Books in series
#1
The Salton Killings
1998
Chief Inspector Woodend is called to investigate the murder of a teenager in the village of Cheshire and suspects there is a serial killer on the loose
#2
Murder at Swann's Lake
1999
When Robbie Peterson, a criminal-turned-club-owner, is found dead in his office, a six-inch nail driven deep into his skull, Woodend and Sergeant Bob Rutter are brought up from London to investigate. Why was Robbie's office broken into twice on the day of his funeral? What caused Robbie's son-in-law to attack his own brother on the night of the murder? As the case unfolds, Woodend uncovers several crimes, but it is only as it draws to a close that he realizes the murder has nothing to do with Robbie's criminal past—and everything to do with his domestic present.
#3
Death of a Cave Dweller
2000
When Eddie Barnes is electrocuted on stage in front of 300 adoring fans, the Liverpool Police immediately call in Scotland Yard, which means calling in the Yard's resident expert Chief Inspector Charlie Woodend. But for once Woodend feels out of his depth.
#4
The Dark Lady
2001
The night after the mysterious appearance of the legendary Dark Lady on the road outside Westbury Park, a German efficiency expert, Gerhard Schultz, is found battered to death in the woods and Chief Inspector Charlie Woodend is faced with his most puzzling case yet. Why did Schultz seem so frightened when on his colleagues mentioned the legend of the Dark Lady? Did the workers at the BCI chemical factory - many of whom are known to hate the Germans - have anything to do with his death? How could Fred Foley, the tramp whose bloodstained overcoat was found close to the scene of the crime, have completely disappeared? And is this murder connected with one which occurred in Liverpool nearly twenty years earlier?
#5
The Golden Mile to Murder
2001
The investigation into the brutal murder of a Blackpool policeman in the middle of the holiday season was never going to easy, but the case itself is not Woodend's only problem. There is trouble at home: his new boss, DS Ainsworth, is just waiting for an opportunity to stick a knife in his back; his invaluable assistant, Bob Rutter, had been replaced by a new sergeant more intent on advancing her own career than helping him—and the Blackpool police themselves seem to think it might be better if the killer were never found . . .
#6
Dead on Cue
2002
With the newspapers screaming for a quick solution, this is a case no one wants to touch—so naturally it is Chief Inspector Woodend who finds himself left holding the baby. With his usual panache, Cloggin'-it Charlie quickly immerses himself of the world of television, meeting people he has previously only seen as characters on the screen, learning that while there may be honour among thieves there does not seem to be much on the set of Maddox Row. The question, it soon becomes apparent, is not who wanted to kill Valerie Farnsworth, but who didn't. And will the murderer stop at only one victim? There are those in the know who are convinced that he won't.
#7
The Red Herring
2002
The discovery of the body of a young, red-haired school mistress, lying in a pig-pen with her face half-eaten away, is the beginning of a new investigation for Charlie Woodend. But it is to be an investigation he is soon ordered to abandon when Helen Dunn, the daughter of Wing Commander Dunn - and a pupil at the school where the dead woman taught - suddenly vanishes into thin air. While Woodend and Rutter race against time in the desperate hope of finding the girl alive, Woodend's bagman, Monika Paniatowski, continues to work on the murder, under the supervision of the mysterious Chief Inspector Horrocks, a Scotland Yard man who seems to have only a mild interest in finding the killer. Are the two cases connected? Woodend begins to wonder. And if they are, who is it who seems to be blocking both investigations at every turn?
#8
Death of an Innocent
2002
A man and a young woman are found blasted away by a rifle in a remote farmhouse on the Yorkshire moors. But where is the farmer, why did he have such swanky furniture in his living room, and who on earth are the victims? Charlie Woodend isn't amused with the people who are getting under his feet as he starts to grapple with these questions, but his steps are abruptly halted when the Deputy Chief Constable decides that, this time, Woodend's high-handedness has gone too far. Woodend may have been suspended but his sense of justice can't let go. And it won't let go however much resistance he encounters and from whom. But as Woodend is depressed to discover, when the people who are determined to keep you down are all-powerful, sheer will-power just isn't enough.
#9
The Enemy Within
2003
There had never been a murder in Whitebridge like this one. What kind of man would decide to slash the throat of an inoffensive widow who was already terminally ill? Why did he decide to place her lifeless body in the middle of a children's bonfire, and then set it alight? A game is being played, and for the game to continue, there must be more deaths.
