DS Stella Mooney

Jimmy Stone died of a broken heart. Literally. "Four people sitting in a ring. Two men and two women. All of them dead." Thus begins a case that will take detective Stella Mooney from the fabulous flats of Notting Hill to the decidedly tougher side of town. It's no wonder Stella feels like she's going round in circles. Her personal life is also going awry. Her live-in-lover has yet to be told her has serious competition in the form of sexy newsman John Delaney, nightmares are an ongoing problem, and Stella's vodka habit is not improving. She's trying to keep everything together long enough to catch the killer. The problem is, the nearer she gets to solving the case, the closer the rest of her life comes to falling apart...

Once she had been beautiful. Now she was eight days dead, her body slashed with more than fifty cuts. Janis Parker - young, successful and glamorous - had shared her modern Notting Hill apartment with flatmate Stephanie James. But now Janis is dead - and Stephanie has disappeared. Heading up the investigation, Detective Stella Mooney soon has her first suspect, in the shape of Mark Ross - Stephanie's boyfriend and Janis's secret lover ... But then another body is discovered - slashed fifty times. Clearly these are no domestic killings. It seems Stella and her team are looking for that most dangerous of creatures: a killer who hunts to feed a terrible appetite. But the truth is they are up against something even more terrifying...

The brutalized corpse of a young woman has just been discovered. When Robert Kimber walks into a Notting Hill police station and confesses to the murder, it's an open-and-shut case-just what the police want this close to Christmas. But, Stella has her doubts. And, if their suspect didn't commit the murder, who did? Someone without a conscience. Someone who will tap into Kimber's disturbed mind. Someone who needs an apprentice for the dark business he has planned...

The naked body of a young woman is found hanging from a tree on a London roadside. Scrawled across her back are the words "DIRTY GIRL." Detective Stella Mooney is faced with a murder as baffling as it is chilling. With no means to identify the victim and no apparent motive, the case is blocked, until a man is found on a bench by the river, his throat cut back to the vertebrae. And, as before, the killer has left a trademark comment: "FILTHY COWARD." Stella and her team can see there's a connection--but what? One victim is a young girl, maybe one of the hookers who work the Strip; the other, a researcher for a prominent and controversial member of Parliament. More evidence is needed. And soon enough it comes: another death; another message....