STONE COLD, STONE DEAD

A daring sleuthing duo’s wish for a peaceful life is not to be.

Patrick Gillard and his wife, Ingrid Langley, have been together since their teens. Patrick, an army veteran, has worked for MI5 and the National Crime Agency. More recently, he’s been embedded with the Avon and Somerset police in order to be near the home he shares with Ingrid, their five children, and his recently widowed mother. Ingrid, an author with an uncanny knack for uncovering crimes, works as a police consultant. The couple’s relatively quiet interregnum ends when MI5 informs Patrick that a nasty case from their past (Murders.com, 2017, etc.) is coming back to haunt them in the person of Julian Mannering—formerly Sir Julian, until he was involved in murder and other crimes—who’s now thought to be taking up new criminal enterprises. Patrick’s mother, Elspeth, still reeling from her husband’s death, is harassed by a couple, claiming to be involved with a London-based church group, who want to move into her house, a former church property attached to Patrick’s home. When Mannering is found dead, the supercilious DI on the case assumes he died of natural causes until the pathologist confirms Ingrid’s suggestion that he was shot three times. The harassment of Elspeth blossoms into vandalism and attacks on Patrick’s children. Are these connected to the police suspicions of Mannering and a former MP who may have joined his criminal enterprises? Since nothing rouses Patrick to anger more than attacks on his family and friends, he and Ingrid set out to untangle the ties between harassment, murder, and Mannering’s criminal activities. Murder and mayhem ensue when they start digging, but Patrick welcomes the chance to take down the ruthless criminals whatever the cost to him and his family.

Fans will enjoy the excitement and action of the clever pair’s newest cases and be very surprised indeed by some of their solutions.