books in order

Robert Goddard Books In Order

Harry Barnett Books In Publication Order

  1. Into the Blue (1990)
  2. Out of the Sun (1996)
  3. Never Go Back (2006)

James “Max” Maxted Books In Publication Order

  1. The Ways of the World (2013)
  2. The Corners of the Globe (2014)
  3. The Ends of the Earth (2015)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Past Caring (1986)
  2. In Pale Battalions (1988)
  3. Painting the Darkness (1989)
  4. Take No Farewell / Debt of Dishonour (1991)
  5. Hand in Glove (1992)
  6. Closed Circle (1993)
  7. Borrowed Time (1995)
  8. Beyond Recall (1997)
  9. Caught in the Light (1998)
  10. Set in Stone (1999)
  11. Sea Change (2000)
  12. Dying to Tell (2001)
  13. Days Without Number (2003)
  14. Play to the End (2004)
  15. Sight Unseen (2005)
  16. Name to a Face (2007)
  17. Found Wanting (2008)
  18. Long Time Coming (2009)
  19. Blood Count (2010)
  20. Fault Line (2012)
  21. Ends of the Earth (2015)
  22. Panic Room (2017)
  23. One False Move (2019)
  24. The Fine Art of Invisible Detection (2021)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. The Best British Mysteries IV (2007)

Harry Barnett Book Covers

James “Max” Maxted Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Robert Goddard Books Overview

Into the Blue

Harry Barnett lives the life of an Englishman on permanent vacation in Greece, house sitting for a powerful friend and hiding from a past disgrace. That is, until a guest at the villa disappears on a walking tour, and Harry is the number one suspect. While a Greek detective tries to trap him, and the British tabloids pillory him at home, Harry’s conscience is his worst enemy of all. What happened to young, beautiful Heather Mallender? Who took her and why didn t Harry realize that something was amiss? Suddenly, a man steeped in failure has found a purpose, retracing the strange, twisting route that led to Heather s vanishing. But the more he learns, the less he knows. Until Harry finds himself at the heart of a dangerous puzzle whose pieces are scattered everywhere: in the realm of British politics, in the beds of adulterous lovers, in the past, the present, and most of all, amid the secrets of a killer…
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Out of the Sun

Although unaware of David Venning’s existence, Harry Barnett begins an international search to help his long lost comatose son after he learns that two other scientists from David’s company have recently died due to mysterious causes.’

Never Go Back

In the spellbinding new mystery by the master of the clever twist, a group of ex RAF comrades journey to a Scottish castle for a reunion. But by the time they reach their destination, two of them are dead. Harry Barnett is leading a contented life in Vancouver with his wife and daughter when he is brought back to England by the death of his mother. He intends to spend just a few days sorting out her affairs when a chance meeting he will regret for the rest of his life makes him change his plans. Two old acquaintances from his National Service days track Harry down to his mother’s house the last address they had for him. A lavish reunion has been organized to mark the fiftieth anniversary of their RAF days. Harry decides to go. During the war, Harry and his fellow RAF conscripts spent three months in a Scottish castle where they acted as guinea pigs in a psychological experiment. The reunion is to take place in the same castle. It will be a chance to see friends, settle old scores and lay a few ghosts to rest. The party begins on the train up to Aberdeen, until the apparent suicide of one of their number shatters the holiday atmosphere. Their arrival in Scotland seems under a cloud, and when another comrade dies soon after their arrival, Harry is gripped by a sense of foreboding. As well, the recollections of the old comrades of their time in the castle are frighteningly different, and unexplained events from 1955 still haunt them. As Harry tries to solve the mystery of what really happened fifty years ago, he uncovers an extraordinary secret that convinces him he will never leave the castle alive.

Past Caring

At a lush villa on the sun soaked island of Madeira, Martin Radford is given a second chance. His life ruined by scandal, Martin holds in his hands the leather bound journal of another ruined man, former British cabinet minister Edwin Strafford. What’s more, Martin is being offered a job to return to England and investigate the rise and fall of Strafford, an ambitious young politician whose downfall, in 1910, is as mysterious as the strange deaths that still haunt his family. Martin is intrigued by Strafford s story, by the man s overwhelming love for a beautiful suffragette, by her inexplicable rejection of him and their love affair s political repercussions. But as he retraces Strafford s ruination, Martin realizes that Strafford did not fall by chance; he was pushed. Suddenly Martin, who has not cared for many people in his life, cares desperately about a man s mysterious death and a family s terrible secret, about a love beyond reckoning and betrayal beyond imagining. Most of all Martin cares because the story he is uncovering is not yet over and among the men and women still caught in its web, Martin himself may be the most vulnerable of all .

