Showing results by author "Kate Ellis" in All Categories

When a body is discovered in a picturesque South Devon village, DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate. The victim, Barry Brown, is a celebrity ghostwriter and the theft of his laptop suggests that the motive for murder may lie in his work. While Wesley investigates Barry's famous clients, Wesley's teenage son Michael joins family friend, Dr Neil Watson, on an intriguing excavation of a crashed World War Two plane on Dartmoor.

Despite many years living in South Devon, DI Wesley Peterson has never visited the tiny island of St Rumon's. That is until erosion from a storm reveals three bodies buried outside the local churchyard. Two are ancient skeletons, but one is far more recent, and Wesley realises he has uncovered a case of murder. But whose remains are they? And who killed them? The island has only a small number of inhabitants. Yet one resident keeps cropping up in Wesley's investigation: the author and self-styled academic Quentin Search.

Archaeologist Neil Watson did not expect to find the body of American veteran Norman Openheim in the ruins of the old chantry chapel. He turns to his old student friend, Detective Sergeant Wesley Peterson, for help. Ironically, both men are looking at an invading force - Wes the WWII Yanks and Neil a group of Spaniards killed by outraged locals as they limped from the wreckage of the Armada. 400 years apart two strangers in a strange land have died violently - could the same motives of hatred, jealousy and revenge be at work? Wes is running out of time to find out....

With the tourist season well and truly over in South Devon, Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson is looking forward to a quieter month in the CID. But when a man is shot dead on Bonfire Night, he finds he has a disturbing and complex murder case on his hands. The body of Patrick North was found in woodland connected to Nesbaraton Hall, a grand estate dating back to the eighteenth century. North worked for the Smithson family who now own the estate.

When a letter arrives at Tradmouth police station addressed to a DCI Norbert it causes quite a stir. For though DCI Norbert has long since moved on, the letter claims to have evidence that the man convicted of murdering the Rev. Shipbourne, Vicar of Belsham, during a robbery in 1991 is innocent. Despite having a full caseload, DI Wesley Peterson is forced to at least follow up on the claims. Meanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson is excavating a site in Pest Field. He discovers a mass grave that leads him to conclude that the site is one of an ancient medieval plague pit. But, more disturbing, is the discovery that the grave is home to a more recent resident....

Liverpool, 1539. A pregnant novice nun, Agnes Moore, ejected from her convent, claims to have been attacked in the ancient chapel of St Mary del Quay by Satan himself. Her former abbess, Lady Katheryn Lukeley, comes to her aid, but Agnes refuses to identify her lover.

When DI Wesley Peterson is summoned to investigate a killing, he assumes that it is a routine case. But soon dark secrets start to emerge from the victim's past.... Meanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson is pulled from the historic Paradise Court to a ruined village from World War One.

A year on from the mysterious disappearance of Jenny Bercival, DI Wesley Peterson is called in when the body of a strangled woman is found. The discovery mars the festivities of the Palkin Festival, held each year to celebrate the life of John Palkin, a 14th-century mayor of Tradmouth who made his fortune from trade and piracy. Could there be a link between the two women?

Serpent's Point in South Devon is the focus of local legends. The large house on the headland is shrouded in an ancient tale of evil, and when a woman is found strangled on the coastal path nearby, DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate. The woman had been house-sitting at Serpent's Point, and Wesley is surprised to discover that she was conducting an investigation of her own into unsolved missing persons cases. Could these enquires have led to her murder?

Derbyshire, 1921. When an MP goes missing in a Derbyshire village, Scotland Yard detective Albert Lincoln is sent to investigate. A grim discovery has been made in a cave next to an ancient stone circle: the naked body of a middle-aged man mutilated beyond recognition. The local police assume it is the missing politician, but when Albert arrives in Wenfield he begins to have doubts.

Taking a short cut home beneath the ruined abbey in the Yorkshire city of Eborby, a teenage girl reports stumbling across a body. But with the body nowhere to be found, her inebriated state and troubled history leaves the police sceptical of her story. Only Detective Joe Plantagenet is inclined to believe her. Meanwhile, Joe finds himself caught in the midst of an investigation into a production of The Devils at the local Playhouse when a young girl is reported missing.

