Showing results by narrator "Gordon Griffin" in All Categories

I was the new boy, so they saddled me with the worst jobs.' Rome, AD 71. Against his better judgement, Falco secretly disposes of a decayed corpse for the Emperor Vespasian, then heads for the beautiful Bay of Naples with his best friend Petronius. He conveniently forgets to mention to his companion that this will be no holiday. They have been sent to investigate the murderous members of a failed coup, now sunning themselves in luxurious villas and on fancy yachts.

Rats are always bigger than you expect.' Falco, ancient Rome's hangdog investigator, hates sharing a cell with a rodent - though being bailed by his old mother is almost as embarrassing. His high-born girlfriend can't decide if she wants him, and Titus Caesar's reward for past services is a wet fish. Hoping for a better life, or at least a better apartment, he takes on new clients. On the elegant slopes of the Pincian Hill, three nouveau riche freedmen with two flashy wives are under siege by a clever redhead.

What did he eat last? Whom did he eat, in fact? Lumbered with working alongside reptilian Chief Spy Anacrites, Falco has the perfect plan to make money - he will assist Vespasian in the Emperor's 'Great Census' of AD 73. His potential fee could finally allow him to join the middle ranks and be worthy of long-suffering Helena Justina. Unexpectedly confronted with the murder of a man-eating lion, Falco is distracted from his original task, uncovering a bitter rivalry between the gladiators' trainers.

harles II is well established at White Hall Palace, his mistress at hand in rooms over the Holbein bridge, the heads of some of the regicides on public display. London seethes with new energy, freed from the strictures of the protectorate, but many of its inhabitants have lost their livelihoods. One is Thomas Chaloner, a reluctant spy for the feared secretary of state, John Thurloe, and now returned from Holland in desperate need of employment.

1895. A senior executive at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is found in his office with a bullet hole between his eyes, a pistol discarded close by. The death has officially been ruled as suicide by local police, but with an apparent lack of motive for such action, the museum’s administrator Gladstone Marriott suspects foul play.

DS Wesley Peterson, newly arrived in the West Country town of Tradmouth, has his hands full when a child goes missing and a young woman is brutally murdered on a lonely cliff path. Then his old friend, archaeologist Neil Watson, unearths the skeletons of a strangled woman and a newborn baby in the cellar of an ancient merchant's house nearby. As the investigation continues, Wesley begins to suspect that these deaths, centuries apart, may be linked by age-old motives of jealousy, a sexual obsession and desperate longing.

Thomas Mallen of High Banks Hall had many sons, most of them bastards. But to all of them he passed on his mark - a distinctive flash of white hair running to the left temple, known as the Mallen Streak. It was said that those who bore the streak seldom reached old age and that nothing good ever came of a Mallen. In 1851, Thomas Mallen found himself a ruined man, forced amid scandal and disgrace to sell the hall. With him went his two young wards and their indomitable governess. Then the Radlet brothers of Wilbur Farm arrived, one of whom bore the unmistakable Mallen Streak.

"I still can't believe I've put the bastard away for good!" Petro muttered.' Petronius Longus, captain of the Aventine watch and Falco's oldest friend, has finally nailed one of Rome's top criminals. Under Roman law, citizens are not imprisoned but are allowed 'time to depart' into exile outside the Empire. One dark and gloomy dawn, Petro and Falco put the evil Balbinus aboard a ship. But soon after, an outbreak of robbery and murder suggests a new criminal ring has moved into Balbinus' territory.

In the autumn of 1817, the arrival of the Ipswich coach and its occupants – a strange, ill-assorted company – changed the lives of those who lived at the Fleece Inn forever…. Will Oakley, landlord and host, with his two daughters, beautiful Myrtle, and the repellent Harriet, waited to receive his guests. Along with the usual farmers, merchants and the “quality”, there were others who fitted into none of these categories.

