Hodder & Stoughton
Books published by Hodder & Stoughton
More Than Just a Pretty Face
Danyal Jilani is a constant source of disappointment to his father. Being funny and drop dead gorgeous isn’t likely to lead to a good job, but academic success isn’t Danyal’s strong point, so when he’s unwillingly thrust into an academic championship, life is going to get problematic.
Reviewed on 25 June 2021 by Linda Wilson
The Last Thing To Burn
A young Vietnamese woman smuggled into Britain is imprisoned in a rural hell and as the last of her possessions are taken from her she desperately seeks a means to escape.
Reviewed on 22 May 2021 by Chris Roberts
The Butterfly House
A body is floating in the waters of an historic fountain, right in the centre of Copenhagen's main city square. A body that's been drained of all its blood. So begins a new and gruesome case for Investigator Jeppe Korner and his assistant Anette Werner.
Reviewed on 13 March 2021 by Viv Beeby
The Familiar Dark
Junie and her best friend are dead. And Eve will make sure their killer pays.
Reviewed on 16 January 2021 by Kati Barr-Taylor
Midnight at Malabar House
In an India still adjusting to independence, a junior female detective is assigned to investigate the murder of a prominent English diplomat.
Reviewed on 19 December 2020 by Chris Roberts
Gallows Rock
Detective Huldar and child psychologist Freya join forces again to work on a complicated case where a banker is found hanging from Gallows Rock, an ancient execution place, and a mysterious small boy is in the man’s luxurious empty flat.
Reviewed on 19 December 2020 by Ewa Sherman
The Flight
Claire and Eva meet at JFK Airport, New York. But their encounter is brief, and their destinations could be their last.
Reviewed on 21 November 2020 by Kati Barr-Taylor
The Stranger
MI6 agent Jude Lyon must deal with past events which threaten the credibility of his agency – and a terrifying new threat to the whole of the British establishment.
Reviewed on 19 September 2020 by John Cleal
Haven't They Grown
Beth Leeson sees an old friend whom she has not seen for 12 years. Her friend has aged appropriately, but her children appear not to have aged at all. Is Beth mistaken about what she saw?
Reviewed on 19 September 2020 by Sylvia Maughan
Finders, Keepers
Verity Ann Baxter tells the story of her developing relationship with new neighbours Ailsa, Tom and family. It is a love-hate relationship, as Verity and Ailsa become more and more involved in each other’s lives. But who is guilty of Tom’s murder?
Reviewed on 22 August 2020 by Sylvia Maughan
The Grove of the Caesars
Flavia Albia becomes involved in the hunt for a serial killer operating in the gardens left to the people of Rome by Julius Caesar. At the same time, her parallel investigation into fraudulent Greek philosophical texts leads to another killer.
Reviewed on 25 April 2020 by John Cleal
The Burning Men
A killer is targeting former firefighters who attended a notorious blaze in a London tower block that burnt down whilst construction was in progress. DI Alex Finn and his new sidekick, DC Mattie Paulson, need to work out why the men are being killed.
Reviewed on 11 April 2020 by Linda Wilson
The Vanished Bride
When the three Brontë sisters hear that a young women has gone missing from her home leaving no clue but a pool of blood, they decide to investigate.
Reviewed on 22 February 2020 by John Cleal
Stone Mothers
Marianne’s husband has bought a convenient pied-à-terre. But it’s the key to a dark past that should have remained buried.
Reviewed on 22 February 2020 by Kati Barr-Taylor
The Runner
Sally Page runs for a hobby, and as her job for MI5 is only at the very bottom of the tree, nowhere near the front line, she never expected to have to run for her life. But when she comes back from a coffee run to find several of her colleagues dead, that’s exactly when she has to do.
Reviewed on 31 January 2020 by Linda Wilson
The Absolution
Detective Huldar and child psychologist Freya are working together again. Their own relationship goes through various stages as they investigate vicious murders in Reykjavik, being announced by a killer via a mobile phone Snapchat app.
