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Simon Tolkien

Simon Tolkien’s gripping Oxford-based thriller which sees Inspector Trave in a race for justice against deception, conspiracy and the long shadow of the past.

When an eminent art historian is found dead in his study, all the evidence points to his estranged son, Stephen. With his fingerprints on the murder weapon, Stephen’s guilt seems undeniable.

As the police begin to question five other people who were in the house at the time, it is revealed that Stephen’s father was involved at the end of World War II in a deadly hunt for a priceless relic in northern France, and the case begins to unravel.

As Stephen’s trial unfolds at the Old Bailey, Inspector Trave of the Oxford police decides he must go to France and find out what really happened in 1944. What artefact could be so valuable it would be worth killing for? But Trave has very little time – the race is on to save Stephen from the gallows.

Leighton Pugh

HarperCollins

Inspector Trave

The Inheritance

David Swain is two years into his life sentence for murdering the lover of his ex-girlfriend, Katya Osman. In the dead of night, he escapes from prison. Hours later, Katya is found murdered in her uncle’s home, Blackwater Hall.

Having first brought Swain to justice two years earlier, Inspector Trave of the Oxford police heads the manhunt. Once Swain is recaptured and put on trial for his life, a guilty verdict seems guaranteed.

But Trave’s investigation has taken an unexpected turn. Katya’s uncle is a rich diamond dealer with a grudge against Trave, and his sinister brother-in-law has gone to great lengths to create a new identity. Now convinced that they have arrested the wrong man, and with personal scores to settle, Trave must risk everything he holds dear to bring his unlikely target to justice.

The King of Diamonds

An ingenious thriller in which young Detective Constable Trave uncovers a sophisticated plot at the heart of MI6 to assassinate Churchill and bring the Second World War and the whole Allied effort to an untimely end.

It’s 1940, and Bill Trave is a Detective Constable in his early thirties working in West London. France has fallen and the capital is being bombed both day and night – it seems against all odds that Britain can survive the onslaught. Almost single-handedly Winston Churchill maintains the country’s morale, with the German enemy convinced that his removal would win them the War.

Albert Morrison, a rich widower forced into early retirement by failing eyesight, is stabbed to death in his Chelsea flat. His only daughter, Ava, tells Trave that she would read the newspapers to him every evening, and the night before his death he had become suddenly excited when she read him an obscure obituary notice.

At Morrison’s funeral, Ava learns from an old colleague that her father worked for MI6 before the War. The obituary notice was a coded message preparing for an assassination, although it does not specify the target. Trave realizes that there is a Nazi double agent within MI6, with a plan to assassinate Churchill and to set up another agent to take the blame. He is in a race against time to save Churchill, for if he fails, Britain’s entire war effort could be at stake…

Damian Kell

Orders from Berlin

Inspector Trave - The book series

Inspector Trave - The book series

Inspector Trave books in order

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