"The first concern of an author is to do down his colleagues." In the long, hot Roman summer of AD 74, Falco, private informer and spare-time poet, gives a reading for his family and friends. Things get out of hand, as usual. The event is taken over by Aurelius Chrysippus, a wealthy Greek banker and patron to a group of struggling writers, who offers to publish Falco's work.

General Treyvon Rayner is the Supreme Commander of the Kaliszian Defenses. He is the cousin and trusted friend of the Kaliszian Emperor, Emperor Liron Kalinin, in spite of Treyvon's ancestor being one of the causes of the Great Infection so many centuries ago. It is never far from Treyvon's mind, and he vowed he'd spend his entire life trying to make things right. Chef Jennifer Neibaur dreamed of traveling to exotic places, of experiencing different cuisines, and learning how to prepare them.

Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brilliant characters: his fiancée Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions; and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham's novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.

I was just a freelance hero doing his best in a hard world.' The spirit of adventure calls Falco on a new spying mission for the Emperor Vespasian to the untamed East. He's picking up extra fees from his old friend Thalia the snake dancer as he searches for Sophrona, her lost water organist. With the Chief Spy Anacrites paying his fare, Falco knows anything can go wrong. A dangerous brush with the Brother, the sinister ruler of Nabataean Petra, sends Falco and his girlfriend Helena on a fast camel-ride to Syria.

Strangefields Farm is notorious for its sinister history ever since serial killer Jackson Temples lured young women to the premises, and the girls never left alive. Now, decades later, Strangefields is being transformed into a holiday village, but the developer's hopes of its dark past being forgotten are ruined when a skull is found on the site. Police suspect it belongs to one of Temples' victims, and when a local florist is found murdered in an echo of Temples' crimes, DI Wesley Peterson fears a copycat killer could be at large.

"I’ve always wanted to see something of the Empire outside Rome." AD 71. Germania Libera: dark, dripping forests inhabited by bloodthirsty barbarians and legendary wild beasts, a furious prophetess who terrorises Rome, and the ghostly spirits of slaughtered Roman legionaries. Enter Falco, an Imperial agent on a special mission: to find the absconding commander of a legion whose loyalty is suspect.

May 1940: Sergeant Jack Tanner has been posted to a training company on the southeast coast of England where the mysterious deaths of two Polish refugees lead him to believe there has been foul play. As the Germans launch their blitzkrieg in Europe, the entire company are sent to join the battle to stop Hitler's drive across the Low Countries. Pitted against the die-hard Nazis of the SS "Death's Head" division and the great panzer commander, General Rommel himself, it is left to Tanner to get his men back to Allied lines.

Jim Henderson is one of six guests summoned by the mysterious Edwin Carson, a collector of precious stones, to a weekend party at his country house, Thrackley. The house is gloomy and forbidding, but the party is warm and hospitable except for the presence of Jacobson, the sinister butler. The other guests are wealthy people draped in jewels; Jim cannot imagine why he belongs in such company. After a weekend of adventure with attempted robbery and a vanishing guest, secrets come to light, and Jim unravels a mystery from his past.

When archaeologist Neil Watson unearths a long-buried mechanical figure in a Dartmoor field, he is determined to discover the truth behind the bizarre find. Soon, however, the village becomes the focus of press attention when two people are found shot dead in nearby Manor Field. DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate, but the murders aren't his only problem.

Vienna 1903. An operatic diva, Ida Rosenkrantz, is found dead in her luxurious villa. It appears that she has taken an overdose of morphine, but a broken rib suggests other and more sinister possibilities. Detective Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt seeks the assistance of his young friend, the psychoanalyst Dr. Max Liebermann, and they begin their inquiries at Vienna's majestic opera house.

What will the world look like in 2050? How will complex forces of change—demography, the environment, finance, technology and ideas about governance—affect our global society? And how, with so many unknowns, should we think about the future? One of Europe’s foremost voices on global trends in economics, business and society, Hamish McRae takes us on an exhilarating journey through the next 30 years. Drawing on decades of research, and combining economic judgement with historical perspective, Hamish weighs up the opportunities and dangers we face.