William Shaw - Free Library Land Online - Christmas

The Red Shore

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 14:50:52 +0200

The first in a brand new series of Devon-set crime thrillers featuring DS Eden Driscoll 'Crime fiction at its very best, a knotty mystery' ELLY GRIFFITHS 'Terrific ... Perhaps his best yet' ANN CLEEVES 'The undisputed king of seaside noir' VASEEM KHAN 'A gripping and wonderful thriller' NICCI FRENCH 'Twistier than a cramping snake' M. W. CRAVEN Met detective Eden Driscoll never wanted a child, but when his estranged sister vanishes from her sailboat, he is asked to look after her son Finn – the nephew he hadn't even known existed. Resettled in the seaside town of Teignmouth, Eden adjusts to his newfound parenthood. Then Finn disappears from school, and Eden knows something is dreadfully wrong. When Eden's sister's body is finally found, floating in the sea, local police rule her death an accident, but Eden isn't convinced. She was an experienced sailor and would never sail without a life jacket. Eden starts searching his sister's life for answers, and what he discovers changes...

The Trawlerman

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 16:45:41 +0300

THE STUNNING FOURTH BOOK IN THE DS ALEXANDRA CUPIDI INVESTIGATIONS FROM ONE OF CRIME FICTION'S FINEST WRITERS

A DOUBLE MURDER

The naked corpses of Aylmer and Mary Younis are discovered in their home. The only clues are a note written in blood and an eerie report of two spectral figures departing the crime scene. Officer Jill Ferriter is charged with investigating the murders while her colleague Alex Cupidi is on leave, recovering from post-traumatic stress.

AN ELABORATE SCAM

The dead couple had made investments in a green reforestry scheme in Guatemala, resulting in the loss of all their savings. What is more disturbing is that Cupidi and Ferriter's disgraced former colleague and friend Bill South is also on the list of investors and the Younis's were not the only losers.

AN UNLIKELY KILLER

Despite being in counselling and receiving official warnings to stay away from police work Cupidi finds herself dragged into the case and begins to trawl among the secrets and lies that are held in the fishing community of Folkestone. Desperate to exonerate South she finds herself murderously compromised when personal relationships cloud her judgement.

Pacey, intense and riddled with surprising twists, The Trawlerman shows that deceit can be found in the most unlikely places. The brooding waters of the Kent coastline offer an ominous backdrop for this lively page-turner of corruption, mental health and the complexities of human connection.

Shaw's novels combine a strong central character with an atmospheric setting and original plots.

Sunday Times

The Trawlerman is an excellent, totally absorbing crime novel which can only augment the reputations of William Shaw.

Shotsmag

[A] terrifically atmospheric thriller mixing a twisting plot with a considered meditation on the lasting effects of close contact with violence

Daily Mail

Deadland

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 11:23:23 +0200

Play With Fire

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 14:49:59 +0200

In hedonistic 1960s London, a police detective investigates the unexpected connections between two suspicious deaths: a call girl and a rock star.
It's the summer of '69, and the hard-living rock stars of the British Invasion still rule London. When former Rolling Stone Brian Jones turns up dead, floating in the pool of his palatial home while the party continues around him, Detective Sargeant Cathal Breen is called away from his former partner, now girlfriend—who quit the force when she became pregnant with his child—to take the case.
Breen's investigation soon uncovers another body spat out by the hedonistic '60s party scene: a young woman, a call-girl for the rich and famous, a girl they called Julie Teenager. Her client list is thick and full of suspects—all rich, powerful, and protected. When Breen gets too close to fingering a financier with ties to Russia—and gets a phone call from MI6 warning him to watch his back—the...

She's Leaving Home

Sat, 15 Nov 2014 05:51:33 +0200

London, 1968: The body of a teenaged girl is found just steps away from the Beatles' Abbey Road recording studio.

The police are called to a residential street in St John's Wood where an unidentified young woman has been murdered. Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen believes she may be one of the many Beatles fans who regularly camp outside Abbey Road Studios. With his reputation tarnished by an inexplicable act of cowardice, this is Breen's last chance to prove he's up to the job.

Breen is of the generation for whom reaching adulthood meant turning into one's parents and accepting one's place in the world. But the world around him is changing beyond recognition. Nothing illustrates the shift more than Helen Tozer, a brazen and rambunctious young policewoman assisting him with the case. Together they navigate a world on edge: where conservative tradition gives way to frightening new freedoms and troubling new crimes.

The Birdwatcher

Mon, 14 Nov 2016 18:14:49 +0200

The Kings of London

Sun, 15 Nov 2015 06:03:01 +0200

In the Swinging Sixties, a battle for the soul of the city is fought between cops and criminals, the corrupt and the corrupted.
November 1968. Judy Garland is performing drunk at the Palladium and the city of London is about to catch fire—literally. Summonded to a gas explosion, Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen unearths a shocking discovery beneath the rubble: Mind-bending paintings by Bridget Riley and Peter Blake...and the garrotted body of Jacob Pugh, a playboy god in the art world. With Detective Helen Tozer, Breen must infiltrate the artistic demimonde of a volatile and increasingly murderous city.
Seen through the eyes of an irresistible pair of detectives, the real London comes in view in The Kings of London: a gritty metropolis thrives in the shadows beyond the spotlights, and all manner of vice is committed in the name of liberation.

A Song for the Brokenhearted

Tue, 08 Nov 2016 16:12:08 +0200

The earthshaking year of 1968 comes to sweeping and dangerous close, as William Shaw's detective duo battle the most powerful members of London society.After being wounded in the line of duty, Detective Sergeant Breen recuperates on the family farm of his former partner, Helen Tozer. To fill the long and empty hours, he reviews the open case file for a murder that has haunted Helen for years: that of her younger sister. Breen discovers that the teenage victim had been having a secret affair with James Fletchet, the son of an affluent local landowner, celebrated for his service in Kenya during the Mau Mau Uprising.

Breen and Tozer return to London's Criminal Investigation Division, where their questions about Fletchet's past are met with resistance and suspicion. The deeper they probe, the more people they implicate in their investigation. New Scotland Yard doesn't look kindly upon breaking rank, and it's only a matter of time before Breen and Tozer make themselves a target.

Shaw's stirring, heartfelt and diabolically plotted mystery series is everything a reader looks for: enveloping, invigorating, and wonderfully entertaining.

Salt Lane

Wed, 14 Nov 2018 15:36:12 +0200

A darkly told crime novel in the tradition of Tana French and Ian Rankin, featuring the return of THE BIRDWATCHER's Alexandra Cupidi.
Sergeant Alexandra Cupidi is a recent transfer from the London metro police to the rugged Kentish countryside. She's done little to ingratiate herself with her new colleagues, who find her too brash, urban, and—to make matters worse, she investigated her first partner, a veteran detective, and had him arrested on murder charges. Now assigned the brash young Constable Jill Ferriter to look after, she's facing another bizarre case: a woman found floating in local marsh land, dead of no apparent cause.
The case gets even stranger when the detectives contact the victim's next of kin, her son, a high-powered graphic designer living in London. Adopted at the age of two, he'd never known his mother, he tells the detectives, until a homeless womanknocked on his door, claiming to be his mother, just the night before: at the same time...