City On Fire

City On Fire book cover

After losing her sister to a drug overdose, Chief Superintendent Jo Howe is desperate to tackle the world of drugs that consumes the shadowy backstreets of Brighton. Operation Eradicate is her response, deploying undercover tactics to collapse drug circles while also providing treatment services to victims of drug abuse. But not everyone sees this as a positive development …

The man behind Respite pharmaceuticals, billionaire Sir Ben Campbell, views Operation Eradicate as a threat to his business. His colossal empire relies on burgeoning numbers of addicts who survive on their substitute drugs. With connections in the highest levels of government, media and organised crime, Sir Ben unleashes a brutal counterattack on Jo.

The question is, how will she survive this fierce onslaught?

Force of Hate

force of hate book cover

When a night-time firebomb attack at a Brighton travellers’ site kills women and children, Chief Superintendent Jo Howe has strong reason to believe the new, dubiously elected, neo-nazi council leader is behind the murders. Against the direct orders of her chief constable, Jo digs deep into the killings secretly briefing the senior investigating officer of her suspicions.

As she delves further, Jo uncovers an underworld of human trafficking, slavery and euthanasia all leading to a devastating plot which threatens thousands of lives and from which the murderous politician looks sure to walk scott-free. Having narrowly survived a plot to kill her, where another was not so lucky, she realises that only by facing near-certain death once more can she thwart this terrorist outrage.

Bad for good - How far would you go?

bad for good book cover

The murder of a promising footballer and, crucially, the son of the Brighton’s highest-ranking police officer, means Detective Superintendent Jo Howe has a complicated and sensitive case on her hands. The situation becomes yet more desperate following devastating blackmail threats.

Howe can trust no one as she tracks the brutal killer in a city balanced on a knife edge of vigilante action and a police force riven with corruption.

Babes in the wood - the real-life case that rocked the nation

Book cover, Babes in the Wood by Graham Bartlett

On 9 October 1986, nine-year-olds Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway went out to play on their Brighton estate. They would never return home; their bodies discovered the next day concealed in a local park. This devastating crime rocked the country.

With unique access to the officers charged with catching the killer, Peter James and I tell the compelling inside story of the investigation as the net tightens around local man Russell Bishop. The trial that follows is one of the most infamous in the history of Brighton policing – a shock result sees Bishop walk free.

Three years later, I am working in Brighton CID when a seven-year-old girl is abducted and left to die. She survives . . . and Bishop’s name comes up as a suspect. Is history repeating itself? Can the police put him away this time, and will he ever be made to answer for his past horrendous crimes? Both gripping police procedural and an insight into the motivations of a truly evil man, Babes in the Wood  is a fascinating account of what became a thirty-two year fight for justice.

Death Comes knocking
Policing Roy Grace's Brighton

Death Comes Knocking Book Cover

Fans of Peter James and his bestselling Roy Grace series of crime novels know that his books draw on in-depth research into the lives of Brighton and Hove police and are set in a world every bit as gritty as the real thing.

With Peter, in Sunday Times Top Ten Best Seller Death Comes Knocking, I have written a gripping account of the city’s most challenging cases, taking the reader from crime scenes and incident rooms to the morgue, and introducing some of the real-life detectives who inspired Peter James’s characters.

Whether it’s the murder of a dodgy nightclub owner and his family in Sussex’s worst non-terrorist mass murder, tracking down the antique trade’s most notorious ‘knocker boys,’ nailing an audacious ring of forgers, hunting for a cold- blooded killer who executed a surfer or catching a pair who kidnapped a businessman, leaving him severely beaten, to die on a hillside, we evoke the dangerous inside story of policing, the personal toll it takes and the dedication of those who risk their lives to keep the public safe.

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