Sally Spencer

"Bristol, 1991. Crammed into a hire car, on their way to a vital appointment, five representatives of Conroy Enterprises are running very late. Rob Conroy, the black sheep of the family, is torn between spiteful amusement at his Uncle Tony's irritation and anxiety for the future. If Conroy Enterprises fails, it will bring Rob's own small publishing company down with it. But in the space of just two hours, everything changes. The car crashes, leaving...

DCI Monika Paniatowski investigates a case that could be the making - or, more likely, breaking - of her career DCI Monika Paniatowski has only been back from maternity leave for three days when she is called in to investigate a nightmare of a case. Not only is the murder victim a mother of three small children, but her husband is a wealthy politician. Monika knows that if she can't make a quick arrest her career is on the line. It's lucky, then,...

"The Woodend series has always been one of the best British police procedurals around. Now Spencer has taken up a new series with Paniatowski in the lead, and she proves again that she is in the league with Peter Turnbull and Lynda La Plante" - Library Journal
The first book in the page-turning DCI Monika Paniatowski British police procedural series, set in the 1970s.
It will be no easy task to fill the shoes of...

DCI Monika Paniatowski is forced to think the unthinkable: could a good friend and long-standing colleague be guilty of murder? On the day of her official retirement from the Force, DCI Monika Paniatowski looks at the two men and one woman who are no longer her team and thinks: Whatever the future holds, I will always be proud of you. She raises a toast. And just like that, her career as a homicide detective is over. Then, fifteen years later,...

With the help of Paco Ruiz - a former policeman, living in disgrace since the Spanish Civil War - Woodend embarks on an unofficial investigation which provides more questions than answers. Why was the dead man travelling under a false passport? Who are the men he was seen to associate with, but now deny all knowledge of him? Why does the local police chief seem determined to lead him up a blind alley? And, who is responsible for the three more deaths...

DCI Monika Paniatowski recognises her latest assignment as advisor to the Earl of Ridley's rock festival for what it really is – an attempt by the chief constable to destroy her career. Yet it soon becomes apparent that matters are not as simple as they appear. Why, for instance, did the earl choose to employ the notorious Devil's Disciples motorcycle gang to provide the security for the festival? And to what lengths will his mother, the dowager...

Politician spills his guts - all over the road! The discovery of Bradley Pine's body off a busy road signals the end of his bid to win a local election. But why would the killer risk dumping the body so publicly? And why should he not only reduce the victim's mouth to pulp, but partly disembowel him? With the election looming, and Woodend's old enemy Marlowe replacing Pine as candidate, Woodend is required to produce a result. Any result!

Private investigator Jennie Redhead finds her loyalties divided when she investigates the decades-old murder of a college student. Oxford, 1974. In the cellars beneath St Luke's College, a sealed medieval ventilation shaft is opened up to reveal human bones. Two bodies, buried thirty years apart, but is there a connection ... Desperate to protect the College's reputation - and finances - the bursar, Charlie Swift, hires his old friend, private investigator...

DCI Monika Paniatowski faces an old enemy, and makes a fatal mistake with the potential to poison her whole, career. Jordan Gough is an important man. He's the town's biggest benefactor. He is the proprietor of the Whitebridge Evening Telegraph. He owns the local football team. He is also, DCI Monika Paniatowski thinks, as bent as a corkscrew, and if she had any evidence, she'd put him away like a shot. A single encounter with him as a young detective...

"You should have worked out by now that nobody wants this case solved!" These words, delivered by Eddie, a Liverpool thug brought down to London especially to put the frighteners on him, send a shiver down newly-promoted DS Charlie Woodend's spine. Because Eddie is right. Nobody does seem interested in bringing the killer of sixteen-year-old Pearl Jones to justice. Not DCI Bentley, Woodend's immediate boss. Not Deputy Commissioner Naylor, whose word...