Böcker av Ric Thompson

Another fast paced political thriller with James Gregory, recovering after his exploits in Target North and being sent by his fiancee's spy-master father, retired Admiral Sir George Spencer, to the Portugal of 1974 to help a friend of a former employee - 'A chance to soak up some sun, and help an old friend.' It sounds innocent enough, and James hasn't been to Portugal before. What could possibly go wrong? Just about everything as James Gregory tries to find out who is threatening the beautiful Dona Teresa and why. The background to the riddle takes place during the war, when a downed British airman is asked to transport a priceless artwork through Nazi occupied France, and General Franco's fascist Spain and into Portugal without getting caught. Back in the present of 1974 James Gregory is caught up in a web of intrigue and with Portugal's notorious 'PIDE', the State Secret Police on his tail. The book comes to an explosive end - but does our hero survive? Like Target Portugal, this book was written in the early seventies after the author returned from working in Oporto, and yes, he was taken in for questioning by the PIDE for speaking out of turn and nearly thrown out of the country - which would have been better than being thrown into prison. It was politely suggested that he leave the country - fast.

A defence analyst has been found dead. The verdict is accidental, but some people in government doubt that. Assistant Commissioner Alec Graves enlists the help of his friend and protégé Andrew Sutherland from Rochfield CID to look into it as a pre-retirement case. In the words of Graves, it was beginning to feel like playing with those stacking Russian dolls, except that he feels that he is working from the little doll in the middle of the stack outwards and wondered if he will ever get to the big bad doll on the outside. Is this another case of murder by proxy from the very top of government?

In this, the twelfth and final book in the Rochfield Mysteries series those who have been reading from the start - Killing the Witch - will finally discover the truth about the death of Rose Masters, hence the image of a rose on the cover.The book opens in the summer of 1963 with the disappearance of two schoolgirls, barely a week apart. In spite of massive searches neither girl was ever found, and if it hadn't been for a severe storm in the late spring of 2003 they would never have been found.The book switches between 1963 onwards and 2003, and fills in some of the back stories, when the CID team led by DCI Dean Simpson, who has taken over from his boss, Andrew Sutherland, painstakingly pieces the jigsaw of clues and information together and make their arrests and justice finally prevails.

Written in 1970, this book has never been published before. Other than correcting spelling and grammar mistakes, it is as originally written. It is a fast paced thriller, a plot by a renegade IRA unit to assassinate the Prime Minister of The United Kingdom. Can thriller writer James Gregory, who is unwittingly duped into going to Ireland to find a missing British agent, escape from his captors and warn the man who sent him, The Admiral, head of a shadowy department of British Security about the fate that waits the PM if the plot is not thwarted? Or will he suffer the same fate as better trained, more professional men who went before him?

Death is stalking the wealthy Crozier textile family in the town of Rochfield. Can DCI Andrew Sutherland and his team catch the killer before more of the family are murdered? Set if the fictional town of Rochfield in early 90s Yorkshire, this is the first in the Rochfield Mystery series. Another 'Televisual Treat' - television for the imagination, and a book that will keep you guessing right to the explosive end. Watch out for more books in this series. Cover design by John Thompson