A Sam Smith Mystery

Love hurts. For Derwena de Caro, songstress, female icon, and teenage dream, success brought drugs, alcohol, and a philandering boyfriend. It also brought wealth, fame, and a stalker, or so she claimed. And that's where I came in, to investigate the identity of the stalker, little realizing that the trail would lead to murder and a scandal that would make the newspaper headlines for months on end.

It had been a week since the incident at the abandoned quarry, a week since I'd shot and killed someone, a week since my ex-husband had been murdered. It had been an emotional week. But life goes on. I'd been hired to discover who was sending death threats to Dr. Ruth Carey, a controversial psychiatrist. The trail led to two high-powered villains and soon the death threats were aimed at me, threats that increased following two murders.

Book Three in the Sam Smith Mystery Series. "Emergency!" "Christ! Who shot her?" "Don't know." "What a mess." "Better call Dr. Warburton." Bright lights. A sharp, antiseptic smell. Pain. Nausea. Eyes blink awake. Gasping. Try to rise, but head hurts too much. Fall back on to the pillow. I was alive. But with a snowstorm gripping the city and with an unknown assassin closing in, I faced the most dangerous moment of my life and the very real prospect of feeling the big chill.

Someone was murdering prostitutes, placing their bodies in the Bay and covering them with roses. To the media, he was "Cardiff Jack", to the rest of us he was a man to avoid and fear. Meanwhile, I was searching for Faye Collister, a prostitute. Why was Faye, a beautiful woman from a privileged background, walking the streets? Why had she disappeared? And what was her connection to Cardiff Jack?

"You've been through a stressful time recently," my fiancé, Dr. Alan Storey said. "I'm off to Bulgaria to attend a psychology conference so why don't you accompany me and we'll throw in a holiday as well." Great idea, I thought. However, when I arrived in Bulgaria my inquisitive nature impelled me towards a mystery dating back to the Second World War. As I delved into the past I stirred up some ghosts, which led to murder and the prospect of spending the rest of my days in a Bulgarian jail.

Barclay's research for his next novel brought him into contact with many unsavory types, including villains, shady private eyes, and managers of strip clubs. The official report into Barclay's death stated that he committed suicide. However, a close friend insisted that Barclay was murdered and I was hired to investigate. Meanwhile, closer to home, I discovered a secret, and the truth, about my long-term partner. Was he the man of my dreams or was our relationship about to end?

When the biggest villain in the country makes you an offer you can't refuse, what should you do? In my case, I decided to accept that offer, made by Mr. Vincent Vanzetti. Vanzetti hired me to find his missing daughter, Vittoria, while threatening reprisals should I fail in my task. While searching for Vittoria, I had to deal with the other members of the Vanzetti clan.

For the first 33 years of my life I had no knowledge of my father, no idea what he looked like, his name, whether he was dead or alive. Then fate brought us together. Then, a year later, he decided to hire me. Although we had talked for a year, my father was still Gawain Morgan to me, a stranger, not my dad. Would the task of locating Frankie Quinn bring us closer together, or drive us further apart? Frankie Quinn was a con-man, a life-long villain, a member of my father's old gang. That's right, my father was a villain too, with dodgy contacts and sins he preferred to forget.

The man in my office held a dark secret, a secret to kill for. That man was Tony Ryland, husband of local madam, Maria de Costa. Unfortunately for me, truth and justice, Tony Ryland was dead. What was Ryland doing in my office? Who had murdered him? What was the nature of his dark secret? The trail led to Ryland's wife, Maria de Costa, to her network of prostitutes and clients. Questions led to evasive answers, and more deaths. Someone was out to muddy the waters, to distort the truth, to bury the secret along with Tony Ryland.

Hired by multimillionaire Jeremy Loudon, my task was simple - find his missing briefcase. Loudon claimed that his briefcase held 10,000 pounds, his winnings from a poker game. However, as the trail unravelled and led to Europe my suspicions deepened. What was in Loudon's briefcase, beyond the money? Why was he being so evasive? Why did he insist on no police involvement?

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Sasha Pryce, a teenage chess prodigy, presented me with a problem. She wanted me to track down Steve Chapin, her coaching assistant. Steve had mysteriously disappeared, leaving no clue as to his whereabouts. However, Sasha insisted that I should follow her strict instructions - her father, eminent pharmacologist Professor Christian Pryce, must not learn of my investigation. Meanwhile, Professor Pryce had hired a handsome bodyguard, Blake, to protect Sasha.

Someone had posted a dead rat through Jana Jakubowska’s letterbox and scrawled obscene graffiti on her garden wall. Harmless pranks or something more sinister? Her boyfriend Tom Renwick hired me to find out. During my investigation, I met Jana’s charming four-year-old daughter Krystyna, her estranged former lover Matt Taylor, and a local hoodlum called Naz.

John Ball was a middle-aged businessman with problems, and those problems compelled him to run away from Nicola, his devoted wife of 20 years. The last thing John needed was to become embroiled in a murder inquiry, but with a gunman on the loose in the city parks, John's temporary home, the heat was on in more ways than one.

In her heyday, the critics regarded Dana Devlin as the most beautiful actress in movies. They also regarded her as shallow, lacking emotion. That was strange because Dana Devlin’s life had been a rollercoaster of emotions, with divorces and nervous breakdowns to the fore. And now she was making a comeback, in a gothic romance, Demon Seed. Everyone’s a critic, it seems, because someone didn’t like the sound of Demon Seed, and they voiced their disapproval through a series of death threats. However, the death threats were covered in hearts, flowers and angels.

As a teenager, Ros McCarthy offered Mark, her baby son, up for adoption. Now, as an adult and a successful author, she wanted to reconnect. With Faye at my side, our task was to locate Mark. Along the way we learned about Ty Gwyn, a children’s home, and the people who lived and worked there. However, as we probed, some people became nervous and issued threats. Then, unexpectedly, a murder. Was the murder and our investigation into Mark’s whereabouts connected, or merely coincidence? I suspected the former, then had my doubts as the maze became more complex.

Pregnant in a pandemic. My life is never dull. While Alan and I set about the pleasant task of selecting a name for our baby, Faye interviewed candidates for the role of maternity leave assistant. Our plans were going well until a friend was murdered. The evidence pointed to a hitman, a professional killing. A further murder underlined the fact that the stakes were high, that someone had a secret to hide.