Showing results by narrator "Peter Wickham" in All Categories

One way or another the Communist guerrilla war in Malaya kept a whole British army occupied from 1948 until 1952. They were the virgin soldiers. Idle, homesick, afraid, bored, oversexed, and unsatisfied. A young virgin like Brigg had to grab his fun while and where he could - in the Liberty Club, in Juicy Lucy's flat or up in Phillipa's room - in one frantic attempt at living before he died or got demobbed...

When Alan left school at fifteen little was expected of him. An 'O' level in art is not the most obvious passport to success, but in the ancient greenhouses of the local nursery Mrs T's little lad found his spiritual home, learning his trade and the strange ways of human nature. But the comfort...

Deena Harrison was one of Leighford High School's “characters” - setting fire to the toilet block and throwing boys down stairs. But she had the voice of an angel and could act the skin off a rice pudding. The autumn she came down from Oxford, there was something of a crisis in the Drama department at Leighford High. Mrs Carmichael was in danger of losing her baby and the Little Shop of Horrors was in danger of closing down. So Deena comes back to help out.

There comes a time in every teacher's life when he must face his nemesis - the Ofsted Inspection. On the third day, with the atmosphere at Leighford High decidedly fraught, one of the Inspectors is found stabbed to death. Events move quickly, and the Head is arrested on suspicion of the murder. But Peter Maxwell, Head of Sixth Form, cannot help but notice that Sally Meninger, the Ofsted Humanities expert, is not as distraught at her colleague's death as one might expect....

When asked about when it all began, Peter Maxwell would always say that it was at breakfast one day, when his son said, 'It says in the news that bats are giving people colds'. At that point, that was all anyone thought. Nolan was worried about the Count and Bismarck but of course, as everyone would soon know, it was much more than that. What was less obvious was that the pandemic would also restart a killing spree.

History teacher Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell, a bit of a maverick, is sent on a short-term swap with another teacher at a nearby private school, Grimonds.

As Head of Sixth Form at Leighford High and a new father, Peter "Mad Max" Maxwell is a very busy man. Despite this, he still finds time for some amateur sleuthing, even though his policewoman "Significant Other", DS Jacquie Carpenter, has decided that, this time, he's leaving any murder investigations to her. But how can he refuse when the school photographer asks for his help after accidentally photographing a murder on the beach?

'Does for Elizabeth's reign what CJ Sansom does for Henry VIII's' Sunday Times The first book in the iconic John Shakespeare series, beloved by thousands of readers, from true master of historical fiction, Rory Clements. ------------------------------------------------------- 'Sixteenth-century...

When Peter Maxwell attends a school reunion of the class of '65, all is not as it seems among his old chums. They are career men, family men - but the years have taken their toll, and the seething tensions of the school years surface in unlikely ways. At the end of the reunion weekend, a man is dead, hanging from the bell rope of the old school. When a second death occurs, Maxwell finds himself in the midst of a murder investigation. What is the secret that has been lurking under Maxwell's nose all these years - and could he be on the murderer's list for killing number three?

With girlfriend DS Jacquie Carpenter back at work, and baby Nolan rapidly growing into a feisty toddler, Peter "Mad Max" Maxwell, Head of Sixth Form at Leightford High, hires an au pair. But one afternoon Max returns home to find that the exotic Juanita seems to have disappeared into thin air. Meanwhile, two walkers are surprised and disturbed when their Border collie digs up an arm on Dead Man's Point.

1794...Returning to England, Harry and James become embroiled in a vicious struggle between rival smugglers played out in the English Channel. Witnesses to a bloody confrontation, they flee to Deal - only to find that, behind its picturesque facade, the town is a haven for traders in contraband, seething with corruption and violence.

Maxwell’s Millennium is not quite like other people’s - for a start, it is a year later. After much quibbling with the maths department, everyone calls it an honourable draw and he celebrates as only he can: with his cat, his model soldiers and his Southern Comfort. A knock on the door could be Jacquie Carpenter, released from night shift earlier than expected, but instead of a warm girl Maxwell opens his door to find a very cold old lady, dead and naked.

England, 1659: Captain Kit Faulkner's house is prospering; his eldest son recently returned from a profitable trip to Jamaica, and his daughter has made a suitable match with a young sailor. But the resignation of the Lord Protector, Richard Cromwell, throws England into uncertainty. Will the republic flourish, or will a King return to the throne? Kit is content to let matters take their natural course, but his younger son, Henry, is an idealist with political ambitions. It soon becomes clear that Henry is in much deeper than Kit first realised, and his actions may threaten everything that Kit holds dear.…

Privateersman Harry Ludlow and his partner and younger brother, James, find that murder and intrigue take up more of their time than the hunt for fat trading vessels. Arriving in the squalid, seething port of Genoa, they find it a tinderbox of tension, fed by the discovery of a hanged British sea captain and packs of English and French sailors at each other's throats.

During a blackout on the streets of London in late 1944, a young Polish land girl, Rosa Nowak, is suddenly and brutally killed. But the police, their resources already stretched by war regulations and the thriving black market, cannot find any reason why someone would want to murder an innocent refugee. For the former police inspector John Madden, the crime hits close to home. Rosa was working on his farm, and he feels personally responsible for not protecting her.

No death could have been more welcome than Evan Morgan's, or more fitting for the Welcome Home celebrations in the village of Llanddewi. For Morgan had spent the war making money and enemies down in the Vale of Glamorgan with about equal facility. In fact, on the night, it seemed as if a whole posse of murderers had beaten a path to the door of the Manor House.

They are the Pessarane Behesht. Sons of heaven. Spawned in war-torn Beirut. Nurtured in revolutionary Iran to wreak vengeance on the enemies of Allah. When the freighter Clarion Call disappears mysteriously in the Gulf, she is carrying a secret consignment of French arms for the Pessarane Behesht in return for the release of a diplomat held hostage. Ex-SAS Major Robert D'Arcy, whose international security firm was protecting the ship, finds himself in the midst of a deadly battle of wills.

When Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell takes his kids from Leighford High on an archaeological dig, they uncover a grave. But the corpse was not Saxon, and it wasn’t a king - this was an altogether more recent death. Then a policeman on the case is found dead at the wheel of his car. What knowledge did he possess that led to his death? And does his colleague, Maxwell’s partner, Jacquie Carpenter, unwittingly have the same information? Maxwell locks horns with the great and not so good in a vicious world of skulduggery, academic backbiting and religious mania which can only end in murder.

The worst has happened. On the eve of their return to Blighty, Brigg and his fellow National Servicemen find themselves sentenced to another six months in Panglin Barracks. Many of the surviving characters from The Virgin Soldiers live again in these pages: dogged Tasker, the odious Sergeant Wellbeloved, the vulnerable Colonel Bromley Pickering and the comically touching Juicy Lucy.

In the final days of Henry VIII, one man is there to witness the demise of a legend... Master historian Paul Doherty weaves his magic in an epic tale of murderous schemes and a blood-smattered political order.King Henry VIII, a fearsome figure of power and stature, lies upon his deathbed diminished by sickness and haunted by ghosts from his past. Only Will Somers, long-serving jester and confidant, sees all. While Henry is confined to his chamber, Will begins a journal that will document his King's last turbulent days.