Showing results by narrator "Paul Thornley" in All Categories

The streets of East London teem with different languages, cultures and religions. Private investigators Lee Arnold and Mumtaz Hakim are well-versed in the community's tensions, the sad day-to-day reality that includes the desecration of graves at Plashet Jewish cemetery in East Ham. However, the destruction of these final resting places leads to a disturbing discovery—one of the damaged coffins does not contain human remains, but instead a sculpture of a man made of clay.

1917. Private Daniel Dawkins fights at Messines Ridge and Passchendaele. He writes home to his true love, Joyce, but reveals little of his extreme bravery, his kindness, his loyalty to his comrades and the horrors they experience on the Western Front. 1920. Captain Peter Harding is tasked with a secret mission to assist in the selection of a body dug up from the battlefields of Flanders to be buried in Westminster Abbey as the 'Unknown Warrior'.

Mahala – City of contrasts. Light and dark. Hope and despair. Rojan Dizon just wants to keep his head down. But his worst nightmare is around the corner. With the destruction of their power source, the vertical city of Mahala is crisis. Riots are breaking out, mages are being murdered and the city is divided. But Rojan's hunt for the killers will make him responsible for complete anarchy. Either that, or an all-out war. And there's nothing Rojan hates more than being responsible.

Two Brothers tells the story of a great sporting family, uncovering new details, exposing myths and placing Jack and Bobby Charlton in their historical context. It's a book about two English footballers but also about English football and England itself.

Hong Kong: The British administration is preparing to hand the capitalist colony back to communist China with the minimum of fuss. But Colonel Joel Tyler has other plans for the British Colony, plans which involve four Vietnam War veterans and a spectacular mission, making use of their unique skills. Vietnam was the one thing the four men had in common before Tyler moulded them into a team capable of pulling off a sensational robbery. But while the vets are preparing to take Hong Kong by storm, their paymaster, Anthony Chung, puts the final touches on an audacious betrayal.

After a close friend's apparent suicide, Christopher Cornwell receives several photos the friend mailed prior to his death. Cornwell subsequently discovers by chance the presence in one of the photos of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President Kennedy. But how could Oswald be photographed in a small Hertfordshire market town when he was supposed to be living in Russia as a defector at the same time?

For James Mercer, the financial ruin of his family by the institutions they trusted can never be undone. It shattered everyone, leaving him with a burning need to right the wrongs they suffered. He will stop at nothing to recoup what they are owed. It’s not theft, it’s payback. Until his solo crusade falls foul of the very people he seeks to rob - the one-percenters, the people who own the bulk of the world’s wealth. Soon he is putting together a crew to carry out one last robbery, to undertake one last job.

Ex-soldier Lee Arnold and his Muslim assistant Mumtaz Hakim run a detective agency in London's ethnically diverse, crime-ridden East End. Mumtaz is approached by an Egyptian woman, Salwa, whose husband is in Belmarsh on terrorism charges. Salwa convinces Mumtaz of her husband's innocence and persuades her to go undercover to prove it. But Salwa is not what she seems. Trapped in an old tunnel that leads to the London docks, will Mumtaz escape with her life?

Eighteen years after the barbarous war with the Serbs that tore their communities apart, a group of Croatian villagers discover the identity of the Englishman who they believe betrayed them by reneging on a deal to supply arms. With revenge in sight at last, they hire a professional killer from London to track him down... but is the story as simple as they think?

Lee Arnold and Mumtaz Hakim run a detective agency in London's East End. But their latest case could have devastating consequences.A new client, Nasreen, has sought Hakim's help. Recently moved to a new house, and with a baby on the way, this should be an exciting time- but Nasreen has made friends in the community that she cannot tell her husband, Abdullah, about. And when a murder takes place close to their home, Nasreen suspects that Abdullah also has something to hide.

Jake Hunter was once an ordinary schoolboy with a computer - until he discovered Villain.net. Now he is an extraordinary schoolboy with a dark side, a bad attitude and an addiction to the villainous powers he can download from the website. And when Jake Hunter - aka the Hunter - breaks out of prison, he has one thing on his mind: revenge. He is going to get his family back, avenge himself on hero Psych, who has wiped all memory of him from their minds, and then destroy heroes and villains.

A threat has been made. An ultimatum delivered. Innocent people are in mortal danger. The gripping new bestseller from the master of the race-against-time thriller.8am: an explosion blasts through a cafe in central London. Minutes later a call is made to a local radio station: ‘We’ve just detonated a bomb. Another will explode shortly. The British Government has until 8pm tonight to meet all our demands, or a far greater attack will take place somewhere in the country that will bring fire down on all your heads.

The chance discovery of a 30-year-old blue movie leads back to the film's maker, Tim Purdom, and the London of the late fifties and early sixties. Purdom was a pioneer of the B&W British porno film and a figure on the periphery of the Profumo sex scandal. He directed eight films... but who was directing him and what was their hidden agenda? And where is Tim now? London Blues explicitly and unremittingly details the hidden world of Soho vice and London's demi-monde at the time when the grey 1950s were giving way to the 'swingin' sixties'.

Libya 1942 - Rommel's Africa Korps is sweeping across Northern Africa. The ragged Allied forces engage the enemy in brutal fire-fights on the desert sands. Meanwhile, the Allied commander-in-chief sends a coded message to the Prime Minister – the courier is First Officer Madeleine Rose, WRNS – codename Runefish.

It's evening, you're back late from work - and the house is in darkness. You step inside, and the phone rings. You answer it - and your world turns upside down. Your 14-year-old daughter's been taken, and her kidnappers demand half a million pounds in cash. They give you 48 hours to raise the money, and warn you that if you call the police, she'll die. Trying desperately to remain calm, you realise that your husband - the man you married only two years previously - is also missing.

When writer Rob Fallon gets drunk one night and ends up joining his friend's girlfriend, Jenny, back at her apartment in London's West End, he's feeling guilty before anything's even happened. But guilt quickly turns to shock when a sequence of events put him in the centre of a mystery and a deadly race against time.

From the bestselling author of the Rebus detective series, a road worker is called on for a favour by the local loan shark.

Sidney Blattner is probably the most successful organised crime figure in London, but things are coming unstuck. Who would dare to execute his innocent brother down in Margate, and why? When Blattner attends the funeral, his chauffeur disappears, forcing Sid and his two minders to flee the seaside resort ignominiously in a Transit van.... Sidney calls in as many favours as he can to find out what is going on down in Margate but without success. Two of his aides, sent down to investigate, turn up murdered.

For the sake of an old schoolmate, Robbie - and more importantly for Robbie's sister, Cate - Daniel Wade agrees to go along with a lie that has fatal consequences. Soon he's sucked into a conspiracy that threatens to consume them all. With a ruthless predator on their trail, Dan realises that evading justice is the least of their worries. All that matters now is staying alive...

Private investigator and ex-soldier Lee Arnold and police superintendent Paul Venus are by no means friends, but when Venus' son, Harry, is kidnapped and ransom demands arrive from an address in Arnold's patch in east London, the superintendent doesn't know who else to turn to. Arnold and his Muslim assistant, Mumtaz Hakim, soon find themselves chasing leads into several of the East End's uneasily coexisting communities.