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Brighton
Brighton
Series · 8 books · 2010-2021
By
Peter Guttridge
Books in series
#1
City of Dreadful Night
2010
"Be prepared for a long night. Guttridge combines period mystery, police procedure and noir in a fascinating tale whose only blemish is that you'll have to wait for the next in the series in its resolution” ― Kirkus Reviews, (Starred Review) The first gripping mystery in the Brighton Trilogy. July 1934 . A woman's torso is found in a trunk at Brighton railway station's lost luggage office. Her identity is never established, her killer never caught. But someone is keeping a diary... July 2009 . Ambitious radio journalist Kate Simpson hopes to solve the notorious Brighton Trunk Murder, and she enlists the help of ex-Chief Constable Robert Watts, whose role in the recent botched armed-police operation in Milldean, Brighton's notorious no-go area, cost him his job. But it's only a matter of time before past and present collide...
#2
Last King of Brighton
2011
The new gripping mystery following City of Dreadful Night A man impaled on the South Downs. Another skinned alive. A skeleton found beneath the West Pier, its feet encased in concrete. Brighton has been invaded. But this is no mere power struggle between rival mobsters; the motives for the killings stretch back through the decades, to an explosive forty-year-old secret Brighton's crime king John Hathaway would rather forget. But someone else remembers, and that someone has decided that revenge is a dish best served cold . . .
#3
Thing Itself
2012
The gripping new thriller in Peter Guttridge's highly acclaimed Brighton series. The truth will out. Thriller writer Victor Tempest is dead and his son, the disgraced ex-Chief Constable Bob Watts, is discovering what really happened in the unsolved Brighton Trunk Murder of 1934. At the same time, DS Sarah Gilchrist has a lead that may establish the truth about the Milldean Massacre. If she can stay alive long enough to follow it . . . Jimmy Tingley, once SAS, now avenging angel, is in Europe on the trail of the Balkan gangsters who wreaked bloody havoc in Brighton. He's armed for World War III, but is that enough when he's his own most dangerous enemy?
#4
Devil's Moon
2013
Brighton’s murderous past and criminal present are intriguingly combined in this brand new series featuring some of the characters from the Brighton Trilogy Everywhere newly-promoted Sarah Gilchrist looks, unsettling things are happening. A Wicker Man is burned on the beach at dawn with a body inside; a painting titled The Devil’s Altar is stolen from the Brighton Museum; a vicar who casts out demons goes missing; and a rare medieval manuscript of the occult Key of Solomon is stolen from the Jubilee Library. Then Gilchrist’s flatmate, Kate Simpson, discovers that acts of sacrilege and grave robbing have been routinely taking place in Brighton and the surrounding villages. And ex-Chief Constable Bob Watts is puzzling over inscriptions in his late father’s books. Specifically, books by occult writers Dennis Wheatley, Colin Pearson - and the feared Aleister Crowley, cremated in Brighton in 1947. Old Religion and New Age collide and the body count mounts as the Devil’s Moon slowly rises …
#5
Those Who Feel Nothing
2014
A macabre discovery beneath Brighton's Royal Pavilion has links to the horrors of Pol Pot's Cambodia in this absorbing mystery
Ex-Chief Constable Bob Watts is hoping to ease gently into his new role as Brighton's first Police Commissioner but is hit with a shocking scandal involving the director of the Royal Pavilion. In the subsequent investigation, Detective Inspector Sarah Gilchrist and Detective Sergeant Bellamy Heap are bemused by the discovery of looted antiquities from Cambodia's Angkor Watt in the tunnels beneath the Pavilion, but the further discovery of a corpse gives their investigation a darker hue. As does the arrival in Brighton of a man who was once caught up in the horror of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime. A man for whom redemption has become retribution.
#6
Swimming with the Dead
2019
With the local lido under threat of closure by ruthless businesswoman Alison Sutherland, the Save the Salthaven Lido campaigners are fighting a desperate battle to keep it open. When the lead campaigner is discovered dead, partially drowned and stabbed repeatedly, suspicion falls upon Alison. No sooner have DI Sarah Gilchrist and DS Bellamy Heap spoken to Alison, one of her colleagues suffers a heart attack - despite being in good health - during a long-distance, open-water swim. Hot on the heels of this, another swimmer turns up drowned. Are all the deaths connected to the Salthaven development? Is someone targeting open-water swimmers? Gilchrist and Heap race to uncover the truth before more victims come to the surface.
#7
The Lady of the Lake
2020
DI Sarah Gilchrist and DS Bellamy Heap are called in when the body of a man is found floating in a lake belonging to a reclusive ex-Hollywood actress.
When Major Richard Rabbitt, owner of a large estate in Sussex, is found floating in a lake belonging to Nimue Grace, a charismatic former Hollywood actress, DI Sarah Gilchrist and DS Bellamy Heap are called in to investigate - and quickly discover Rabbitt was a notoriously difficult man to deal with. Rabbitt was hated by his estranged wife, had several rivalries with residents of the area, and was involved in a number of deals with other shady businessmen . . . such as Said Farzi, a 'criminal' according to many, and the corrupt politician William Simpson - the father of Heap's girlfriend. With numerous suspects and many refusing to cooperate, Gilchrist and Heap must stay on their toes to unravel all the connections. Who stood to gain the most from Rabbitt's demise, and who can be trusted?
#8
Butcher's Wood
2021
A bloody death of an actress during a theatre show has DI Gilchrist and DS Heap investigate . . . but was it a bizarre accident or a deliberate attack? During a theatre performance Detective Inspector Sarah Gilchrist is reluctantly attending, blood begins soaking through a curtain startling one actor into falling to his death from the stage. The source of the Elvira Wright, the lead actress, has been bludgeoned by a lead weight used for opening the curtain. Meanwhile former Hollywood actress Nimue Grace is attracting attention from a notorious gangster. When she stumbles across something horrific in the aptly named Butcher's Wood, she interprets it as a vicious message left for her. As Gilchrist and Detective Sergeant Bellamy Heap investigate, they find themselves running in circles. All the actors were disgruntled with the director of the play, Cat Pinter, and the way it was produced, but why would any of them target Elvira? And what is the meaning of the horrible discovery in Butcher's Wood?
Author
Peter Guttridge
Author · 13 books