A teenage girl is strangled and left for dead on a lonely country lane in Devon. The police are baffled when she describes her attacker as having the head of a dog, but when the body of a woman is found mutilated and wrapped in a sheet, DI Wesley Peterson suspects the killer may be performing an ancient ritual linked to the jackal-headed Egyptian god, Anubis. Meanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson has been called to Varley Castle to catalogue the collection of an Edwardian amateur Egyptologist.

Lilith Benley and her mother, rumoured to be witches, were convicted of the brutal murder of two teenage girls 18 years ago. Shortly after Lilith is released from prison, a young woman is found dead at a farm close to Lilith's old home in South Devon, and DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate. As Wesley tries to establish whether Lilith Benley could have killed again, archaeologist Neil Watson discovers a gruesome wax doll at a house that once belonged to a woman hanged for witchcraft in the 17th century.

It is 1920, and DI Albert Lincoln is still reeling from the disturbing events of the previous year. Before the war, he'd investigated the murder of a child in a Cheshire village, and now a woman has been murdered there and another child is missing. With the help of the village schoolmistress, Albert closes in on the original prewar killer. He soon realises the only witness is in grave danger, possibly from somebody he calls 'the Shadow Man'. And as he discovers more about the victims he finds information that might bring him a step closer to solving a mystery of his own.

DI Wesley Peterson has never witnessed such a bizarre crime scene. A man has been brutally murdered by two precise wounds to his neck and his body drained of blood. It seems that the victim was not a popular man in the Devon area and Wesley doesn't have a shortage of suspects. But then two more victims are found killed in an identical fashion. As if Wesley didn't have enough to investigate, Wesley's friend, archaeologist Neil Watson, begins to receive disturbing anonymous letters about macabre events at a medieval abbey.

When Dr James Dalcott is shot dead in his cottage it looks very much like an execution. And as DI Wesley Peterson begins piecing together the victim's life, he finds that the well-liked country doctor has been harbouring strange and dramatic family secrets. Meanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson has discovered a number of skeletons in nearby Tailors Court that bear marks of dissection and might be linked to tales of body snatching by a rogue physician in the 16th century. But when Neil finds the bones of a child buried with a 1930s coin, the investigation takes a sinister turn.

An excavation at the lost gardens of Earlsacre Hall is called to a halt when a skeleton is discovered under a 300-year-old stone plinth, a corpse that seems to have been buried alive. But DS Wesley has a more recent murder case to solve. A man has been found stabbed to death in a caravan at a popular holiday park, and the only clue to his identity is a newspaper cutting about the restoration of Earlsacre. Does local solicitor Brian Willerby have the answer?

DS Wesley Peterson, newly arrived in the West Country town of Tradmouth, has his hands full when a child goes missing and a young woman is brutally murdered on a lonely cliff path. Then his old friend, archaeologist Neil Watson, unearths the skeletons of a strangled woman and a newborn baby in the cellar of an ancient merchant's house nearby. As the investigation continues, Wesley begins to suspect that these deaths, centuries apart, may be linked by age-old motives of jealousy, a sexual obsession and desperate longing.

Boothgate House is a recently converted apartment building with a sinister past. Once an asylum for the insane, known as Havenby Hall, it was where serial killer Peter Brockmeister was sent on his release from prison. Detective Inspector Joe Plantagenet is drawn into the house's history when the daughter of a solicitor, who was investigating Havenby Hall's closure, is kidnapped. Joe wonders whether there may be a connection between the case and the building's disturbing past.

Thirteen Torland Place was the scene of five terrible murders in the nineteenth century, and also related to the disappearances of two teenage girls. When a student living in the house is found to be brutally murdered, Detective Inspector Joe Plantagenet is left wondering whether her death has anything to do with the house's grim history. As other similar deaths come to light, Joe fears a ruthless killer may be on the prowl - a killer who deprives each victim of one of their five senses.