Showing results by narrator "Michael Tudor Barns" in All Categories

The Gropes are an old English family based in Northumberland, separated from the rest of society and as eccentric as they come. It is a line dominated by strong-willed and oversexed women, determined to produce more female heirs regardless of whether their desired partners are willing.... At the dawn of the new millennium, timid and gormless teenager Esmond is abducted and lured to Grope Hall by a descendant of the Gropes.

A woman's naked body is found floating in the weeds of a lake near Bath by an elderly woman walking her Siamese cats. No one comes forward to identify her, and no murder weapon is found, but sleuthing is Superintendent Peter Diamond's speciality. A genuine gumshoe, practising door stopping and deduction: he is the last detective. Struggling with office politics and a bizarre cast of suspects, Diamond strikes out on his own, even when Forensics think they have the culprit.

Exeter, 1323. A strange man is entering people’s houses at night, causing panic amongst householders. Although many had thought him harmless, now he seems to have committed murder. A man lies dead in his own home, slaughtered merely for trying to protect his children, and the folk of Exeter want this menace caught and hanged. Sir Baldwin de Furnshill suspects that the solution isn’t that simple.

Winner of the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger and shortlisted for the Edgar Award. The summons comes at night. Two policemen collect Peter Diamond from his West London flat and drive him to Bath. Once head of the murder squad there, he is now out of touch in his retirement, unaware of an audacious escape from Albany Prison. Four years previously, Diamond headed the investigation of the bizarre murder of a Swedish woman journalist, her mouth stuffed with red roses.

Sometimes you come across a lofty railway viaduct marooned in the middle of a remote country landscape. Or a crumbling platform from some once-bustling junction buried under the buddleia. If you are lucky you might be able to follow some rusting tracks or explore an old tunnel leading to...well, who knows where? Listen hard. Is that the wind in the undergrowth? Or the spectre of a train from a golden era of the past panting up the embankment?

On 3 May 1961, after a trial conducted largely in secret, a man named George Blake was sentenced to an unprecedented 42 years in jail. By his own confession he was a Soviet spy, but the reasons for such a severe punishment were never revealed. To the public, Blake was simply the greatest traitor of the Cold War. Yet his story touches not only the depths of treachery, but also the heights of heroism.

Stuck in a job he doesn't want - but can't afford to lose - as nominal Head of the Communications Department at Fenland University, Wilt is still subject to the whims of The Powers That Be, both in and outside of work. The demands of his snobbish wife Eva, and the stupendous school fees of his despicable quadruplet daughters cause him the biggest headaches...apart from the hangovers, that is. When Eva signs him up for a summer job, teaching the gun-toting idiot son of a lusty local aristocrat, Wilt is not amused.

Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, takes a city break in Vienna, but everything goes wrong and his companion, Paloma, calls a halt to their relationship. Meanwhile, strange things are happening to jobbing musician Mel Farran, who finds himself scouted by methods closer to the spy world than the concert platform. The chance of joining a once-famous string quartet in a residency at Bath Spa University is too tempting for Mel to refuse. Then a body is found in the city canal, and the only clue to the dead woman's identity is the tattoo of a music note on one of her teeth.

A nightmare discovery in the boot of a stolen BMW plunges car thief Danny Stapleton into the worst trouble of his life. What links his misfortune to the mysterious disappearance of an art teacher at a private school for girls in Chichester? Orders from above push Peter Diamond of Bath CID into investigating a police corruption case in the Chichester force, and he soon finds himself reluctantly dealing with spirited schoolgirls, eccentric artists and his formidable old colleague, Hen Mallin.

Crete, May 1941. In the face of a German invasion, Sergeant Jack Tanner is embroiled in a deadly game of survival that will test his resolve more than ever before. Not only has he fallen out with his commander but he has mortally offended Alopex, a powerful local chieftain. As if that wasn't enough, Tanner and the rest of his battalion are caught in vicious close-quarter fighting against crack German paratroopers.