Reviewed on 31 January 2020 by Ewa Sherman
Witchfinder
The British Secret Service is in chaos as the hunt for traitors snowballs after the defection of Burgess, Maclean and Philby
Reviewed on 30 November 2019 by John Cleal
Miracle Creek
A fire and explosion in a therapeutic hyperbaric oxygen chamber kills two and injures others. As a trial begins, the preoccupations of those close to the tragedy fear that personal secrets will be exposed.
Reviewed on 09 November 2019 by Chris Roberts
The Last Hunt
Captain Benny Griessel of South Africa’s elite Hawks police unit and his partner Vaughn Cupido are assigned to investigate the death of an ex-policeman and uncover a plot to kill the country’s corrupt president
Reviewed on 12 October 2019 by John Cleal
The Punishment She Deserves
A man is found hanged in a disused police station. The victim’s father, a local MP, refuses to believe that it was suicide.
Reviewed on 07 September 2019 by Sylvia Maughan
If She Wakes
Tara Beckley is lying in a hospital bed, locked inside her own mind. Her sister is fighting for her, but someone else wants her dead, and Tara knows it.
Reviewed on 10 August 2019 by Linda Wilson
Elevation
A man in the small town of Castle Rock is losing weight but not mass
Reviewed on 29 June 2019 by Madeleine Marsh
A Capitol Death
Informer Flavia Albia must discover how an unpopular overseer met a death which threatens the triumphal procession of the Emperor Domitian.
Reviewed on 27 April 2019 by John Cleal
The Cutting Edge
A serial killer with a strange affinity for diamonds is at work in New York targeting couples seeking the perfect engagement ring. Criminalist Lincoln Rhyme is drafted in to help make sense of the brutal murders.
Reviewed on 30 March 2019 by Linda Wilson
All the Hidden Truths
Ryan Summers, a young student equipped with three guns, enters Three Rivers College and immediately begins shooting girls. He kills 13 of them and then himself. Everybody wants to know why but there appears to be no answer to the question.
Reviewed on 30 March 2019 by Arnold Taylor
The Reckoning
After returning to the rural Mississippi town of Clanton, World War II hero Pete Banning drives to his local Methodist church and shot the Reverend Dexter Bell. He has never said why.
Reviewed on 30 March 2019 by Chris Roberts
Last Man Standing
SAS trooper Matt Standing receives a plea for help from the sister of someone who once saved his life, and Standing isn’t someone who can turn down a friend in need.
Reviewed on 09 March 2019 by Linda Wilson
The Red Ribbon
Wiggins, once leader of Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars and now an unwilling member of the fledgling security services, must run down government leaks which threaten Britain’s security while pursuing his own mission of revenge.
Reviewed on 09 March 2019 by John Cleal
Careless Love
Superintendent Alan Banks and his team investigate two suspicious deaths – a student found in an abandoned car, and a man in a smart suit at the bottom of a gully on the moors.
Reviewed on 09 February 2019 by Sharon Wheeler
Tall Order
Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd puts his extraordinary memory to the test when he’s tasked with the search for the terrorists behind a suicide bombing at a football stadium.
Reviewed on 26 January 2019 by Linda Wilson
Shell Game
VI Warshawski is run ragged when the nephew of her closest friend is linked to a murder, and the niece of her ex-husband shows up desperate about a missing sister.
Reviewed on 26 January 2019 by Chris Roberts
Battle Sight Zero
Muslim extremists plan to smuggle assault rifles into Britain for a series of deadly attacks.
Reviewed on 12 January 2019 by John Cleal
A Step So Grave
When Lady Lavinia Dunnoch is found murdered in the garden of her remote Highand home, detective Dandy Gilver, a guest at the house to discuss the marriage of her son to the victim’s daughter, is faced with a tangled web of lies, deceit and superstition.
