DI Matt Barnes Books

Book 1 in the DI Matt Barnes Series. Detective Inspector Matt Barnes is a cop dedicated to his job at the expense of all else. He and his team are protecting the star witness in the upcoming trial of gangland boss, Frank Santini. All aspects of Matt’s life are altered forever when Santini hires a contract killer, Gary Noon, to hit the safe house. Only Matt survives the onslaught of an inventive and sadistic killer, but is left seriously wounded. The subsequent search for Noon is both a personal and professional challenge, during which Matt is aided by Criminal Psychologist Dr. Beth Holder, who is brought in to build a profile on Noon. The man they seek comes to consider Matt a threat to his continued wellbeing, and determines to eliminate him. As Matt and Beth’s relationship flourishes, more people die at Noon’s hand, and events conspire to bring the cop and killer ever closer to a deadly showdown. With an unknown enemy within New Scotland Yard, Santini’s goons hunting for him, and a second imported hitman also on his trail, Matt knows that the odds against him surviving by outmanoeuvring the various factions are at best slim. Noon is the personification of evil; a psychopath using violence and cruelty to feed his sadistic needs. He considers himself a hunter: his fellow man, and especially Matt Barnes, the prey.

Book 2 in the DI Matt Barnes Series. DI Matt Barnes has recovered from serious injuries sustained in the line of duty. He is now in a relationship with Dr Beth Holder, a criminal psychologist who consulted on a case involving a homicidal sociopath. Now, the thirteen year old daughter of Detective Superintendent Ray Preston has been abducted, and Matt and Beth once more pool resources in an attempt track down the unknown suspect, who they believe holds a grudge against Ray Preston, and has specifically targeted his daughter to get back at him. The perpetrator has an agenda: a need to avenge a perceived travesty of justice. His lethal intent is to both psychologically and then physically destroy all those that he considers guilty for his own loss and subsequent sense of wretchedness. Matt, his team on the Special Crimes Unit, and Beth are looking for someone that has covered his tracks and can adapt to stay ahead in what he considers to be the ultimate game. He is the police’s worst nightmare; an opponent who does not conform to any pattern, and who, when cornered, will turn on his pursuers, not run from them. As the body count rises, Matt and Beth stalk the faceless killer, only to find that they themselves are being hunted by him.

Book 3 in the DI Matt Barnes Series. The body of Marsha Freeman – known professionally as Trudi Jameson – is discovered inside a lockup in Putney. She has been brutally beaten, burned repeatedly with cigarette ends, and strangled with a pair of tights. An ex-model, Marsha had latterly been working as a high-class prostitute, with clients including politicians, well-known celebrities and captains of industry. All that has been taken by her killer are three pages that have been removed from a potentially career-destroying address book. The Serious Crimes Unit is given the case, due to Marsha’s murder being the second carried out with the same MO. Both victims were prostitutes and redheads. Detective Inspector Matt Barnes is assigned to head up the investigation, due in part to his previous success in running down repeat killers. Matt, and Beth Holder – a criminal psychologist who consults on certain serial and ritual murder cases – are in love, but Matt’s almost fanatical dedication to his work is threatening the future that they both want to share together. Beth is in New York City attending a seminar, and is treating it as time-out to seriously consider her relationship with Matt. With Marsha Freeman’s address book, video found at her apartment featuring her with clients, and bruise impressions on both corpses that have been made by an embossed ring depicting the head of a wolf or similar animal, Matt and his team begin the task of interviewing Marsha’s contacts, that include more than one high-ranking cop. Why was Marsha carrying her address book, which is not even in code? And what is motivating the psycho who Matt is convinced will strike again? Is the perpetrator’s name on one of the pages that was torn from the book, or is the as yet unknown killer planning to add blackmail to his repertoire?

DI Matt Barnes and his team are working two cases in the Greater London area. A cold-blooded psychopath is stalking the housekeepers of wealthy, elderly men that live alone. Obtaining all the information he needs from the women, he murders them and proceeds to rob and kill their employers. The other killer is a married man with a daughter, who ‒ from behind his façade of respectability ‒ roams the city at night, selecting, raping and strangling young women who have been foolish enough to venture alone into dark and uninhabited streets and alleyways. Matt needs a break if he is to stop the body count from rising. As always the race is on, because the only certainty they have is the knowledge that repeaters do not stop. It is impossible to know where either of the killers will strike next. The one thing they have in common is that they leave no trace evidence at the scenes of their crimes.

Bodies are turning up at various dumpsites east of the city, bearing unique behavioural signature aspects that signify a serial killer is active. DI Matt Barnes and his team on the Serious Crimes Unit are investigating the case, and are simultaneously studying the supposed suicides of two presenters and a researcher who worked on the City Crime TV show. That all three of them would take their own lives is too much of a coincidence. With two separate multiple murder cases to solve, Matt and his squad are working against the clock yet again. The killers have one thing in common; each has a psychological need to commit murder: a passion to kill.

The initial crimes had been committed throughout the preceding decades, behind the walls of the now fire-gutted Gladstone House, which had originally been a Victorian lunatic asylum and then an orphanage, before being closed down following a headline-making exposé of gross sexual abuse by staff against many of the boys in their charge. The current spate of murder victims were ex-employees of the orphanage, and it falls to DI Matt Barnes and his team to somehow identify and apprehend a killer that they believe has harboured a need to exact vengeance for many years. But all is not what it appears to be, and their prime suspect has cast-iron alibis that seemingly cannot be broken.

DI Matt Barnes and the squad have two separate cases to investigate. One is to identify and apprehend an opportunist rapist who strangles his victims to ensure that his description cannot be given to the police. The second perpetrator is apparently a homophobic serial killer who uses carpenters’ chisels to dispatch his chosen prey. But nothing is ever what it seems. As the Special Crime Unit begin their inquiries, an east end gangster, Ray Cooper, sends two enforcers to the home of a recent recruit to the team, DC Kelly Day, to lean on her and tell her that they need any information on the killer that has unknowingly murdered Ray’s sister. Their incentive to have Kelly on side is that they threaten to kill her mother if she does not comply. DCS Julia Stone has asked Matt to step up to fill the shoes of now retired DCI Tom Bartlett, and although Matt does not want promotion, he has to consider the integrity of the team. Nothing stays the same, life moves on, and so perhaps he will take on the extra responsibility, but not before he has closed the cases that are currently being investigated.

A serial killer is raping and strangling women in the east end of London, and due to the fact that he leaves a recognisable, highly individual signature at the scenes, it is obvious that he is leaving his mark, to let it be known to the authorities and the public at large that the crimes are being committed by the same perpetrator. Newly promoted DCI Matt Barnes of the Special Crimes Unit is given the case to investigate, because his squad was formed to primarily hunt down serial killers. Another young woman is murdered by the offender, who the press has tagged the East End Strangler, and Matt and the team know that they are on the clock, pitting their wits in a race against time to save more women from the fate that has befallen prior victims. The killer is game-playing with the SCU, making brief contact by using the dead women’s mobile phones to communicate and tell them the locations of the corpses. With no apparent intersection between the murdered women, and no obvious motive to lead the squad in any particular direction, all they can do is rely on meagre forensic trace evidence, and hope that the killer makes a mistake that will lead them to his door.