#10
A Death Left Hanging
2003
A miscarriage of justice for DCI Woodend Though it is thirty years since Margaret Dodds was tried and executed for the brutal murder of her second husband, many troubling questions raised during the trial are still left unanswered. Why would she choose to commit the crime in such a way that the finger of suspicion would almost inevitably point at her? Why did she insist, even when all hope of reprieve had gone, that she was not guilty? Her daughter, an influential lawyer, wants her name cleared. The investigating officer, now a powerful politician with a seat in the House of Lords, is determined to ensure that the verdict stands. And Chief Inspector Charlie Woodend, charged with stripping away three decades of lies and deceit, finds that - once again - his superiors have presented him with a poisoned chalice.
#11
The Witch Maker
2004
A village with a dark code for Woodend to crack
To be Witch Makers in the moorland village of Hallerton is both a great honour and a heavy burden. It is he who, after years of painstaking apprenticeship, constructs the effigy of Meg Ramsden - he who ties it to the stake and burns it before a bitterly jeering crowd. But this Witch Maker - only the twenty-fourth in the 450 years of the ceremony - never lives to witness his moment of triumph.
This Witch Maker is discovered tied to the Witching Post early one morning with a length of twine wrapped tightly around his neck. DCI Charlie Woodend prides himself on knowing how villages work - but has absolutely no idea at all what makes this one tick. Why do the villagers, who almost revered their Witch Maker, seem so unwilling to help the police? Why have there been so many suicides in this apparently sleepy hamlet? And why, when he has peeled away one level of secrets, does he find nothing underneath but an even deeper level?
#12
The Butcher Beyond
2004
DCI Woodend's first foreign holiday, in General Franco's Spain, ends abruptly when he sees a fellow guest plunge mysteriously from his hotel balcony to the rocky beach below 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 which quickly follow on from the first? It soon becomes plain to Woodend that the roots of the case stretch back thirty years and that if he is ever to solve it, he must confront history itself.
#13
Dying in the Dark
2005
It is one of the most brutal murders Chief Inspector Woodend has ever encountered . . .
Pamela Rainsford, found on a lonely canal path in the middle of a dark night, has not only been raped and strangled, but her face has been hacked to pieces. At first it seems a random killing, but as the case progresses, Woodend begins to suspect that the death of the mild-mannered, respectable secretary may have been a result of her own secret life.
And another secret life is having its consequences, too as a result of his now-ended affair with Sergeant Monika Paniatowski, Inspector Bob Rutter's marriage is falling apart. As the investigation proceeds, Woodend finds himself beginning to understand the complex web of lies and deceits which Pamela Rainsford has spun around herself, but nothing he discovers could ever prepare him for a second death this one much closer to home!
#14
Stone Killer
2005
'Spencer continues to display her mastery of the British procedural and this one... is one of her best yet' - Booklist Starred Review
'Spencer expertly balances personal and prfessional angst in this tense, compelling tale' - Kirkus Starred Review
Prove my wife is innocent or the hostages die!
Never before has DCI Woodend had to work under such terrible and terrifying pressure. He has just a few days, at the most, to find a flaw in the weighty evidence which led to Judith Maitland's conviction as a stone-cold killer a few days to produce the real murderer. But what if Judith really is guilty as charged? What if she did, in fact, brutally butcher her lover, Clive Burroughs, in his own office, as the facts seem to suggest?
How can Woodend produce the evidence when there is none to find? As the hostage situation becomes tenser the hostage-takers increasingly nervous; the army itching to intervene at whatever the cost. Woodend realizes that unless he can find an improbable rabbit to pull out of the hat, the only way the siege will end is in carnage!
#15
A Long Time Dead
2006
The latest Detective Chief Inspector Woodend mystery
When Captain Robert Kineally went missing from Haverton American Army base in Devon in 1944, it was generally assumed he had lost his nerve and deserted. But now, twenty years after the War ended, a body found on the near-derelict base seems to tell an entirely different story. DCI Charlie Woodend has strong reasons for not wanting the case.
As a sergeant on secondment to the Americans, he served at Haverton himself, left it only a few days before the murder, and he is personally involved. However, he is given the case, and it is soon plain that while the British Government expects one outcome, the American Government will be happy with nothing less than the opposite.
#16
Sins of the Fathers
2006
A politician spills his guts - all over the road!
The discovery of Bradley Pine's body in a lay-by off a busy road clearly signals the end of his bid to win the local bye-election. But what is even clearer - from the state in which the corpse is found - is that this is no ordinary murder.Why would the killer run the risk of dumping the body in such a public place, DCI Charlie Woodend asks himself?