Reviewed on 08 December 2018 by John Cleal
The Reckoning
A chilling message found in a school’s time capsule says that six people will be killed. The threat has been written ten years ago. Disgraced detective Huldar is assigned to investigate this seemingly non-case.
Reviewed on 24 November 2018 by Ewa Sherman
Breathe
Dick Bourton is not like other probationer policemen. He makes connections his superiors don’t want to see, linking a series of deaths as the fogs of the 1952 winter stop the city in its tracks.
Reviewed on 27 October 2018 by John Cleal
The Outsider
An 11-year-old boy is found murdered and mutilated in the small town of Flint City. All the evidence points to Little League Coach Terry Maitland. But there’s as much evidence that he was out of town as there is placing him at the crime scene. How he can be in two places at once?
Reviewed on 07 July 2018 by Madeleine Marsh
Pandora's Boy
Flavia Albia investigates the suspicious death of a young girl on the Quirinale Hill, home of Rome’s wealthiest and most aristocratic and ancient citizens
Reviewed on 09 June 2018 by John Cleal
Earth Storm
Detective Malin Fors investigates cases of two opposing voices: murder of a right-wing extremist and a missing left-wing teenage activist, connected through words and actions, and as soon becomes apparent, also though the mysterious person who made them suffer.
Reviewed on 26 May 2018 by Ewa Sherman
The Prince and the Whitechapel Murders
Jack the Ripper is murdering and mutilating prostitutes. Zulu Hart is called back to England by the Duke of Cambridge, his natural father, to investigate evidence which seems to point to Prince Edward as the mad killer.
Reviewed on 17 March 2018 by John Cleal
A Damned Serious Business
MI6 officer Edwin Coker known as Boot for his obsession with the Duke of Wellington and Waterloo, puts together a daring plan to combat Russian cyber terrorism and recruits a British mercenary to carry it out.
Reviewed on 03 February 2018 by John Cleal
The Reluctant Contact
It is 1977 and Yuri is returning from attending his brother’s funeral in Moscow to Pyramiden in the Svalbard Archipelago north of Norway. He is about to discover that the quiet life of which he is so fond is about to come to an end.
Reviewed on 20 January 2018 by Arnold Taylor
The Rooster Bar
Law students Mark, Todd and Zola are struggling under a mountain of debt. Realising they have been scammed, they start looking for payback.
Reviewed on 16 December 2017 by Chris Roberts
Light Touch
Spider Shepherd is sent undercover to report on whether another operative from a different agency, also working undercover, has gone rogue. In addition, he’s dragged into the hunt for a possible rogue SAS soldier.
Reviewed on 11 November 2017 by Linda Wilson
The Best Kind of People
George Woodbury is a respected and much-loved teacher who saved his school from the attack of a gunman. He is a pillar of the small community of Avalon until the day he is arrested and accused of inappropriate sexual behaviour with several of his students.
Reviewed on 11 November 2017 by John Barnbrook
City of Masks
Oswald de Lacy, Lord Somershill, is in Venice on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On a night of carnival, he finds a dead man and is plunged into the secrets and intrigues of the City on the Sea.
Reviewed on 28 October 2017 by John Cleal
A Game of Ghosts
Mysterious ghost-like figures appear to certain people, and then those people are killed. They are the Brethren and they and their descendants will do anything to protect themselves from the consequences of their dreadful past.
Reviewed on 28 October 2017 by John Barnbrook
Fever
In a world where the majority of the population has been destroyed by a pandemic, an altruistic academic sets out to build a society free from the pressures of South Africa’s past.
Reviewed on 14 October 2017 by John Cleal
The Irregular
When a friend is murdered, Wiggins, once leader of Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars, seeks revenge and becomes involved with Britain’s emerging security services.
Reviewed on 19 August 2017 by John Cleal
Caraval
From a young age, Scarlett has longed to go to Caraval, a magical event run by the famous Master Legend. Scarlett wants her and her sister to escape from her cruel father. Eventually she gets her wish but things do not happen as she expects.