In Pale Battalions

Six months after her husband’s sudden death, Leonora Galloway sets off for a holiday in Paris with her daughter Penelope. At last the time has come when secrets can be shared and explanations begin…
Their journey starts with an unscheduled stop at the imposing Thiepval Memorial to the dead of the Battle of the Somme near Amiens. Amongst those commemorated is Leonora’s father. The date of his death is recorded and 30th April, 1916. But Leonora wasn’t born until 14th March 1917. Penelope at once supposes a simple wartime illegitimacy as the clue to her mother’s unhappy childhood and the family’s sundered connections with her aristocratic heritage, about which she has always known so little. But nothing could have prepared her, or the reader, for the extraordinary story that is about to unfold. From the Paperback edition.

Painting the Darkness

A novel of mystery intrigue and love from the author of Past Caring’ and In Pale Battalions’.

Take No Farewell / Debt of Dishonour

Consuela Caswell stands accused of murder, letters proving that she wants to murder her husband providing damming evidence against her. It is 1923, and if proved guilty, she could hang. Her young daughter, Jacinta is convinced of her innocence, and is determined to find the real murderer.

Hand in Glove

In her seaside cottage, Beatrix Abberley bravely confronts an intruder moments before her life is brutally taken. The crime stuns the elderly spinster’s family especially Beatrix s niece, Charlotte Ladram. But Charlotte has little time to mourn the loss of her beloved aunt and little patience when police quickly arrest a man Charlotte believes is innocent. For Charlotte, a harrowing quest for answers begins one that will take her into the shadows of the past and into the life and secrets of the dead woman s brother, famed poet and casualty of the Spanish Civil War, Tristram Abberley. Now, amid shattering revelations about her family, and in the aftermath of a second savage crime, Charlotte finds herself at the center of a widening storm. And for Charlotte, something extraordinary is beginning to happen. As fifty years of secrets begin to unravel, shy, cautious Charlotte is coming alive in the shadow of a mystery uncovering a shocking tale of wartime greed and treachery, and a vendetta of violence seemingly without end .

Closed Circle

The year is 1931. The new and luxurious transatlantic liner Empress of Britain is on her eastward passage. Among the first class passengers are two English confidence tricksters, making a discreet exit from a little awkwardness they have left behind. A chance meeting on deck brings them a tempting new target in the shape of Miss Charnwood and her niece, the beautiful Diana. It’s a trick they ve pulled before. Charm the daughter into an engagement to marry, then get the father to buy you off. So confident are they, that they make a pact: whichever of them wins Diana Charnwood s love, will share his fortune with the other. Who would imagine that these smooth operators would let their hearts rule their heads? Or that violent death would find its way into their neat little scheme? Or that they would stumble into something much darker and deeper than either had suspected.

Borrowed Time

It is a golden evening of high summer in July 1990. Robin Timariot has set out that morning on what he has planned as a six day tramp along part of Offa’s Dyke. At the close of his first day’s walk he encounters an elegant middle aged woman who seems strangely out of place among the sheep and gorse of Hergest Ridge. They exchange only a few words of conversation, but their talk is enigmatic and unforgettable. A few days later, at the end of his walk, Timariot returns home to learn from the newspapers that, just a few hours after their meeting, the woman, whose name was Louise Paxton, was raped and then murdered, along with an artist, Oscar Bantock, who lived near by.A man is swiftly charged and convicted of the crime, but a string of inexplicable events begins to convince Timariot and others that all is not what it seems. Timariot, fascinated by Louise Paxton’s memory, is drawn irresistibly into the complex motives and relationships of her family and friends, searching against his better judgement for the secret of what really happened on the day she died. The closer he gets to the truth, the more hideous and uncertain it seems to be. And far too late he realizes that it may threaten many powerful people. So much so that anybody who uncovers it is unlikely to be allowed to live. From the Paperback edition.

