He's a barbaric killer, guilty of the most terrible crime. He abducted and tortured an innocent 17-year-old girl, brutally raped her, then left her to die. Yet when James Martin O'Donnell stood trial at Exeter Crown Court he was acquitted.
Twenty years later a chance DNA test makes it tragically clear that there has been a shocking miscarriage of justice. But the law of double jeopardy means O'Donnell cannot be tried again - with haunting consequences for all those determined that this evil monster will pay for his depravity.
And when Joanna Bartlett, the once brilliant but now jaded crime correspondent who covered the case two decades ago, starts to delve into the past, she is forced to revisit not only the crime she can't bear to remember but also the maverick police detective she has forced herself to forget...

Hilary Bonner is a former showbusiness editor of the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mirror. She now lives in Somerset, and continues to work as a freelance journalist, covering film, television and theatre. She is the author of five previous novels: The Cruelty of Morning, A Fancy to Kill For, A Passion So Deadly, For Death Comes Softly and A Deep Deceit.

The latest victim in a series of attacks was found stark naked, bleeding from a chest wound, and inquiries led nowhere. Now, faced with a celebrity receiving unpleasant fan mail, and hampered by a lack of manpower, Resnick fears there will be terrible consequences for one or both of these cases.

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When a 15-year-old boy is found hanging from the shower in a local authority home, Charlie Resnick suspects foul play. Why would the youngster commit suicide? Then, when the senior investigating officer is found brutally murdered, Resnick's suspicions appear to be well founded.

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A savage assault with a scalpel leaves Dr Tim Fletcher's body lying badly slashed in a deserted walkway. He is the first victim in a series of assaults on hospital staff and, as panic grips the city, Charlie Resnick is faced with a mass of clues that seem to lead nowhere.

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A baby girl is kidnapped and 2500,000 is demanded for her return. Due to the unusual nature of her father's work, he refuses to contact the police, but attempts to handle the situation himself.
A famous international footballer hires Dave Cunane, head of Pimpernel Investigations, to track down the girl's kidnappers. Cunane soon realises that his new employers are involved in some highly illegal activities in the premiership.
As he digs deeper in the case it emerges that, in a role reversal, some of Manchester's more successful criminals are being blackmailed. There is an increasing amount of extortion and murder taking place. And while there is a certain satisfaction in criminals getting their comeuppance, Cunane knows deep in his heart it's his duty to stop the violence.

'I've always thought I couldn't love anyone who didn't love Venice, and I don't think I could really understand a crime fan who didn't love Donna Leon' Scotland on Sunday

The murder of two clam fishermen on the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, draws Commissario Brunetti into the close-knit community of the island, a community bound together by a code of loyalty and suspicion of outsiders worthy of the Mafia. When the Questore's secretary, Signorina Elettra, volunteers to investigate by visiting her relatives on the island, Brunetti finds himself torn between his duty to solve the murders, concerns for Elettra's safety, and his unsettling feelings for her...

Donna Leon lives in Venice and is the Sunday Times' crime fiction reviewer She is the author of nine previous novels featuring Commissario Brunetti.

The young woman is Mary Ann Tierney. She is fifteen years old. Within days her name will be known to millions across America, her court case a television must- watch for everyone from the President downwards.
As Mary Ann takes on her own parents and the constitutional law of the United States in a desperate bid to protect her future right to bear children, the ramifications of 'the Tierney case' bring a threat to the new President, Kerry Kilcannon, to his nominee for Chief Justice, Caroline Masters, and to his main rival for the Presidency, Senator Chad Palmer. All have dangerous secrets in their past, secrets that would not only threaten careers, but bring death and tragedy to innocent lives.
Protect and Defend is a tense, moving account of the tangled moral issues at the heart of the most difficult decision a woman has to take. It plays out the terrible consequences when the media takes people's private lives and turns them into public entertainment.

The news that a venerated teacher has been murdered and a lama is missing sends a unlikely band of outcasts into the remote northern reaches of the Tibetan plateau. Two old Tibetans travel to restore the spiritual balance disturbed by violent death. A Sullen resistance fighter races to battle a new foe. But Shan Tao Yun, former Beijing investigator and newly released from four years of prison camp, sets out to find justice.
In the dangerous borderlands of Western China, however, justice is elusive. Vengeful officials, soldiers, smugglers, secret Buddhists and the remnants of the proud Muslim clans all stand in the way of Shan's pursuit of a serial killer whose terrible motives lie buried in the Tibetan struggle.

Eliot Pattison's numerous books and articles on international policy issues have been published on three continents. He is a world traveller and a frequent visitor to China. The Skull Mantra, his first work of fiction, won him the Edgar award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America.

(3.2003) At Scotland Yard, Inspector Grant has a reputation for being able to pick them at sight. Now he is in hospital, knowing that no amount of good behaviour is going to make this anything less than an extended stay. Yet his professional curiosity is soon aroused. In a portrait of Richard III, the hunchbacked monster of nursery stories and history books, he finds a face that refuses to fit its reputation. But how, after four hundred years, can a bedridden policeman uncover the truth about the murder of the Princes in the Tower?

It was eight years since Patrick had vanished leaving his pitiful note, 'I'm sorry but I can't bear it any longer. Don't be angry with me, Patrick.' Now it seemed, he had returned - just in time to claim the family inheritance. But if Patrick really had committed suicide, who was this mysterious young man claiming to be him and calling himself Brat Farrar?

The first of Tey's Inspector Grant mysteries concerns the murder of an unknown man, apparently struck down as he stood in the ticket queue for a London theatre show. Grant tenaciously pursues his suspects throughout the length of Britain and the labyrinth of London.