Reviewed on 10 August 2017 by John Barnbrook
Camino Island
Writer Mercer Mann is recruited by an insurance company to get close to a book dealer who they suspect is holding stolen manuscripts worth a fortune.
Reviewed on 05 August 2017 by Chris Roberts
The Burial Hour
Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs travel to Italy on the trail of a serial kidnapper who likes to torture his victims in pursuit of some unusual goals.
Reviewed on 24 June 2017 by Linda Wilson
The Legacy
Out of his depth detective Huldar and the child psychologist Freyja must work together to get any information from seven-year-old Margrét, the only witness to her mother’s horrific murder.
Reviewed on 10 June 2017 by Ewa Sherman
The White Road
Simon Newman has a bad reputation to live down. When he made a clandestine trip into a Welsh cave with another man, only Simon came out alive. Now he intends to make an attempt on Everest, the world’s highest mountain.
Reviewed on 10 June 2017 by Linda Wilson
Takedown
Hitman Lex Harper is contracted by former MI5 operative Charlotte Button to take out a former special forces soldier who has thrown his lot in with Islamic terrorists and is intending a high-profile attack on British soil.
Reviewed on 13 May 2017 by Linda Wilson
The Third Nero
Flavia Albia must expose a plotter at the heart of Rome’s government who could plunge the city and empire into civil war.
Reviewed on 29 April 2017 by John Cleal
Jericho's War
Corrie Franklin has escaped Jihadist capture following a failed mission in Syria, and is recruited for another dangerous operation in Yemen.
Reviewed on 14 April 2017 by Arnold Taylor
The Whistler
Lacy Stoltz, lawyer at Florida’s Board on Judicial Conduct, meets a man representing a whistleblower who claims a judge is in deep with organised crime - the Gulf Mafia.
Reviewed on 18 March 2017 by Chris Roberts
Sons of the Blood
What is the meaning of the mysterious map entrusted to his bastard son Jack Wynter by Yorkist courtier Sir Thomas Vaughan before his execution?
Reviewed on 07 January 2017 by John Cleal
Dandy Gilver & A Most Misleading Habit
Dandy Gilver and Alec Osbourne investigate a case of arson at a convent in which a nun dies.
Reviewed on 10 December 2016 by Jim Beaman
Dark Forces
Spider Shepherd has to infiltrate a dangerous criminal organisation as well as help to counter attacks by IS terrorists.
Reviewed on 26 November 2016 by Linda Wilson
A Time of Torment
Charlie Parker and his two sidekicks, Angel and Louis, appear to have the power to know and intervene in deviant criminal behaviour. They are an unusual force for good. This power serves them well as they investigate cases of missing young girls and pit themselves against the insidious power of The Cut.
Reviewed on 12 November 2016 by John Barnbrook
A Death at Fountains Abbey
John Aislabie, one of the wealthiest and most hated men in England, has been threatened with murder. Thomas Hawkins is blackmailed into investigating and must hunt those responsible, or lose the woman he loves.
Reviewed on 01 October 2016 by John Cleal
The Earthly Gods
Imperial agent Cassius Corbulo has to help track down three kidnapped girls as well as continuing the search for his missing bodyguard.
Reviewed on 17 September 2016 by Linda Wilson
Before the Fall
When a private jet goes down, painter Scott and a young boy are the only ones who survive. Several of the passengers had serious enemies – was it sabotage?
Reviewed on 23 July 2016 by Chris Roberts
When the Music's Over
Newly-promoted Det Supt Alan Banks is landed with a cold case from 50 years back where it’s alleged a TV personality assaulted young female fans.
Reviewed on 23 July 2016 by Sharon Wheeler
A Banquet of Consequences
A well-known feminist is found dead in a hotel room by her PA. Her editor is subsequently found almost lifeless by DS Barbara Havers. Barbara needs a successful case in order to put off her imminent transfer to Berwick-on-Tweed.
