shot once in the back of the head, it is a cold, calculated execution. When the postmortem reveals she has gone to significant expense in disguising her appearance, Fluke knows this is no ordinary murder.

Washington Poe has a story to tell. And he needs you to listen. You'll hear how it started with the robber birds. Crows. Dozens of them. Enough for a murder. He'll tell you about a man who was tied to a tree and stoned to death, a man who had tattooed himself with a code so obscure, even the gifted analyst Tilly Bradshaw struggled to break it. He'll tell you how the man's murder was connected to a tragedy that happened fifteen years earlier when a young girl massacred her entire family. And finally, he'll tell you about the mercy chair.

The next unmissable novel in the Sunday Times bestselling, multi-award-winning Washington Poe series. Poe and Tilly fans: be prepared for the most twisted thrill-ride so far . . .

After The Puppet Show, a new storm is coming. Jared Keaton, chef to the stars. Charming. Charismatic. Psychopath. He's currently serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of his daughter, Elizabeth. Her body was never found, and Keaton was convicted largely on the testimony of Detective Sergeant Washington Poe. So when a young woman staggers into a remote police station with irrefutable evidence that she is Elizabeth Keaton, Poe finds himself on the wrong end of an investigation, one that could cost him much more than his career.

Investigating how a severed hand ends up on the third green of a Cumbrian golf course is not how Detective Inspector Avison Fluke has planned to spend his Saturday. So when a secret protection unit from London swoops in quoting national security, he's secretly pleased. But trouble is never far away. A young woman arrives at his lakeside cabin with a cryptic message: a code known to only a handful of people, and it forces Fluke back into the investigation he's only just been barred from.

Ben Koenig is a ghost. He doesn't exist any more. Six years ago it was Koenig who headed up the US Marshal's elite Special Ops group. They were the elite unit who hunted the bad guys - the really bad guys. They did this so no one else had to. Until the day Koenig disappeared. He told no one why and he left no forwarding address. For six years he became a grey man. Invisible. He drifted from town to town, state to state. He was untraceable. It was as if he had never been.

When a shocking murder and abduction on the streets of London leads investigators to him, Ben Koenig has no idea at first why the highest echelons of the CIA would need his help. But then he realises he knows the woman who carried out the killings. Ten years earlier, without being told why, he was tasked with helping her disappear. Far from being a deranged killer, she is the gatekeeper of a secret that could take down the West, so for years she has been in hiding. Until now.

Detective Sergeant Washington Poe is in court, fighting eviction from his beloved and isolated croft, when he is summoned to a backstreet brothel in Carlisle where a man has been beaten to death with a baseball bat. Poe is confused—he hunts serial killers and this appears to be a straightforward murder-by-pimp—but his attendance was requested personally, by the kind of people who prefer to remain in the shadows. As Poe and the socially awkward programmer Tilly Bradshaw delve deeper into the case, they are faced with seemingly unanswerable questions.

It's Christmas, and a serial killer is leaving displayed body parts all over Cumbria. A strange message is left at each scene: #BSC6. Called in to investigate, the National Crime Agency's Washington Poe and Tilly Bradshaw are faced with a case that makes no sense. Why were some victims anaesthetised, while others died in appalling agony? Why is their only suspect denying what they can irrefutably prove but admitting to things they weren't even aware of? And why did the victims all take the same two weeks off work three years earlier?

A collection of seven short stories, featuring crime-fighting duo Tilly and Poe: The Killing Field, Why Don't Sheep Shrink?, Dead Man's Fingers, Strange Ink, A Permanent Solution, Mondo Bizzarro and Once in a Red Moon.

A serial killer is burning people alive in the Lake District's prehistoric stone circles. He leaves no clues, and the police are helpless. When his name is found carved into the charred remains of the third victim, disgraced detective Washington Poe is brought back from suspension and into an investigation he wants no part of. He is reluctantly partnered with brilliant but socially awkward civilian analyst Tilly Bradshaw, and the mismatched pair uncover a trail that only he is meant to see. The elusive killer has a plan, and for some reason Poe is part of it.

Dangling from a hook in a meat packing plant isn't how Detective Sergeant Washington Poe wants to spend his weekend. He's been punched and kicked and threatened, and when a contract killer arrives, it seems things are about to go from bad to worse. He goes by the name of the Pale Man, and he and his straight-edged razor have been feared all over London for 20 years. But Poe knows two things the Pale Man doesn't. Although it might seem like a hopeless situation, Poe has planned to be here all along.

Detective Sergeant Washington Poe can count on one hand the number of friends he has. And he'd still have his thumb left. There's the guilelessly innocent civilian analyst, Tilly Bradshaw of course. Insanely brilliant, she's a bit of a social hand grenade. He's known his beleaguered boss, Detective Inspector Stephanie Flynn for years as he has his nearest neighbour, full-time shepherd/part-time dog sitter, Victoria. And then there's Estelle Doyle. Dark and dangerous and sexy as hell.

Poe and Tilly are having breakfast, wondering how to spend the rest of their holiday, when their presence is requested at a Cumbrian airfield. An airfield that, during the 2001 foot-and-mouth crisis, was known as the killing field.

Poe and Tilly are on an HR course in Wales when a murder is committed in their hotel. But, maybe not everything is as it seems.

Mondo Bizzarro sees Tilly drag Poe to Durham to meet her favourite fantasy author, Aldridge Fowler, but when they arrive, he's already dead - killed by his own hand. Despite the overwhelming evidence though, Poe suspects the bookshop staff might be hiding a terrible secret.

Whilst on a murder-mystery evening in deepest darkest Northumberland, Poe manages to annoy everyone whilst simultaneously solving a mystery - what happened to a five-carat red diamond called the Red Moon of Coonowrin.

A global pandemic forces Poe and Tilly to self-isolate together. Things don't go well. They're bickering and on the verge of falling out until Poe finds an old case file: a locked-room mystery he's been mulling over for years. Step forward, Tilly Bradshaw.

Crime-fighting duo Tilly and Poe solve a mystery from inside a pantomime horse in a short story that first appeared in the Halloween anthology Afraid of the Shadows.

Hvad er en frygtløs mand faktisk i stand til? Det finder de snart ud af … på den hårde måde. Ben Koenig var engang chef for en specialgruppe under US Marshals. Hans gruppe jagtede de slemme fyre – de virkelig slemme fyre. Han var i stand til at finde hvem som helst. Og så en dag forsvandt Koenig selv. Nu har Koenig været på flugt i seks år. Og pludselig dukker hans ansigt op på hver eneste tv-skærm i USA, så han er nødt til at komme op til overfladen. En kvinde er forsvundet, og hendes far vil gøre hvad som helst for at finde hende.