The year is 1794. Free from jail, John Pearce is not free from the smugglers whose boat he stole. While lying low, Pearce soon has other pressing concerns on his mind. Granted a commission by William Pitt, John Pearce evades his pursuers by undertaking a dangerous mission in France. As rebellious ambition turns to bloody disaster, Pearce must try to re-join Admiral Howe. Also serving with Howe is Ralph Barclay - who has somehow contrived to yet again press Pearce’s friends into his crew.

HMS Expedient and her crew have survived their most perilous commission yet: the dead have been buried and the battle scars repaired. Captain James Rennie is anxious to be active again after a year on the beach. And this time he longs for regular service with the Fleet as opposed to the extraordinarily dangerous detached missions he has been assigned by Britain’s shadowy spy masters in the last few years. His friend, Lieutenant James Hayter, is haunted by his past and he too longs for the sea.

The house was built in the Old Queen's time: built for an Elizabethan pirate who was knighted for the plunder he brought home. It survived many eras, many reigns: it saw the passing of Cromwell and the Civil War. It became rich with an Indian Nabob and poor with a 20th century innkeeper. It saw wars, and lovers, and death. Children were born there, both heirs and bastards. It had ghosts and legends and a history that grew stranger with every generation.

Called up in 1940, Reg expected to be fighting Germans. Instead, he found himself caught up in the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. What followed were three years of hell, moving from one camp to another along the Kwai river, building the infamous Burma railway. Reg made the deadly jungle work for him. With an ingenuity that is astonishing, he trapped and ate lizards, harvested pumpkins from the canteen rubbish heap and with his homemade razor became camp barber.

Battle and burial are built into the history of Lansdown Hill, so it is no great shock when part of a skeleton is unearthed there. But Peter Diamond, Bath's Head of CID, can't ignore the fresh corpse found close to the folly known as Beckford's Tower. The hill becomes the setting for one of the most puzzling cases he has investigated, involving golf, horseracing, Civil War re-enactment and the Cyrillic alphabet.

In the small hours of a Sunday morning in the city of Bath a policeman on beat duty is shot dead by an unseen gunman - the third killing of an officer in Somerset in a matter of weeks. The emergency services are summoned. Ambitious to arrest the Somerset Sniper, the duty inspector, Ken Lockton, seals the crime scene, which is confined by the river on one side and a massive retaining wall on the other. He discovers the murder weapon in a garden - and is himself attacked and left for dead.Enter Peter Diamond, Bath's burly CID chief.

North Africa, 1942. Dust, heat, thirst, flies. For those who liked that sort of thing, it was a good clean fight: nothing to harm but the sand, the enemy and yourself. Striking hard and escaping fast, Fanny Barton’s squadron play Russian roulette, flying their clapped out Tomahawks on ground-strafing forays. On the ground, the men of Captain Lampard’s SAS patrol drive hundreds of miles behind enemy lines to plant bombs on German aircraft.

Blood, Iron, and Gold reveals the huge impact of the railways as they spread rapidly across the world, linking cities that had hitherto been isolated, stimulating both economic growth and social change on an unprecedented scale. From Panama to the Punjab, Christian Wolmar describes the vision and determination of the pioneers who developed railways that would one day span continents, as well as the labour of the navvies who built this global network.

One of the best-loved composers of all time, Dvorák rose from rural origins to become not only a great but an influential composer. The first composer to put his native Bohemia on the musical map of the world, he was invited to do the same for America. One result was the famous "New World" Symphony, which made him a household name across the globe. Writing music of irresistible color, lilt and peasant vitality, he was also a melodist-in-a-million. This portrait-in-sound follows a lovable and in many ways a very simple, man from hay cart to imperial palace, from tragic loss to heart-warming joy, to pigeon-raising and world celebrity.

Spring 1791. Though deeply disturbed by a terrible incident during his previous commission, James Hayter is nevertheless on the verge of taking command of HMS Sloop Eglantine as Master and Commander when personal tragedy shatters his life. The twin blows convince Hayter that he is not fit to command and he must turn his back on the sea forever. Even the intervention of his friend and former captain, William Rennie, cannot not dissuade him from derelicting his duty.