Beyond Recall

On a bright autumn afternoon in Truro, the Napier family celebrates one couple’s golden wedding anniversary and another s marriage. But for one member of the clan, the day turns dark. Chris Napier, prodigal son, suddenly spots the ragged specter of a former friend, Nicky Lanyon a man whose own family was ruined by the same twist of fate with which the Napiers were blessed. And the next morning, Chris is horrified to find Nicky dead, hanging from a tree where the boys once played . For Chris, the suicide opens a floodgate of doubt and suspicion. How did his family s wealth slip out of the hands of a great uncle, brutally murdered before he could change his will? Were the men convicted of the crime truly guilty? And who is the mysterious, seductive woman who claims to know the Napiers darkest secrets? As the crimes of two families are exposed, a series of violent acts shadows him and suddenly Chris knows he s in uncharted waters until a killer drops one last disguise for the ultimate act of revenge.

Caught in the Light

Photographer Ian Jarrett sets out to solve a mystery that may be 170 years old. At the end of his search, a trap awaits him.

Set in Stone

Recovering from the recent death of his wife in a cliff fall, Tony Sheridan goes to stay with her sister and her husband at their house in Rutland. The house, called Otherways, is in some senses a character in the story: a strange, circular, moted construction dating from Edwardian times. Disturbed by memories of his wife and a growing attraction to her sister, and troubled by vivid dreams, Sheridan learns that a murder committed at the house in 1939 still has resonances for those living in the neighbourhood, including the sister of the murdered woman. There is a scandal surrounding the murderer’s brother, and enough hints of other mysteries to forewarn Sheridan of impending disaster as he embarks on a secret affair. But that disaster is far worse than a friendship betrayed. Its nature is revealed by the ghosts that have haunted Otherways over the years of whom he comes to fear that he may be one himself.

Sea Change

It is January, 1721. London is reeling from the effects of the greatest financial scandal of the age, the collapse of the South Sea Bubble. William Spandrel, a penniless mapmaker, is offered a discharge of his debts by his principal creditor, Sir Theodore Janssen on one condition: he must secretly convey an important package to Janssen’s friend in Amsterdam. The package safely delivered, Spandrel barely survives an attack on his life, only to be blamed for a murder himself…

Play to the End

Once Toby Flood played a Bond like hero in a Hollywood film. Now he’s serving a sentence in a crippled traveling production of a newly unearthed Joe Orton play a play that might have saved Toby s career if only someone enjoyed watching it. Painfully, the show s swan song is coming in Brighton, where Toby s wife happens to be living happily with another man in anticipation of a divorce decree. Then, almost as if he were scripted, a stranger enters the scene…
.A stalker is frightening Toby s wife, Jenny, who believes the man is probably one of her estranged husband s fans. When Jenny asks Toby to confront the man, Toby leaps at the chance. Soon, he s moonlighting from the stage lights and heroically pursuing…
something. The truth is, the more Toby finds out about Jenny s stalker, the more questions he has about a twisting tale of unexplained deaths, interlocking lives, and the violent, greedy adventures of none other than Jenny s wealthy fianc a man who might make the perfect villain, if only the hero lives long enough to prove it…
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Sight Unseen

Another classic mystery from the master of the clever twist. On a summer’s day in 1981, a two year old girl, Tamsin Hall, was abducted during a picnic at the famous prehistoric site of Avebury in Wiltshire. Her seven year old sister Miranda was knocked down and killed by the abductor s van. The girls were in the care of their nanny, Sally Wilkinson. One of the witnesses to this tragic event was David Umber, a Ph.D student who was waiting at the village pub to keep an appointment with a man called Griffith who claimed he could help Umber with his researches into the letters of Junius, the pseudonymous eighteenth century polemicist who was his Ph.D subject. But Griffin failed to show up, and Umber never heard from him again. The two year old, Tamsin Hall, was never seen again either. The Hall family fell apart under the strain. Sally Wilkinson, the nanny, wound up living with Umber, whom she had met at the inquiry. But she never recovered from the incident, suffered increasingly from depression, and eventually committed suicide. In the spring of 2004, retired Chief Inspector George Sharp receives a letter signed Junius reproaching him for botching the 1981 investigation. Sharp confronts Umber, whose explanation for being at the scene of the tragedy has always seemed dubious. Obliged to accept Umber s denial of authorship of the letter, he nonetheless forces him to join in a search for the real culprit and hence the long concealed truth about what happened 23 years previously. It is a quest that both will later regret having embarked upon. Too late they come to understand that some mysteries are better left unsolved.