And, even more significantly, why should he - post mortem - decide not only to reduce his victim's mouth to a pulp but also to partly disembowel him?With the election looming - and Chief Constable Marlowe, Woodend's old enemy, taking over Pine's place as candidate - the pressure is on to come up with a result. Any result!
But the more Woodend learns of the case, the more he comes to believe that not only is the motive behind the murder at least as bizarre the crime itself, but that the origins of the crime lie in a mountain-climbing tragedy which occurred three years earlier.
#17
Dangerous Games
2007
Five little Englishmen, feeling quite secure, one went and lost his head, and then there were four.
When Terry Pugh's headless body is found floating in the canal, DCI Woodend at first believes that Pugh had merely miscalculated the amount of rope he needed to hang himself. But why would Pugh commit suicide when he had a loving wife who was expecting their first baby, and was just about to start an exciting new job?
Other disturbing questions soon follow in the first body's wake. Who was the mysterious stranger? Pugh was seen with, just before he died? What is the connection between him and the down-and-out who suffers a similar fate to his only twenty-four hours later? And how many more men are intended to die?
As the investigation proceeds, Woodend and his team come to realize that the key to solving the crimes is hidden in the past and on an island far, far away.
#18
Death Watch
2007
This is the new Charlie Woodend mystery...
Angela Jackson, a young girl abducted from Whitebridge Corporation Park, has been missing for over twenty-four hours and, in the opinion of Dr Stevenson, the psychiatrist who Woodend turns to for advice, her kidnapper will first torture and then kill her.Woodend is aware of the damaging strains operating within his own team.
Inspector Bob Rutter seems unable to control his infatuation with the unscrupulous journalist, Elizabeth Driver, while Sergeant Monika Paniatowski, is rapidly developing a deep affection for Rutter's small daughter, Louisa. And, Woodend's old enemy, Chief Constable Marlowe, is hovering in the background like a malevolent bird of prey, just waiting for the chief inspector to make a mistake.
The more the investigation proceeds, the less Woodend can see any signs of hope. And he knows - deep within himself - that he will fail in bringing Angela back alive.
#19
Dying Fall
2008
A DCI Charlie Woodend Mystery - A charred body is discovered in an abandoned cotton mill, and the crime scene presents DCI Woodend and his team with many questions, but very few answers. As Woodend attempts to solve a murder with no clues, he must also battle against a police authority blocking him at every turn. And worse is to follow, because Elizabeth Driver, Inspector Bob Rutters lover, has almost finished the book which could destroy everything he has ever worked for.
#20
Fatal Quest
2008
After the dramatic events in Dying Fall, Woodend reminisces on his long career in a brand new story...
'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 is law in Scotland Yard. Not even the dead girl's mother herself.
But Woodend cares. Working alone - sifting through the rubble of bombed-out post-war London and building up a picture of a life cut short - he is assailed by a growing anger and a deepening sorrow. He will find the murderer, he promises himself, even if that means putting his career - and perhaps even his own life - on the line.
Authors
Sally Spencer
Author · 47 books
A pseudonym used by Alan Rustage. Sally Spencer is a pen name, first adopted when the author (actually called Alan Rustage) was writing sagas and it was almost obligatory that a woman's name appeared on the cover (other authors like Emma Blair and Mary Jane Staples are also men). Before becoming a full-time writer, he was a teacher. In 1978-79 he was working in Iran and witnessed the fall of the Shah (see the Blog for what it was like to live through a revolution). He got used to having rifles - and, one occasion, a rocket launcher - pointed at him by both soldiers and revolutionaries, but he was never entirely comfortable with it. He lived in Madrid for over twenty years, and still considers it the most interesting and exciting city he has ever visited, but for the last few years he has opted for a quieter life in the seaside town of Calpe, on the Costa Blanca. His first series of books were historical sagas set in Cheshire (where he grew up) and London. They were very popular with his English readers, but his American readers find the dialect something of a strain. He has written twenty books featuring DCI Woodend (a character based partly on a furniture dealer he used to play dominoes with) and ten (so far!) about Woodend's protegé Monika Paniatowski. His DI Sam Blackstone books are set in Victorian/Edwardian London, New York and Russia, and the Inspector Paco Ruiz books have as their backdrop the Spanish Civil War. Alan is a competitive games player who likes bridge and pub quizzes. It is only by enforcing iron discipline that he doesn't play video games all the time. He now lives on Spain's Costa Blanca.
