Showing results by author "James Pattinson" in All Categories

It was nearing the end of the road for The Merrymakers. Such companies of entertainers touring the towns and villages of East Anglia were finding things more and more difficult. For Howard Layton, player-manager of the troupe, it was a worrying time. But it was the murder of the bright young star of the show that proved to be the hardest blow he had to bear. For Debbie was his own daughter, and he and his wife Gloria had once had ambitious plans for her career on the stage.

Kemp blamed himself: he should have kept more closely in touch with his younger sister. Now it appears that Lorna has gone off to Colombia with a man named Roberto Vargas. But Kemp finds the story hard to swallow - there's something fishy about it.

Sam Grant is tasked with the job of tracing the vendor of a painting that had come up for sale at a London auction room. Produced by a German Jewish artist who had perished in a Nazi concentration camp, the painting had been stolen from a schloss in Lower Saxony in World War Two. Then it had apparently vanished. Now it has surfaced 50 years later. So who had possessed it in those years? Grant has to find the answer for Gerda Hoffman, an attractive blonde. But the case turns out to be more dangerous and life-threatening than he could have anticipated…

When Detective Sergeant Frank Devon was sent to the West Indian island of St Joseph on an exchange assignment, he was told that it would be more of a holiday in the sun than work. And so it would have been, if he had not started looking beyond the limits of his authorised activities. He began to observe certain goings-on that seemed highly suspicious; but when he reported his findings he was met with either indifference or outright disapproval.

One of the most important attributes of a prospective candidate for the U.S. presidency is that of being clean; not to have any dirt in your background, present or past. Senator William S. Gaullicauder appeared to fit the bill perfectly in this respect. But then a skeleton came rattling out of an English cupboard, threatening the senator’s squeaky clean reputation. The story had to be suppressed, and fast. But competing interests were involved, and violence and murder would ensue.

Sometimes, in his own mind, Keele referred to himself as “The Booking Clerk”. This was a rather macabre private joke since the tickets he issued were all one-way. Yet whatever he was called, his was a profitable occupation. The time came, however, when he wished to leave it. Miss Rona Wickham had entered his life, and the role he played hitherto was incompatible with his association with her. Unfortunately, he found that getting out was not as easy as he had hoped.

Harry Banner turns up in London one November evening having just got back from Venezuela. He wants to see Robert Cade, a man he'd known six years earlier in Buenos Aires. He needs to ask him for a small favour: to keep a parcel until he calls back for it. The trouble is, Banner never does call back. The next morning he is found dead in his hotel room with a stab wound to his chest.

The drug trade route stretched from London across Europe and part of Asia to the borders of Afghanistan. Investigating one part of it cost the life of a police detective name George Lacon. Although his death was reportedly suicide, Detective Inspector Marler felt certain it was murder. But to trace the murderers proved a difficult task.