DI Laura Scott Books
Detective Inspector Laura Scott is making a fresh start. Following the accidental death of her daughter, Kara, she has transferred from the Met up to Yorkshire. The slower pace of life and change of scene proves beneficial, up until three young women are brutally murdered. Laura has to face the fact that a serial killer is operating on her patch, and the case file has landed on her desk. With no forensic evidence or apparent motive, Laura soon – and unofficially – contacts an old friend who had also been her lover; Jim Elliott, an ex-FBI profiler now living in the UK and running a successful PR company in London. Jim reluctantly agrees to consult on the case, to bring his ‘mind hunting’ skills to the aid of Laura and her team, to hopefully identify and apprehend the homicidal maniac known as the Tacker.
When Shelley Payne, a close friend of Laura Scott, is brutally murdered, Laura and her partner, ex-FBI profiler Jim Elliott, investigate on their own time. Everything points to the perpetrator being Shelley’s husband, Barry, due to a pending divorce and the prospect of having to pay a large settlement being a strong enough motive for him to want his wife dead. Proving it was going to be difficult, though, due to the fact that he was out of the country when Shelley was slain. Laura and Jim soon determine that the killing was carried out by a professional hitman, although the police believe, mistakenly, that the crime was in furtherance of a burglary that escalated. Identifying the person that Barry Payne had asked to arrange the hit for him, Laura and Jim discover that Tony Russo – a notorious London gangster – had brokered the deal. To uncover the killer’s identity they will have to work their way through a list of seriously dangerous individuals, against seemingly impossible odds, to ultimately find themselves in the firing line of a homicidal maniac.
Carolyn Blake does not make it home from a girls’ night out at a pub in Uxbridge. Her partner, Nick Lewis, reports her as missing to the police, and also contacts Mitchell & Associates; a private investigation agency run by Jerry Mitchell, Laura Scott and Jim Elliott. With just one small lead to follow, the investigators determine that Carolyn is one of several young women that have been taken by the same perpetrator. The killer does not dump the bodies of his victims. He has a secret place that he calls his Trophy Room, where he does much more than abuse and murder them. Carolyn has one slim chance to survive. Her uncle is rich, and when her abductor becomes aware of that fact, he decides that to ransom her for a great deal of money is the way to go. No plans are perfect or without risk, though, especially if you are a paranoid serial killer who has never had experience of allowing a victim to live.
Joanne Egan walks into Mitchell & Associates, a private investigation agency in Staines, and asks if they will attempt to find her brother, David, who has been missing for several days. The police have opened a missing person report, but due to David being an adult they are currently going through the motions with no sense of urgency. Laura Scott, Jim Elliott, Jerry Mitchell, and now ex-DCI Alan Porter consider the circumstances of the case and decide to take it on, because there is no apparent reason why the young man would suddenly vanish. What appears to be a run of the mill missing person investigation is in fact an abduction. It is believed that David has stolen highly sensitive information from the casino he works for, and that a hitman has been contracted to retrieve it, and then kill him. Laura and the team uncover the hitman’s identity, but he knows that they are involved, and the subsequent cat and mouse events become a convoluted war of attrition that leads to several deaths, prior to a final confrontation that not all of the participants will survive.