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...

The second in a new series featuring DCI Monika Paniatowski

Nothing could have prepared DCI Monika Paniatowski for this. It's not that the man's throat has been cut, or that he is naked, that shocks her—it's the way his corpse has been so carefully posed. Is the killer sending a message? If so, to who? Saddled with a colleague she doesn't trust, and watched by an old enemy, Monika realises that whatever the murderer's message is, he will

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Before she can even begin to track down the killer of the old woman dumped by the lonely canal, Monika Paniatowski needs to find out who she is, and no one seems to know. Even when her daughter Louisa provides the vital clue, it only makes life more difficult, because the Chief Constable, intent on making Paniatowski's life difficult, refuses to let her follow the obvious trail. And it is not until there is a second, even more brutal murder, that...

"DCI Paniatowski's team are increasingly convinced that the girl found dead in the woods is the victim of a ritual killing, carried out by a secret society which has been established in the very heart of Whitebridge. Their problem is that without Paniatowski there to back them up, they find it impossible to persuade the ambitious DCI 'Rhino' Dixon that treating it as a mere domestic murder will get them nowhere. And so Meadows, Crane and Beresford...