DCI Cook Thriller

There's a secret, that much is certain, but who knows? The missing actress? The executive producer, his eavesdropping assistant? Or the actor who portrayed her fictional brother on the Soap Opera? DCI Isaac Cook of the Murder Investigation Team at Challis Street Police Station in London is searching for the missing woman. Why has he been taken away from more important crimes to search for the woman? It's not the first time she's gone missing, and why does everyone assume she's been murdered?

A corpse in the fireplace of an old house. It's been there for thirty years, but who is it? It's clearly murder, and what connection does the body have to the previous owners of the house? It was bound to be discovered eventually but was that what the murderer wanted? The main suspects are all old and dying, or already dead. There's a motive, but what is it? Isaac Cook and his team have their work cut out trying to put the pieces together. Those who know are not talking out of an old-fashioned belief that a family's dirty laundry is not to be aired in public, and certainly not to a policeman-even if that means the murderer is never brought to justice!

Before she left she carved a number in blood on his chest. But why the number 2, if this was her first murder? A woman stalks London. She kills at will. Her targets are men who have wronged her, or have they? What is behind her hatred and why is she keeping count? DCI Cook and his team know who she is, at least after she has killed the first four, but the woman disappears in plain sight. The pressure's on to stop her, but she's always one step ahead. And this time, DCS Goddard can't protect his protege, Isaac Cook, from the wrath of the new commissioner at the Met.

A dismembered corpse floats in a canal in London. Isaac Cook is baffled as to why it's there. Is it gang-related, or is it something more? Whatever the reason, it's clearly a warning, and Isaac and his team are sure it's not the last body that they'll have to deal with.

He was thought to be dead, until he returns to exact revenge against those who had blighted his life. His only concern is to protect his wife and daughter. He will stop at nothing to achieve his aim . . . "Big Greg, I never expected to see you around here at this time of night." "I've told you enough times." "I've no idea what you're talking about," Robertson replied. He looked up at the man, only to see a metal pole coming down at him. Robertson fell down, cracking his head against a concrete curb. The two vagrants, no more than twenty feet away, did not stir and did not even look in the direction of the noise. If they had, they would have seen a dead body, another man walking away.

One murderer, two bodies, two locations, and the murders have been committed within an hour of the other. There's a connection, but what is it? They're separated by a couple of miles, and neither woman has anything in common with the other. Isaac Cook and his team at Challis Street Police Station are baffled as to why. One of the women is young and wealthy, the daughter of a famous man; the other is poor and hardworking and unknown.

A Downmarket Hotel. A Moral Campaigner. A woman who had killed her husband. Both Dead. Both Compromised. On the bed, the naked bodies of a man and a woman. "Bullet in the head's not the way to go," Larry Hill, Isaac Cook's detective inspector, said. "Do you recognize him?" Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook said. "James Holden, from what I can see." "Rent by the hour?" "Not according to her handbag. There's a business card. She worked for the man." "You know this will be all over the media within the hour," Isaac said. "James Holden, a proponent of the sanctity of the marital bed, man and wife. It's bound to be."

A murdered recluse. A property empire. A disinherited family. All the ingredients for murder. No one gave much credence to the man when he was alive. In fact, most people never knew who he was, although those who had lived in the area for many years recognized the tired-looking and shabbily dressed man as he shuffled along, regular as clockwork on Thursdays at seven in the evening to the local off-license. It was always the same: a bottle of whisky, premium brand, and a packet of cigarettes. He paid his money over the counter, took hold of his plastic bag containing his purchases, and then walked back down the road with the same rhythmic shuffle. He said not one word to anyone on the street or in the shop. Apart from the three-story mansion where he lived, one of the best residences on one of the best streets in London, with its windows permanently shuttered, no one would have regarded him as any other than homeless and destitute. Just a harmless eccentric, until the morning when he was found dead in his front garden.

A mass shooting. An amoral Romanian gangster. A Russian oligarch who claims to be an honest businessman, but isn't. No one knows who was the target or why, but there are eight dead. The men seem the most likely, or could have it been one of the two women, the attractive Gillian Dickenson, or even the celebrity-obsessed Sal Maynard? There's a gang war brewing, and if there are deaths, they don't care as long as it's not one of them. But to Detective Chief Inspector Isaac Cook, it's his area of London, and he needs to find out who killed the eight. It's unpredictable, and initially, it had been the West Indian gangs that had held sway in the area. But then, a more vicious Romanian gangster had usurped them. And now he's being marginalized by the Russians. And their leader is the head of the most vicious Russian mafia organization, and he's got residency in England, as well as money and influence, the ear of those in power.

An early-morning jogger is murdered in Hyde Park. It's the center of London, but no one saw him enter the park, no one saw him die. He carries no identification, only a water-logged phone. As the pieces unravel, it's clear that the dead man had a history of deception. Is the murderer one of those that loved him? Or was it someone with a vengeance? It's proving difficult for DCI Isaac Cook and his team at Challis Street Homicide to find the guilty person-not that they'll cease to search for the truth, not even after one suspect confesses.