The Salisbury Writer
Rod
Hacking
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The Lesbian Detective Series:
Detective Chief Superintendent Jo Enright DBE
As with all coppers Jo began as a constable in Boston, Lincolnshire, but held back by superiors jealousy of her ability. This talent was spotted by others and she quickly rose to the leadership of Norfolk CID where she confronted evil outside and in the betrayal of love in her personal life.
Jo neither hid nor flaunted her sexuality but gathered a number of able detectives to work with her some, but by no means all, of whom were lesbian.
The great passion of her life was reading Sigmund Freud and applying to her work all she learned from him. These are crime novels but focus on Jo, her extraordinary talent as a detective confronting crime in various forms, not least within the Police Force itself and also her vulnerabilities.
The novel opens in the Appeal Court in London where a GP seeks release from prison for something he did not do. Returning home he finds himself caught up again with the very people who got him into prison in the first place, and also has to face a wife who is divorcing him.
He takes up new work in the Cumbrian Dales but even there the past catches up with him and his new partner. A GP in the Dales has to work very hard, but then a terrible tragedy takes place threatening totally to overwhelm him. Transformation comes in the person of Olivia Doyle, a most unusual poet with whom he falls in love. Then a child is abducted in the village.
A retired and widowed Jewish archaeologist receives devastating news and realises there is a former colleague he needs to share it with and so flies out to Tel Aviv and meets this friend in Jerusalem. The friend decides he needs support as he faces up to what is before him and comes to share his life in Oxford.
His high-flying daughter sees this as an opportunity for a major change in her own lifestyle.
In the end there is a big surprise as love triumphs.
Emily is a successful Performance Poet and for her forthcoming American tour her publisher suggests a highly unlikely companion. They begin in Boston and travel across the country. Meanwhile back home, the publisher is involved in smuggling rare books out of Italy, something accidentally uncovered by Emily and her companion in Los Angeles.
Something terrible happens in Florence and something wonderful in Sheffield, as the characters each have to face their unknowable and utterly unexpected futures .
The Follow up to Emily and Bishop. Living with Emily and their children in the Derbyshire Dales, having abandoned public life, Alex Elliot is searching meaning and purpose. Out of the blue comes an invitation to serve the Parole Board in a High Security Prison in Yorkshire. He has to deal with a Parole Application from someone who has done truly terrible things. He is, however alerted by the prison chaplain to something seriously wrong with life in the prison. For that knowledge the chaplain pays a heavy price.
Alex above all concerns himself with the parents of the victims, but wonders whether anything even they say can be taken at face value. Meanwhile Emily is giving all her attention to another man!
Helen Kellner has lived a hellish existence and all because of the way she was used and abused by an older man when she was at school. Now they come face to face in a courtroom. She is on trial for murder and he is the Judge. Found to be not guilty he wants to begin their relationship once again but she is determined to resist. Meanwhile the judge's daughter has a major catastrophe to deal with: the suicide of a priest on remand having committed sexual offences against young boys.
For Helen just two things matter: reconciliation with her parents and being reunited with the only person she has ever loved and been loved by. The problem is that she is in prison for life in New York.
A Follow Up to Judge Knott Charlotte might as well be dead. From her birth onwards everything has gone wrong and her life is hopeless: drugs and prostitution. But Paul, wanting to change sex is little better, nor Andrew who is cut-off from what he loves. Charlotte comes to Scotland and unearths dangerously unpleasant secrets. As Charlotte begins to come to life, she meets Zolko, who is the latest one to experience her capacity to bring others to life. When Ed is diagnosed with cancer, amazingly it is once again Charlotte who proves the life-giver, and against the odds she discovers something astonishing for herself and the man she loves.
Wherever Hester went, men turned to look but what was she doing working in a bank? The inevitable happened one day in Cambridge when she was 'spotted' by a man who runs a model agency. In no time at all, with a failed marriage behind her, she is regarded as a much sought-after super model.
But something is not as it should be in Hester – seriously so, and one person only comes to know and fears she may pay a heavy price for that knowledge. Now known across the world as Eleanor Jennings the supermodel, was she also Eleanor Jennings the Serial Killer?
Nadine and her sister Caro share a house in Chelsea. One sister is an up-and-coming composer and the other is a very beautiful but totally deaf woman and also very clever. By accident they are drawn into a total mess involving the Continuity IRA in London and one sister is badly beaten up. Into all this comes first of all a brilliant young pianist from Romania and a Colonel and Major from the Security Services. Betrayal and love are the themes of this account of 'ordinary' life, and where being deaf is extremely useful except where Fulham supporters are concerned!
A Follow Up to Pianissimo A number of women, linked to MI5, are charged with the capture of the person co-ordinating the work of Islamic terrorists in the UK, using extraordinary skills, courage and guile Much of the action is centred on the unlikely setting of Betty's Tea and Cake shop in Ilkley, and initiated by two friends with the unlikely names of Sharon and Tracey! The whole thing is fraught with danger and the women regarded as completely dispensible and disposable. Can the women do what the men cannot?
Follow Up to Women's Troubles Following a realistic tipoff that some significant person is to be murdered in Devon by the Continuity IRA, a number of women officers of the security service come to Dartmoor in the hope of preventing the killing. Then a terrible event happens but the person who proves to be the Saviour may well be the intended assassin.
In the Yorkshire Dales of Swaledale and Arkengarthdale, the world of sheep farming, a former Sergeant Major of Special Forces now retired is constantly armed warned about a revenge attack but unprepared for the arrival of three young ladies who were set to change his life completely.
Related to Risen From The Dead Following the tragic death of the young, beautiful but mysterious Alice, a Frenchwoman newly married to a Scot, Adam. Her husband is appointed as a diplomat in Paris and there becomes aware of the secret life of his wife and her involvement in extreme right-wing politics. To help him unravel the truth is Simone, Alice's identical twin sister with whom Adam becomes involved and desperately needs to find out the truth about a woman Amilene Béthune, who seems to hold the key to what they want to know, only to discover that she has been murdered in Marseille.
But nothing is quite what it seems to be and there are awful discoveries to be made before Adam can eventually return to Scotland with a measure of peace.
Billy's parents have money but little more to offer him and he is sent to a private school he detests. At the first opportunity he leaves school and home and gets a ghastly job in a kennels skinning animals. Into his life comes Anita but when unexpected tragedy strikes he is able to begin new work living with her parents.
Even more unexpectedly he acquires considerable wealth and a cup of tea in a canteen changes his life completely, a life spent thereafter with Sonja from Poland. He is however, caught up in. two instances of corruption, one at Oxford University and another in local government. Considering his beginning Billy achieves a great deal, and then he is admitted into hospital with a life-threatening illness.
Eamonn is an evangelical Baptist minister in South London when something happens to call into question his belief in God and the meaning of his life. After many years of marriage, his wife also needs a radical change of life if she is to survive.
Eamonn signs up for a course in poetry and has relationships which change his life totally and cause him to give up Christianity completely.
His wife seeks a divorce and a return to her roots in Barnsley where she discovers a new way of living and loving. Eamonn ends up being much loved by a new partner, a Muslim.