Reviewed on 09 July 2016 by Sylvia Maughan
The 14th Colony
The Cold War has been over for years and Russia has lost it. However, there is one man who refuses to accept this and has plans to take a horrifying revenge on the United States.
Reviewed on 25 June 2016 by Arnold Taylor
The Graveyard of the Hesperides
Flavia Albia is preparing for her wedding. But when workmen uncover six bodies in the backyard of a downmarket bar, she and husband-to-be Manlius Faustus must unravel a dark secret.
Reviewed on 11 June 2016 by John Cleal
No Mortal Thing
A young Englishman, holding a prominent position in an investment bank in Berlin, decides to intervene when he sees a young girl being attacked in the street – an action that has huge consequences.
Reviewed on 27 February 2016 by Arnold Taylor
Emperor's Silver
Roman investigator Cassius Corbulo, his bodyguard and Christian slave must track down a gang of counterfeiters threatening the economic stability of the Empire.
Reviewed on 02 January 2016 by John Cleal
The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins
Gambler and rake Tom Hawkins has survived Marshalsea prison only to be convicted of a murder he did not commit. He’s mixed up in the affairs of two ‘courts’, that of George II and the criminal overlord of London’s grim St Giles. Can any of his friends or patrons save him?
Reviewed on 21 November 2015 by John Cleal
The Silent Ones
Ten years after Olivia Duvall confessed to the murder of five girls, the brother of one of her victims fakes his identity and gets a job at the secure hospital where Olivia is serving her life sentence, determined to get answers.
Reviewed on 21 November 2015 by Madeleine Marsh
The Devil's Anvil
Billie Womack’s ex-husband stole $80 million and the people he stole it from think she’s the key to getting their hands on the money. It’s Joe Hunter’s job to keep her safe.
Reviewed on 24 October 2015 by Linda Wilson
Brush Back
Chicago private investigator VI Warshawski is reluctantly drawn back to her old neighbourhood to investigate whether the unpleasant mother of a former boyfriend was framed for the murder of her daughter.
Reviewed on 24 October 2015 by Sharon Wheeler
At the Ruin of the World
The western Roman empire is collapsing with its rulers relying on unstable alliances with barbarians while fighting among themselves. Three young people hang on the dream that Rome can be great once more, but how can they save it, or themselves?
Reviewed on 26 September 2015 by John Cleal
Last Words
Garrison in Southern Indiana is a town that’s harbouring quite a few secrets, as Mark Novak discovers to his cost when he’s sent to look into an exceedingly cold case.
Reviewed on 12 September 2015 by Linda Wilson
Marston Moor
Five armies meet outside York in July 1644 in a brief, but bloody battle which changed the course of history. Battle-scarred Royalist Major Innocent Stryker must call on all his experience to survive the Parliamentary assault and treachery from his own side.
Reviewed on 12 September 2015 by John Cleal
Finders Keepers
At a time when his family is falling apart, Peter Saubers finds a trunk full of cash and Molskine notebooks. The money is enough to save his family, and what’s in the notebooks changes his heart.
Reviewed on 15 August 2015 by Madeleine Marsh
A Song of Shadows
PI Charlie Parker’s recovery from life-threatening injuries in a small US town is hijacked by horrific secrets dating back to the second world war.
Reviewed on 01 August 2015 by Sharon Wheeler
Wolf Winter
Finnish immigrant Maija and her daughters are left alone on a grim mountain. The girls find a murdered man, but locals and the authorities dismiss it as a killing by animals.
Reviewed on 18 July 2015 by John Cleal
Nunslinger
Visitandine nun Sister Thomas Josephine is a survivor of an attack on a California-bound wagon train, in 1864. She goes on the run, building a legend as the Six Gun Sister as she flees across the south west.
Reviewed on 04 April 2015 by John Cleal
Afraid
When 15-year-old Skye ends up in care, the children’s home is more like a young offenders’ institution and she has no one to turn to apart from a friend she met online. But it’s not her friend who comes to pick her up – it’s someone else entirely.
