Showing results by author "Quintin Jardine" in All Categories

As head of Edinburgh’s CID, Detective Chief Superintendent Bob Skinner has seen it all…but even he is shocked by the savagely mutilated corpse discovered in a dark alleyway. The victim is identified as a successful young lawyer, and the motive for the brutal death remains a mystery. Then further seemingly random killings in the city begin to suggest a vicious serial killer on the rampage. But when the lawyer’s fiancée is also murdered, Skinner realises that someone is in deadly earnest.

When struggling ex-copper Terry Coats was discovered in bed with an air hostess, his excuse that he was 'going undercover' cut no ice with the force - or his wife. But now he's been brutally killed on Hogmanay night, it seems there may have been more to his plea. Dragged from the New Year celebrations, Special Constable Sir Bob Skinner is shocked to find Coats' body alongside that of Griff Montell: his erstwhile protégé and former lover of Skinner's own daughter, Alex. Could there be some dark truth under Coats' cock-and-bull story, after all?

An expensive mobile home, abandoned in a new housing development, reveals a fearful secret when finally it is opened by police: the decomposed body of a former colleague. But what became of Sandra Bulloch after she left the police service? What chain of events led to her murder? DCI Lottie Mann is tasked with finding the killer of her former boss, and investigation that draws Bob Skinner into its web, just as a second mystery develops for him in his new Spanish base.

Every August thousands of tourists and performers flood into Edinburgh for its famous festival. But this year, on the very first day, an explosion rocks Princes Street, and a man is killed. A few hours later, a threatening letter is delivered to the Secretary of State – apparently from a freedom group – demanding political separation from England. Assistant Chief Constable Bob Skinner, head of CID, quickly assembles his team, with SAS backup.

The heat is on for DCC Bob Skinner. His career hangs by a thread, as a recent illness has given his enemies a weapon to use against him. A body found in the detritus of a flood is identified as the hated brother whose existence he has kept hidden for years. And an incendiary device destroys a valuable painting in the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. As Skinner and his team tackle these crises, his wife Sarah, recovering from the loss of her parents, finds comfort with an old college lover.

After cracking their first case together as a private investigation team, Oz Blackstone and Primavera Philips find themselves simultaneously in love and in the money. And where better to lie back and contemplate life than the picturesque village of St. Marti, on the rugged Costa Brava.

First the joyous birth of Skinner’s son… Then the grim reality of murder in ones of Edinburgh’s prosperous suburbs. A man has been found knifed in a luxury villa. The victim had run a chain of launderettes, saunas and pubs throughout the city, but for some time the police suspected these to be the front for a drug-distribution network.

The horrific suicide of a successful Lithuanian entrepreneur shocks newly appointed Chief Constable Bob Skinner and his colleagues. Why would a man with everything to live for take his own life? As enquiries begin, a mystery girl, drugged and incoherent, is dumped in a health centre by a mysterious Galahad, who promptly disappears. Who is she, who is he, and where has he gone? Is it coincidence that most of the massage parlours in the city have suddenly closed overnight?

It's August and the Edinburgh International Book Festival is in full swing. The world of books is focused on Charlotte Square Gardens, so it's a considerable embarrassment when a successful crime writer, and key member of the Scottish Parliament, is found dead in the author tent. But is it natural causes? DCC Bob Skinner, on the edge of a career-defining moment, doesn't need this in his life.

The opening of an elite country club, marked by a prestigious golf tournament, turns to chaos when a man is found dead in the clubhouse jacuzzi – with his throat cut. When the murder is linked to a legendary witches’ curse, Assistant Chief Constable Bob Skinner thinks it’s fantasy. He’s more concerned with harsh reality than East Lothian’s past as a centre for witchcraft. But when another body is found, he must uncover the disturbing truth beneath a dark mythology…

In Edinburgh's old Parliament House, an armed robbery trial is about to take a macabre turn. While the lawyers tussle over the evidence, the judge suddenly collapses in mortal agony--the victim of an apparent heart attack.

When an Edinburgh car showroom is torched, leaving a charred body among the burnt-out luxury cars, Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner wonders if a life of crime has finally caught up with one of the city's most elusive villains. But the corpse turns out not to be that of Jackie Charles, the owner of the showroom, but his wife Carole. Skinner now finds himself on the same side as his old enemy. However, Skinner's number one priority is a murder much closer to home.

Former Chief Constable Bob Skinner is long out of the police force, but trouble has a habit of following him around. So it is that he finds himself in the Palace of Westminster as a shocking act befalls the nation. Hours before the Prime Minster is due to make a controversial statement, she is discovered in her office with a letter opener driven through her skull. Is the act political? Personal? Or even one of terror? Skinner is swiftly enlisted by the Security Service to lead the investigation.

Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner could be forgiven for thinking that someone is out to get him. With his marriage already on the rocks, he suddenly finds his private life plastered across the pages of a tabloid. And then a woman already linked to Skinner by tragedy is found dead, with her young son a kidnap victim. Skinner finds himself at the centre of a deadly maze of conspiracy and unless he can clear his name he stands to lose everything.

Amidst a family celebration, a cataclysmic storm uncovers long-buried horrors—and a team of detectives struggle to solve a thirty-year-old double murder. The police are also searching two countries for traces of a mysterious crime novelist who appears to have vanished. Has the faking of his own death been his masterpiece? Alongside each inquiry as it evolves is former Chief Constable Sir Robert Skinner, relishing his new role as a media magnate, but drawn into reluctant action and towards a chilling discovery of his own.

Once upon a time in what was then reasonably Great Britain, there was a world in which the not too serious business of politics was practised without those people known today, nonsensically, as spin doctors, and without whispers against those who were supposed to be friends, but who were in fact blockages on the ladder of ambition. This audiobook is a wistful recollection of those days. None of it actually happened. But it would be nice to think that it might have.

Sir Robert Skinner's stock is rising - after retiring from the police service he's been promoted to head an international media organisation. Yet a series of unexplained deaths on his home turf in Scotland threaten to bring him crashing back down to earth. As Skinner helps the elderly in his local community, several residents seem to die of natural causes. But when a gruesome discovery is made in a Glasgow flat and one of Skinner's long-time friends - an aspiring politician - emerges as the prime suspect, things become very murky indeed.

Oz Blackstone, enormously wealthy screen hero and sleuth, dies of a ruptured aorta. Her mind still filled with thoughts of her dead ex-husband, Primavera Blackstone is in Spain with their son Tom when their peace is breached again with the arrival of her formidable aunt, Adrienne McGowan, whose son, Frank, has disappeared.

Still reeling from the tragic death of their much-loved colleague, Skinner's men are about to discover that a disturbed serial killer is still at large and very close to home. DCC Bob Skinner and his men get a call informing them that the body of a young woman has been found on a golf course. The way she has been laid out is uncannily familiar; the body has been "composed", just like the bodies of three other young women in a previous case. Could it be the work of a copycat killer?

A plane explodes mid-flight and plunges to disaster from the Scottish skies, the British and American defence secretaries among the victims. Now Edinburgh’s Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner must lead the most high-profile investigation of his career. The means of destruction is apparent from the start, but the investigation quickly grows more puzzling. When Skinner himself is wrenched from the case, his colleagues struggle with the mass of clues while he fights for his life, trapped with the secret horrors of his past.