Sally Spencer

Five little Englishmen, feeling quite secure, one went and lost his head, and then there were four.
When Terry Pugh's headless body is found floating in the canal, DCI Woodend at first believes that Pugh had merely miscalculated the amount of rope he needed to hang himself. But why would Pugh commit suicide when he had a loving wife who was expecting their first baby, and was just about to start an exciting new job?
Other disturbing...

The discovery of the body of a young, red-haired school mistress, lying in a pig-pen with her face half-eaten away, is the beginning of a new investigation for Charlie Woodend. But it is to be an investigation he is soon ordered to abandon when Helen Dunn, the daughter of Wing Commander Dunn - and a pupil at the school where the dead woman taught - suddenly vanishes into thin air. While Woodend and Rutter race against time in the desperate hope of...

Never before has DCI Woodend had to work under such terrible and terrifying pressure. He has just a few days, at the most, to find a flaw in the weighty evidence which led to Judith Maitland's conviction as a stone-cold killer--a few days to produce the real murderer. But what if Judith really is guilty as charged? What if she did, in fact, brutally butcher her lover, Clive Burroughs, in his own office, as the facts seem to suggest? How can Woodend...

'a standout among her reliably entertaining procedurals' - Kirkus Starred Review
The tenth in the acclaimed Inspector Woodend series
There had never been a murder in Whitebridge like this one. What kind of man would decide to slash the throat of an inoffensive middle-aged widow who was already terminally ill? Why did he decide to place her lifeless body in the middle of a children's bonfire, and then set it alight?...

DCI Woodend's first foreign holiday, in General Franco's Spain, ends abruptly when he sees a fellow guest plunge mysteriously from his hotel balcony to the rocky beach below
With the help of Paco Ruiz a former policeman, living in disgrace since the Spanish Civil War Woodend embarks on an unofficial investigation which provides more questions than answers. Why was the dead man travelling under a false passport? Who are the men he...

When the body of an American woman is found in the Prince Alfred suite at the Royal Victoria Hotel, DCI Monika Paniatowski is faced with one fo the most baffling cases of her career. The owman who called herself Mary Edwards had been a guest at the hotel for the past two weeks, having paid cash in advance. But who was she really - and what was she doing in a small town like Whitebridge? If Monika could discover why the dead woman had come to Lancashire,...

A killer who can't be classified - a killer who can't be profiled ... When a young girl, Jill Harris, is murdered, the case soon becomes personal for Monika Paniatowski. She saw the victim looking distressed only hours before she was killed, and Jill was the same age as her own daughter, Louisa. Driven by guilt and pity, Monika throws herself into the investigation, but both the chief constable, who is away, and Colin Beresford - her right-hand man...

"Oxford, 1975. Three years ago, world-renowned anthropologist Grace Stockton was slain in a brutal, unprovoked attack. Despite a large-scale police investigation, the identity of the prime suspect was never uncovered ... and neither was the location of Grace's head. But Grace's daughter, the wealthy academic Julia Pemberton, refuses to accept that the trail has run cold. Determined to find out who killed her mother, she knows just the woman for the...

DCI Monika Paniatowski investigates a case that could be the making - or, more likely, breaking - of her career DCI Monika Paniatowski has only been back from maternity leave for three days when she is called in to investigate a nightmare of a case. Not only is the murder victim a mother of three small children, but her husband is a wealthy politician. Monika knows that if she can't make a quick arrest her career is on the line. It's lucky, then,...

"Bristol, 1991. Crammed into a hire car, on their way to a vital appointment, five representatives of Conroy Enterprises are running very late. Rob Conroy, the black sheep of the family, is torn between spiteful amusement at his Uncle Tony's irritation and anxiety for the future. If Conroy Enterprises fails, it will bring Rob's own small publishing company down with it. But in the space of just two hours, everything changes. The car crashes, leaving...