Showing results by author "Kate Ellis" in All Categories

DS Wesley Peterson, newly arrived in the West Country town of Tradmouth, has his hands full when a child goes missing and a young woman is brutally murdered on a lonely cliff path. Then his old friend, archaeologist Neil Watson, unearths the skeletons of a strangled woman and a newborn baby in the cellar of an ancient merchant's house nearby. As the investigation continues, Wesley begins to suspect that these deaths, centuries apart, may be linked by age-old motives of jealousy, a sexual obsession and desperate longing.

Archaeologist Neil Watson did not expect to find the body of American veteran Norman Openheim in the ruins of the old chantry chapel. He turns to his old student friend, Detective Sergeant Wesley Peterson, for help. Ironically, both men are looking at an invading force - Wes the WWII Yanks and Neil a group of Spaniards killed by outraged locals as they limped from the wreckage of the Armada. 400 years apart two strangers in a strange land have died violently - could the same motives of hatred, jealousy and revenge be at work? Wes is running out of time to find out....

Despite many years living in South Devon, DI Wesley Peterson has never visited the tiny island of St Rumon's. That is until erosion from a storm reveals three bodies buried outside the local churchyard. Two are ancient skeletons, but one is far more recent, and Wesley realises he has uncovered a case of murder. But whose remains are they? And who killed them? The island has only a small number of inhabitants. Yet one resident keeps cropping up in Wesley's investigation: the author and self-styled academic Quentin Search.

An excavation at the lost gardens of Earlsacre Hall is called to a halt when a skeleton is discovered under a 300-year-old stone plinth, a corpse that seems to have been buried alive. But DS Wesley has a more recent murder case to solve. A man has been found stabbed to death in a caravan at a popular holiday park, and the only clue to his identity is a newspaper cutting about the restoration of Earlsacre. Does local solicitor Brian Willerby have the answer?

When the body of Pauline Brent is found hanging from a yew tree in a local graveyard, DS Wesley Peterson immediately suspects foul play. Then history provides him with a clue. Wesley's archaeologist friend, Neil Watson, has excavated a corpse at his nearby dig - a young woman who, local legend has it, had been publicly hanged from the very same tree before being buried on unhallowed ground five centuries ago. Wesley is now forced to consider the possibility that the killer knows the tree's dark history.

Singmass Close has a sinister past. Reputedly haunted by the ghosts of children, in the 50s it was the hunting ground of the Doll Strangler, a ruthless killer who was never brought to justice. Now DI Joe Plantagenet wonders whether a copycat killer is at work when the strangled body of teenager Natalie Parkes is found in the same close, a mutilated doll lying by her side.

When workmen converting former girls' boarding school Chadleigh Hall into a luxury hotel discover a skeleton in a sealed room, DI Wesley Peterson and his boss, Gerry Heffernan, are called in to investigate. But within minutes they have a second suspicious death on their hands: a team of marine archaeologists working on a nearby shipwreck have dragged a woman's body from the sea. And it becomes clear that her death was no accident. The dead woman's husband may be linked with a brutal robbery of computer equipment, but Wesley soon discovers that the victim had secrets of her own....

When a skeleton is discovered on a Devon smallholding, DS Wesley Peterson, a keen amateur archaeologist, is intrigued by the possibility that it is a Viking corpse, buried in keeping with ancient traditions. But he has a rather more urgent crime to solve - the disappearance of a Danish tourist. Wesley finds disturbing evidence that the attractive Dane has been abducted. His boss, Gerry Heffernan, believes that Ingeborg's disappearance is linked to a spate of brutal robberies and that she witnessed something she shouldn't have.

With the tourist season well and truly over in South Devon, Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson is looking forward to a quieter month in the CID. But when a man is shot dead on Bonfire Night, he finds he has a disturbing and complex murder case on his hands. The body of Patrick North was found in woodland connected to Nesbaraton Hall, a grand estate dating back to the eighteenth century. North worked for the Smithson family who now own the estate.

It's 1919. The Derbyshire village of Wenfield is still coming to terms with the loss of so many of its sons when the brutal murder of a young girl shatters its hard-won tranquility. Myrtle Bligh is found stabbed, her mouth slit to accommodate a dead dove. During the war Myrtle volunteered as a nurse, working at the nearby big house, Tarnhey Court. When two more women are found murdered, Inspector Albert Lincoln is sent up from London.

