Eighteen years ago, Billy Peters disappeared. Everyone in town believes Billy was murdered--after all, serial killer Arnold Avery later admitted killing six other children and burying them on the same desolate moor that surrounds their small English village. Only Billy’s mother is convinced he is alive. She still stands lonely guard at the front window of her home, waiting for her son to return, while her remaining family fragments around her. But her twelve-year-old grandson Steven is determined to heal the cracks that gape between his nan, his mother, his brother, and himself. Steven desperately wants to bring his family closure, and if that means personally finding his uncle’s corpse, he’ll do it. Spending his spare time digging holes all over the moor in the hope of turning up a body is a long shot, but at least it gives his life purpose. Then at school, when the lesson turns to letter writing, Steven has a flash of inspiration… Careful to hide his identity, he secretly pens a letter to Avery in jail asking for help in finding the body of “W.P.”—William “Billy” Peters. So begins a dangerous cat-and-mouse game. Just as Steven tries to use Avery to pinpoint the gravesite, so Avery misdirects and teases his mysterious correspondent in order to relive his heinous crimes. And when Avery finally realizes that the letters he’s receiving are from a twelve-year-old boy, suddenly his life has purpose too. Although his is far more dangerous… Blacklands “is a taut and chillingly brilliant debut that signals the arrival of a bright new voice in psychological suspense.”

In the closed Exmoor village of Shipcott, first encountered in Blacklands, the local bobby Jonas Holly is shocked by the death of Priddy. Knowing such a case is beyond his remit, Holly calls in the top guns and we observe the arrival of DCI Marvel from Taunton: a man who proves to be an extreme irritant to Holly’s well meaning efforts, rendering them hapless at every opportunity and sucking away at Holly’s self esteem. Soon, it becomes apparent that someone aims to remove from Shipcott all of its most vulnerable and dependent: the elderly and the ailing, or a combination of the both. Within this, Holly’s wife Lucy, a housebound sufferer of MS, seems a prime target. Call yourself a policeman? Jonas had always felt the local police held him in warm regard. Now a small dagger of ice had pierced that warmth and everything had changed in an instant. Shipcott in bleak midwinter: a close-knit community where no stranger goes unnoticed. So when an elderly woman is murdered in her bed, village policeman Jonas Holly is doubly shocked. How could someone have entered, and killed, and left no trace? Jonas finds himself sidelined as the investigation is snatched away from him by an abrasive senior detective. Is his first murder investigation over before it’s begun? But this isn’t the end of it for Jonas, because someone in the village blames him for the tragedy. Someone seems to know every move he makes. Someone thinks he’s not doing his job. And when the killer claims another vulnerable victim, these taunts turn into sinister threats. Blinded by rising paranoia, relentless snow and fear for his own invalid wife, Jonas strikes out alone on a mystifying hunt. But the threats don’t stop – and neither do the murders…

The eight-year-old boy had vanished from the car and – as if by slick, sick magic – had been replaced by a note on the steering wheel… ‘You don’t love him’… At the height of summer a dark shadow falls across Exmoor. Children are being stolen. Each disappearance is marked only by a terse note – a brutal accusation. There are no explanations, no ransom demands… and no hope. Policeman Jonas Holly faces a precarious journey into the warped mind of the kidnapper if he’s to stand any chance of catching him. But – still reeling from a personal tragedy – is Jonas really up to the task? Because there’s at least one person on Exmoor who thinks that, when it comes to being the first line of defence, Jonas Holly may be the last man to trust…

‘The dead can’t speak to us,’ Professor Madoc had said. That was a lie. Because the body Patrick Fort is examining in anatomy class is trying to tell him all kinds of things. Life is already strange enough for the obsessive Patrick without having to solve a possible murder. Especially when no one else believes that a crime has even taken place. Now he must stay out of danger long enough to unravel the mystery – while he dissects his own evidence. But as Patrick learns one truth from a dead man, he discovers there have been many other lies rather closer to home…

‘Call your mother.’ ‘What do I say?’ ‘Say goodbye.’ This is how it begins. Lone women terrorized and their helpless mothers forced to watch – in a sick game where only one player knows the rules. And when those rules change, the new game is Murder. Living with her parents in the dank beach community of Limeburn, ten-year-old Ruby Trick has her own fears. Bullies on the school bus, the forest crowding her house into the sea, and the threat of divorce. Helping her daddy to catch the killer might be the key to keeping him close. As long as the killer doesn’t catch her first…

Стивен живет на угрюмом, насквозь продуваемом плато в самом центре Англии. Куда ни глянь, везде лишь вереск и утесник. Вечный дождь и рвущий душу ветер. Не самое лучшее место для детских игр. Но Стивен и не играет. Он пытается раскрыть давнюю тайну. Много лет назад его дядя Билли, которому тогда было столько же, сколько Стивену, вышел из дома и больше не вернулся. С тех пор в семье все пошло наперекосяк. Бабушка Стивена дни напролет стоит у кухонного окна, не замечая ничего и никого, она ждет, не появится ли вдруг на дорожке ее Билли… А Стивен мечтает о нормальной семье, о милых домашних глупостях, которых у него никогда не было. Но, узнав о трагедии, он понял, что, пока тело Билли не будет найдено, ничего в их жизни не наладится. И одиннадцатилетний мальчик вступает в сложную и опасную игру с убийцей, который даже за решеткой чрезвычайно опасен. Удивительно напряженный, наполненный готической атмосферой, обаятельный и чрезвычайно оригинальный детектив Белинды Бауэр получил в 2010 году «Золотой кинжал» и еще три престижные детективные премии