Reviewed on 07 March 2015 by Linda Wilson
Vagabond
A former runner of informers against the Provisional IRA is called out of retirement and asked to help trap a well-known and dangerous Irish Republican. He agrees to do so even though the work had left him emotionally scarred.
Reviewed on 10 January 2015 by Arnold Taylor
Cut Out
A man has been brutally murdered in the toilets of a seedy nightclub. But when a woman goes missing, DI Harland is told to prioritise the woman’s case – and his new boss wants results.
Reviewed on 27 December 2014 by Linda Wilson
Plague Land
Monastery-raised teenager Oswald de Lacy, lord of the manor after the plague deaths of his father and brothers, must battle greed and superstition to solve the brutal murder of a young girl.
Reviewed on 13 December 2014 by John Cleal
Warlord's Gold
Captain Innocent Stryker is dispatched to the Scilly Isles in search of treasure hidden by a Royalist supporter.
Reviewed on 13 December 2014 by John Cleal
White Lies
Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd is in big trouble. A rescue mission goes horribly wrong and he ends up in the hands of al-Qaeda. But fortunately for Spider, his M15 controller Charlotte Button is a woman who doesn’t always feel bound to follow the rules.
Reviewed on 15 November 2014 by Linda Wilson
Abattoir Blues
DCI Alan Banks’ holiday mood is soon dissipated by three seemingly random crimes – the theft of a tractor, the disappearance of two young men, and an arson attack on a caravan.
Reviewed on 04 October 2014 by Sharon Wheeler
The Queen's Man
John Shakespeare is ordered to investigate a plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots, but discovers its roots go deep into his native Warwickshire and threaten his own family. How far will he go to protect them?
Reviewed on 06 September 2014 by John Cleal
The Wolf in Winter
PI Charlie Parker does a favour for an old contact and investigates the disappearance of a young woman – and it takes him to a town that isn’t all it seems
Reviewed on 28 June 2014 by Sharon Wheeler
Respect
Her mother has run off to Spain with a bloke, leaving 15-year-old Chantelle to look after her younger brother and keep the debt collectors at bay. But her brother is in with a gang and Chantelle is on over her head and sinking fast
Reviewed on 14 June 2014 by Linda Wilson
The Lawless Kind
Joe Hunter goes across the border to Mexico to bring back a child that’s been abducted by its father. The only problem is that the father is high up in one of the powerful drug cartels and has no intention of giving up the boy without a fight.
Reviewed on 03 May 2014 by Linda Wilson
The Devil in the Marshalsea
Marshalsea Prison, Southwark. Country parson’s son Tom Hawkins, a gambler and rake, is thrown into a debtors’ prison where he must share a cell with a man inmates call a devil – and solve a murder or lose his own life.
Reviewed on 22 March 2014 by John Cleal
Just One Evil Act
One of DS Barbara Haver’s neighbours, a child, is abducted and her mother is also missing. The child’s father takes extreme measures to try to retrieve her while Barbara lets her emotions control her actions.
Reviewed on 22 February 2014 by Sylvia Maughan
Sycamore Row
When a reclusive multi-millionaire businessman with terminal cancer hangs himself, he leaves a hand-written will cutting out his family and leaving the bulk of his money to his black housekeeper. Jake Brigance is appointed to represent his estate, provoking a controversial trial and forcing Ford County to face its unsavoury past.
Reviewed on 16 November 2013 by John Cleal
Children of the Revolution
DCI Alan Banks finds that the death of a recluse has links back to the student unrest of the 1960s.
Reviewed on 18 October 2013 by Sharon Wheeler
The Corporal's Wife
A member of an elite Iranian military regiment is blackmailed into providing intelligence to Western agencies. He refuses to tell all he knows until his wife is rescued from Iran.
Reviewed on 20 September 2013 by Arnold Taylor