Name to a Face

He d seen her somewhere once he was sure of that. But the young woman gave no hint of recognition and before this could be explained, everything fell apart…
. Tim Harding has come to Cornwall at the behest of a friend to represent him in an auction and facilitate the purchase of a much coveted antique ring. Hayley Winter has come there for reasons of her own…
and a centuries old mystery is about to come crashing down around them both.A decade before, a woman matching Hayley’s exact description died in a suspicious diving accident at the side of the man giving Harding his orders. Now the ring, said to have been cut off the finger of a drowned British naval commander in 1707, is at the center of a many tendrilled puzzle. Uncanny resemblances…
stunning contradictions…
Then Hayley s sudden disappearance…
For Harding, one misstep and a handful of coincidences ignite a search through dozens of lives, back into English history and the age of the Black Death, and forward to a fatal meeting in Germany…
to find Hayley, her true identity, and the most shocking secret of all.

Found Wanting

In the summer of 1909, an unassuming English bobby crossed paths with Russian royalty. Now, a century later, the secret entrusted to him is about to be revealed. Richard Eusden is on his way to work in London one unremarkable winter morning when he is intercepted by his ex wife, who asks him to ferry an old attach case to their friend Marty Hewitson in Brussels. Richard expects to be back in London within the day, but in Belgium, Marty is nowhere to be found. Instead, Richard comes face to face with a ruthless kidnapper and his outrageous demand: the attach case in exchange for Marty’s life. The desperate attempt to save his old friend sets Richard off on a race across Germany and then north, first to Copenhagen, then to Helsinki. Whatever the contents of the case, they link a Danish tycoon and his family s dark secret to the deaths of several innocent people. And now that secret is beginning to tug at the threads of a larger mystery one involving the fate of the Grand Duchess Anastasia, last of the Romanovs.

Long Time Coming

Stephen Swan is amazed when he hears that the uncle he thought had been killed in the Blitz is actually alive. For nearly four decades, Eldritch Swan has been locked away in an Irish prison and now, at last, has been released. Shocked and suspicious, Stephen listens to the old man’s story and is caught up in a tale that begins at the dawn of World War II, when Eldritch worked for an Antwerp diamond dealer with a trove of Picassos highly valuable paintings that later disappeared. Stephen, who finds his uncle by turns devious, charming, and brazen, then meets Rachel Banner, a beautiful American who may have inherited the Picassos and is determined to see justice done for her family. But in this tale of revenge and redemption, justice is the ultimate illusion. Eldritch, Stephen, and the woman Stephen has fallen in love with soon find themselves fighting for their lives against sinister forces still guarding a secret that must never be revealed.

Blood Count

There’s no such thing as easy money. As surgeon Edward Hammond is about to find out. Thirteen years ago he performed a life saving operation on a Serbian gangster, Dragan Gazi. Gazi is now standing trial for war crimes in the international court in The Hague. After his life was saved, his men went on to slaughter thousands in the Balkan civil wars. Now Gazi’s family want more from him: in exchange for keeping Hammond’s dirty little secret, they want him to find for them the man who holds the key to all the money Gazi squirreled away before he was locked up. But Italian financier, Marco Piravani, doesn’t want to be found, not by Hammond, not by anyone. No sooner has Hammond tracked him down, than Piravani has disappeared again. His pursuit will take him first to the Hague, and then to Milan to find the Italian, and then finally back to the scene of his crime, Belgrade, where he must confront the decisions he once so easily took. Only then will he be able to lay the past to rest.

The Best British Mysteries IV

British crime and mystery writing is popular all over the world. And how could it not be? After all these are the shores that saw the talents of Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and so many others flourish. From the Golden Age of classic mystery writing onwards, British talent has captured the imagination of readers in a unique way, and the modern era has been no exception. The art of the short story has always been one that mystery writers have excelled at, and here we are proud to present 25 examples of the bite sized mystery from the very best authors in Great Britain today. The stories cater for every criminal taste from the locked room puzzle to the action packed vignette and several have been shortlisted or winners of prestigious awards. Tour the British Isles with this superb collection you re bound to enjoy the journey! Contributors include: Ian Rankin, Anne Perry, Edward Marston, Martina Cole, Peter Robinson, Stella Duffy, Jerry Sykes, Liza Cody, Marin Edwards, Marion Arnott, Amy Myers, Bill James, Peter Turnbull, Robert Barnard, Peter Lovesey, Val McDermid, Mat Coward, Denise Mina, Stephen Gallagher, Judith Cutler, David Williams, John Harvey, Carol Anne Davis, Nicholas Royle, Sally Spedding

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