Lilith Benley and her mother, rumoured to be witches, were convicted of the brutal murder of two teenage girls 18 years ago. Shortly after Lilith is released from prison, a young woman is found dead at a farm close to Lilith's old home in South Devon, and DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate. As Wesley tries to establish whether Lilith Benley could have killed again, archaeologist Neil Watson discovers a gruesome wax doll at a house that once belonged to a woman hanged for witchcraft in the 17th century.

Teenager Lewis Hoxworthy discovers a disturbing painting in a medieval barn - a discovery which excites archaeologist Neil Watson, who is excavating an ancient manor house nearby. But when former rock star Jonny Shellmer is found shot through the head in Lewis' father's field and Lewis himself goes missing after contacting a man on the Internet, Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson and his boss, Gerry Heffernan, face one of their most intriguing cases yet. It seems that the Devon village of Derenham is not only full of resident celebrities seeking the rural idyll but also of secrets, ancient and modern.

Derbyshire, 1921. When an MP goes missing in a Derbyshire village, Scotland Yard detective Albert Lincoln is sent to investigate. A grim discovery has been made in a cave next to an ancient stone circle: the naked body of a middle-aged man mutilated beyond recognition. The local police assume it is the missing politician, but when Albert arrives in Wenfield he begins to have doubts.

When DI Wesley Peterson is summoned to investigate a killing, he assumes that it is a routine case. But soon dark secrets start to emerge from the victim's past.... Meanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson is pulled from the historic Paradise Court to a ruined village from World War One.

It is 1920, and DI Albert Lincoln is still reeling from the disturbing events of the previous year. Before the war, he'd investigated the murder of a child in a Cheshire village, and now a woman has been murdered there and another child is missing. With the help of the village schoolmistress, Albert closes in on the original prewar killer. He soon realises the only witness is in grave danger, possibly from somebody he calls 'the Shadow Man'. And as he discovers more about the victims he finds information that might bring him a step closer to solving a mystery of his own.

The discovery of a human skeleton and a red rucksack amongst the roots of a fallen tree jolts memories for DI Wesley Peterson: a hitchhiker who went missing in 2008 and was never found. Meanwhile, in the small Devon village of Petherham, a famous TV psychic is the main attraction at a supernatural weekend. But when the psychic dies in suspicious circumstances Wesley discovers a connection between the dead man and the vanished hitchhiker. But was he responsible for her murder? Or has a shady organisation called The Burial Circle been revived in the present day?

Liverpool, 1539. A pregnant novice nun, Agnes Moore, ejected from her convent, claims to have been attacked in the ancient chapel of St Mary del Quay by Satan himself. Her former abbess, Lady Katheryn Lukeley, comes to her aid, but Agnes refuses to identify her lover.

Serpent's Point in South Devon is the focus of local legends. The large house on the headland is shrouded in an ancient tale of evil, and when a woman is found strangled on the coastal path nearby, DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate. The woman had been house-sitting at Serpent's Point, and Wesley is surprised to discover that she was conducting an investigation of her own into unsolved missing persons cases. Could these enquires have led to her murder?

Strangefields Farm is notorious for its sinister history ever since serial killer Jackson Temples lured young women to the premises, and the girls never left alive. Now, decades later, Strangefields is being transformed into a holiday village, but the developer's hopes of its dark past being forgotten are ruined when a skull is found on the site. Police suspect it belongs to one of Temples' victims, and when a local florist is found murdered in an echo of Temples' crimes, DI Wesley Peterson fears a copycat killer could be at large.

The brutal massacre of the Harford family at Potwoolstan Hall in Devon in 1985 shocked the country and passed into local folklore. When a journalist researching the case is murdered 20 years later, the horror is reawakened. Sixteenth-century Potwoolstan Hall, now a New Age healing centre, is reputed to be cursed because of the crimes of its builder, and it seems that this inheritance of evil lives on as DI Wesley Peterson is faced with his most disturbing case yet. And when the truth is finally revealed, it turns out to be as horrifying as it is dangerous.