Showing results by narrator "Neil Pearson" in All Categories

The Martin Beck books are widely acknowledged as some of the most influential detective novels ever written. Written by Swedish husband and wife team Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö between 1965 and 1975, the 10-book series set a gold standard for all subsequent Scandinavian crime fiction. Long before Kurt Wallander or Harry Hole, Beck was the original flawed policeman, working with a motley collection of colleagues to uncover the cruelty and injustice lurking beneath the surface of Sweden's liberal society.

One of the main movers and shakers at TS Sports Stars agency, Trevor Heslop is honest, decent and sensitive. Unfortunately, he works in a world of cutthroats and corruption, with nightmare clients and a rapacious partner with the morals of a barracuda. Add to that his dysfunctional family - estranged wife Meryl and teenage son Toby - and it’s a miracle he manages to stay afloat in the shark tank that is his life.

A Peeping Tom is frightening the women of Eastvale; two glue-sniffing young thugs are breaking into homes and robbing people; an old woman may or may not have been murdered. Investigating these cases is Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, a perceptive, curious, and compassionate policeman recently moved to the Yorkshire Dales from London to escape the stress of city life.

Shortly before his 44th birthday, John Diamond received a call from the doctor who had removed a lump from his neck. Having been assured for the previous 2 years that this was a benign cyst, Diamond was told that it was, in fact, cancerous.

Tom Bryce did what any decent person would do. But within hours of picking up the CD that had been left behind on the train seat next him, and attempting to return it to its owner, he is the sole witness to a vicious murder.

Amid the tragic unfolding mayhem of the morning of 911, failed Brighton never-do-well Ronnie Wilson sees the chance of a lifetime, to disappear and reinvent himself in another country. Five years later the discovery of the skeletal remains of a woman's body in a storm drain in Brighton, leads Detective Superintendent Roy Grace on an enquiry spanning the globe, and into a desperate race against time to save the life of a woman being hunted down like an animal in the streets and alleys of Brighton.

The complete BBC Radio 4 satirical comedy series about a seasoned presenter of travel documentaries, Brian Gulliver, who finds himself in a hospital's secure unit after claiming to have experienced a succession of bizarre adventures. In series one we hear about Brian's travels in Gelbetia, a country run by doctors; Juradia, where every other person is a lawyer; Osminia, a land where marriage is outlawed; Sham, a country where alternative therapies abound; Erosia, which has a very different view of sexual politics; and Jampoa, where fame definitely equals fortune.

Chief Inspector Banks is back - in an original tale that makes up part of a new crime collection of seven short stories by Peter Robinson, never published in the UK before. With settings ranging from the Pacific Northwest in the Sixties to the Yorkshire of the Second World War and present-day Toronto to Eastvale at Christmas, these stories feature hippies, policemen and models, little girls dancing ballet, PIs and soldiers.

On the night Brian Bishop murdered his wife, he was 60 miles away, asleep in bed. At least, that's the way it looks to Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, who is called in to investigate the kinky slaying of beautiful young Brighton socialite Katie Bishop.

Three unabridged readings of original novels from the creator of Paul Temple. Three unabridged readings of original novels from the creator of Paul Temple. In The Desperate People, read by Neil Pearson, Philip Holt is determined to uncover the truth about the death of his brother, Rex, and those who were responsible for it. In Dead to the World, also read by Neil Pearson, Philip Holt's skills are again in demand after he meets Robert Scranton, a wealthy American, on a plane returning to England from the USA.

In Nocturnes, a sublime story cycle, Kazuo Ishiguro explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time. From the piazzas of Italy to the Malvern Hills, a London flat to the "hush-hush floor" of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, the characters we encounter range from young dreamers to cafe musicians to faded stars, all of them at some moment of reckoning. Gentle, intimate, and witty, this quintet is marked by a haunting theme: the struggle to keep alive a sense of life's romance, even as one gets older.

In series 1 and 2, as his mum and wife, Mary, sit round his bedside and wonder how to wake him up, Ben’s mind is busy elsewhere. In his imagination, he lives with his two-year-old daughter, Blitz (now miraculously grown up), encounters celebrities such as Sue Lawley, Elvis Presley and Tom Paulin, relives memories from his past and gets into a compromising situation with a fellow inmate at a strangely familiar Torquay hotel. Meanwhile, an imaginary sitcom written by him, about coma patients in a hospital, plays in the background.

The body of a well-liked local historian is found half-buried under a wall near the village of Helmthorpe, Swainsdale. Who on earth would want to kill such a thoughtful, dedicated man? Penny Cartwright, a beautiful folk singer with a mysterious past, a shady land-developer, Harry's editor, and a local thriller writer are all suspects, and all are figures from Harry's previous, idyllic summers in the dale. A young girl, Sally Lumb, knows more than she lets on, and her knowledge could lead to danger.

It should have been a cosy scene: log fire, sheepskin rug, Vivaldi on the stereo, Christmas lights and tree. But appearances can be deceptive. For Caroline Hartley has been brutally murdered.

In the usually peaceful town of Eastvale, a simmering tension has now reached breaking point. An anti-nuclear demonstration has ended in violence, leaving one policeman stabbed to death. Fired by professional outrage, Superintendent "Dirty Dick" Burgess descends with vengeful fury on the inhabitants of "Maggie's Farm", an isolated house high on the daleside.

When two social workers investigating reports of child abuse appear at Brenda Scupham's door, her fear of authority leads her to comply meekly with their requests - even when they say that they must take her seven-year-old daughter Gemma away for tests. It is only when they fail to return Gemma the following day that Brenda realises something has gone terribly wrong.

It was 2.47 a.m. when Chief Inspector Alan Banks arrived at the barn and saw the body of Keith Rothwell for the first time. Only hours earlier, two masked men had walked the mild-mannered accountant out of his farmhouse and clinically blasted him with a shotgun.

Thirty-five The Hill is an ordinary house in an ordinary street, owned by an apparently ordinary young couple. But it is about to become infamous. For when Police Constables Janet Taylor and Dennis Morrisey are sent to the house following a report of a domestic disturbance, they stumble upon a truly horrific scene - a scene which leaves one of them dead and the other fighting for her life and career.