Horse Thriller

Slough House is Jackson Lamb’s kingdom; a dumping ground for members of the intelligence service who’ve screwed up: left a secret file on a train, blown surveillance, or become drunkenly unreliable. They’re the service’s poor relations – the slow horses – and bitterest among them is River Cartwright, whose days are spent transcribing mobile phone conversations.

After learning of a suspicious attempt to burn down a beloved old pub, The Crooked Horse, amateur detective Libby Sarjeant and her friend Fran reluctantly agree to investigate. But when a local antiques dealer mysteriously disappears after apparently taking out his boat, it appears there are dark and sinister forces at play. Can Libby and Fran uncover a connection between the fire and the missing man? And will unravelling a deadly case put them in terrible danger?

To understand the strange goings on at The Pale Horse Inn, Mark Easterbrook knew he had to begin at the beginning. But where exactly was the beginning? Was it the savage blow to the back of Father Gorman's head? Or was it when the priest's assailant searched him so roughly, he tore the clergyman's cassock? Or could it have been the priest's visit, just minutes before, to a woman on her deathbed? Or was there a deeper significance to the violent squabble that Mark Easterbrook had himself witnessed earlier?

Violent burglars have been terrorising residents across the English countryside. But when a mutilated body is discovered in a Cotswolds house, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary group of opportunist thieves. As Detective Jack Warr investigates, he discovers locals with dark secrets, unearths hidden crimes - and hits countless dead ends. With few leads and the violent attacks escalating, he will have to act as audaciously as the criminals if he hopes to stop them.

Evan Smoak is a man with many identities and a challenging past. As Orphan X, he was a government assassin for the off-the-books Orphan Program. After he broke with the program, he adopted a new name and a new mission - the Nowhere Man, helping the most desperate in their times of trouble. Having just survived an attack on his life, and the complete devastation of his base of operations, as well as his complicated (and deepening) relationship with his neighbour, Mia Hall, Evan isn't interested in taking on a new mission. But one finds him anyway.

Once a blacksmith, now famous and respected as a newspaperman, Valentine Clark knows everyone who is anyone in the racing world. Aged, confused, blind and dying, he harbours a daunting secret that he is desperate to be rid of. He makes last confession to his visiting film-director friend, Thomas Lyon, whom in his delirium he mistakes for a priest.

A sunken U-boat has lain undisturbed on the Atlantic ocean floor since the Second World War - until now. Inside its rusting hull, among the corpses of top-rank Nazis, lie secrets people will kill to obtain. The sequel to Len Deighton's game-changing debut The IPCRESS File, Horse Under Water sees its nameless, laconic narrator sent from fogbound London to the Algarve, where he must dive through layers of deceit in a place rotten with betrayals.

Derby Day at Epsom Downs and a multitude of people crowd to watch the races: dukes and dustmen, bishops and beggars, privileged ladies and prostitutes. The gamut of Victorian society, though, is also a hotbed for crime and crooks of all kinds. With the country a-flutter in the run-up to this national occasion, events reach fever pitch when a disembodied head is discovered on a passenger train at Crewe; the first in a murky course of events that takes in murder, fraud and race-fixing.

British Prime Minister Gabriel Bryce lies injured in the hospital, a survivor of the car bomb that has wiped out his cabinet and thrown the country into chaos.

3,000 years ago Iron Age people carved a white horse on the Downs near Uffington Castle, and now someone has dumped a body there. Laid out like a ceremonial killing, Detective Inspector Leo George isn't convinced that the murder is what it appears. He suspects the young female victim may have been a member of the Children of the White Horse, a secretive valley commune, but none of the cult members are talking. That is until he discovers his friend Jess Bridges is undercover in the commune, attempting to persuade a wayward young woman to leave the cult.

In Slough House memories are stirring, all of them bad. Catherine Standish is buying booze again, Louisa Guy is raking over the ashes of lost love, and new recruit Lech Wicinski, whose sins make him outcast even among the slow horses, is determined to discover who destroyed his career, even if he tears his life apart in the process.

Sid Halley had one good hand and another made of metal. Five hundred pounds of horse had landed on him, directly ending his career as a brilliant jockey - and indirectly ending his marriage to the woman he loved. He had become a private investigator, quite a good one, though his new life could never erase the haunting memories of his past glories.

Malcolm Pembroke never expected to make a million pounds without making enemies. Nor did he expect his latest wife to be brutally murdered. All the clues suggest the killer comes from close to home, but after five marriages and nine children, that still leaves the field wide open. When he find his own life in danger, Pembroke entrusts his safety to his estranged son, Ian, an amateur jockey; and through him discovers a compulsive new outlet for his financial expertise.

John Kendall knows how to survive. He's written six handbooks on the subject. Now he wants to become a novelist, preferably without starving to death. But when cold and hunger set in, Kendall impulsively accepts an unlikely job. He is to research and write a biography of Tremayne Vickers, a famous racehorse trainer. Staying at Vickers' home in rural Berkshire, Kendall soon learns to like his host and friends, learns to ride racehorses, learns about murderers ...

When a sick friend asks Edward Lincoln to investigate the comprehensive failure of a string of racehorses, he agrees to help out. But it is impossible for him to go about the task quietly and unnoticed because he is now a world-class star of action films, in which he always plays the hero. And the apparently easy survey of the string of racehorses blows him through a smokescreen into circumstances, where, to survive, he has to make himself become the man everyone else already thinks he is.

Peter Darwin was hoping for some quiet leave from the Foreign Office. Instead he found himself in the village of his childhood, at the service of a veterinary surgeon whose operating theater was rapidly acquiring an unwanted reputation as an abattoir. The sudden unexplained death of a string of valuable racehorses from one small area in Gloucestershire was a mystery the police couldn't solve. But Darwin was local. He remembered people and what was at stake. And now he knew enough to get himself killed.

Randall Drew is prevented from carrying on with his career in steeplechasing by poor eyesight. Restless and unsure of his future but pursuing an ardent love affair, he does not welcome an invitation to go to Moscow on a delicate investigation, but irresistible pressure is hard to refuse. A mysterious entity, "Alyosha", is threatening a royally-connected candidate for the Moscow Olympic Games; the candidate may be vulnerable to scandal which could set off intolerable diplomatic conflicts.

At an annual party to celebrate the success of the racing season, everything seemed to be running well to form, including the need for more champagne. Then a runaway horsebox ploughed into the marquee. A witness to the terrible death and destruction, wine merchant Tony Beach knows it is just one of those tragic accidents. But when his expert advice is called into play over sub-standard alcohol in a local night club, connections start to click, and another person dies, horribly.

A British jockey, riding in Norway, has disappeared, and with him has gone a day's takings from the turnstiles of Oslo racecourse. The Norwegian police have found no trace of him, nor have the British, and the case is being filed as just one more unsolved theft. David Cleveland, investigator for the Jockey Club, is a last resort. He goes without much expectation, and finds himself in waters as dark and deep as the fjords.

Derek Franklin is an injured jockey. The last fence at Cheltenham has left him on crutches. But his brother’s death means even bigger trouble. He inherits a jewellery business, a mistress – and some very shady business associates. Franklin likes to play things straight. But with £1.5 million in diamonds gone missing, he finds honesty can be a deadly virtue.