KATHERINE JOHN
Katherine John has worked as a management consultant, social worker and was a Bunny Girl in New York. She lives in Wales with her husband. She is currently working on two sequels to THE AMBER KNIGHT and a historical novella BLACK-EYED DEVILS which will be published in March 2009 as a Quick Read.
A WELL-DESERVED MURDER (Trevor Joseph 6) (Accent Press, 16th June 2008)
Sergeant Peter Collins' cousin, journalist and photographer, Alan Piper, is
living next door to the neighbours from Hell. They build a deck that overlooks
his patio and monitor his every movement. Under the cover of darkness they
steal plants and building materials from his garden, but when his gate and
gatepost disappear he calls in the police who advise him to put up a CCTV
camera. Alan has a better idea. Mousy civil servant Kacy Howell is amazed
to suddenly find herself the centre of attention at work and showered with
unprompted gifts of flowers, chocolates and - discreetly wrapped sex toys.
Her husband, George, is bewildered until a colleague shows him a pornographic
magazine aimed at the amateur photographer.Before George finds out if the
photos are real, Kacy is found battered to death on the decking that overlooks
Alan's garden. Inspector Trevor Joseph and Sergeant Peter Collins find themselves
wanting to look beyond the obvious suspect for a murder, which Kacy's neighbours
have already Christened 'justifiable homocide'.
BLACK DAFFODIL (Trevor Joseph 5) (Accent Press, 21st April 2008)
Newly promoted Inspector Trevor Joseph and Sergeant Peter Collins take their
wives on a long overdue holiday to Trevor's brother's Cornish farm. But when
they arrive they find Trevor's seventeen year niece, Sarah, in intensive care,
beaten to a pulp by her drug dealing, junkie boyfriend, Charlie.
When Charlie disappears, the local police believe he has been murdered by
a professional, hired by Trevor's brother Tom.
Working out of his jurisdiction, Trevor's list of suspects is longer - his
mother, Laura, sister-in-law, Emma, his young nephews Matt and Luke and, after
he sees Peter handing a large brown envelope to an old lag, even his maverick
colleague.
While Sarah fights for her life, Trevor battles to keep his guilt stricken
family together, Tom out of gaol - and at Sarah's bedside.
AMBER KNIGHT (Adam Salen 1) (Accent Press, 5th February 2007)
As the Red Army advances towards the Wolfsschanze, Hitler's command bunker
in East Prussia, the complex is evacuated and its treasures plundered from
European cities are loaded on to trucks to escape the Russians. Included in
the Nazi horde, is the body of a Teutonic knight, entombed in a layer of amber.
As the Red Army and partisan close in, the commander guarding the booty agrees
to split the treasure amongst the warring parties, and with it the Amber Knight
disappears.
Fast forward sixty years, and Adam Salen, American director of a museum trust of a Gdansk museum, is approached with an offer to buy the Amber Knight, available to the highest bidder. Adam is a compulsive gambler, and a womaniser, not without a certain charm and adept at tricky black market negotiations. But the arrival of his high-maintenance and unfaithful wife, who is refusing a divorce, presents him with an unwelcome distraction.
Adam and his colleague, Magdalena are desperate to prove the bona fides of the artefact and be first to contact the seller, before the Amber Knight is lost as a national treasure. But the sale is attracting a lot of unsavoury interest from criminal gangs. As the price mounts, so do the number of corpses littering the treasure trail. The search for the Amber Knight is becoming very dangerous indeed. And when the gangsters start coming after him, he no longer knows who to trust or how long he and his friends can stay alive.
Worldwide Eng-lang rights: Accent Press
Translation: Marjacq Scripts
Polish rights: Swiat Ksiazki
THE CORPSE'S TALE (Trevor Joseph 4 - novella) (Accent Press, 11th May 2006)
Dai Morgan has the body of a man and the mind of a child. He lived with his
mother in the Mid Wales village of Llan, next door to bright, beautiful 19
year old Anna Harris. The vicar found Anna's naked, battered body in the churchyard
one morning. The police discovered Anna's bloodstained earring in Dai's pocket.
The judge gave Dai life. After ten years in gaol Dai appealed against his
sentence and was freed. Sergeants Trevor Joseph and Peter Collins are sent
to Llan to reopen the case. But the villagers refuse to believe Dai innocent.
The Llan police do not make mistakes or allow murderers to walk free. Do they?
Worldwide Eng-lang rights: Accent Press
Translation: Marjacq Scripts
Dutch rights: de Vries/Brouwers
MIDNIGHT MURDERS (Trevor Joseph 3) (Accent Press, 21st August 2006)
Compton Castle is a Victorian psychiatric hospital long overdue for demolition.
Its warrens of rooms and acres of grounds, originally designed as a sanctuary
for the mentally ill, now provide the ideal stalking ground for a serial killer.
Physically and mentally battered after his last case, Sergeant Trevor Joseph
is a temporary inmate - but the hospital loses all therapeutic benefit when
a corpse is dug out of a flowerbed. Then more bodies are found; young, female
and both linked to the hospital. Everyone within the mouldering walls is in
danger while a highly unpredictable malevolence remains at large. And, as
patients and staff are interrogated by the police, the apparently motiveless
killer watches and waits for the opportunity to strike again...The pit reeks
of rot and decay. Staring upwards she can see the sky, the moon, the trees
and the silhouette of her killer as earth is shovelled over her. Another shower
comes down...There can be no more fight for air - for anything. Only a soft
blackness that caresses and envelops, plunging her into the darkest oblivion
of all. Now she knows that she is going to die.
Second in the Trevor Joseph series.
Worldwide Eng-lang rights: Accent Press
Translation: Marjacq Scripts
German rights: Rowohlt
MURDER OF A DEAD MAN (Trevor Joseph 2) (Accent Press, 20th November 2006)
Jubilee Street - the haunt of addicts and vagrants is a part of town to avoid
at all costs, especially when it becomes the stalking ground of a brutal and
ruthless murderer. A drunken down and out is the first casualty, mutilated
and burned alive but his grisly death raises even more problems for the investigating
officers, Sergeants Trevor Joseph and Peter Collins. They discover that their
victim died two years earlier. So who is the dead man? And what was the motive
for the bizarre crime? While they seek a killer in the dark urban underworld,
the tally of corpses grows and the only certainty is that they can trust no
man's face as his own. He froze. His mouth opened but uttered no sound. The
corpse of the young man was sitting bolt upright, the sheet draped in folds
around its waist. The torso was white, finely muscled, the porcelain quality
of the skin gleaming in glaring contrast to the purple and blue pulp where
the face had been. The attendant continued to gaze, mesmerized. One word echoed
through his mind as the scream finally tore from deep inside his throat. Flayed!
- Third book in the Trevor Joseph series.
Originally published by Thomas Dunne Books in the United States and Headline in the UK.
Worldwide Eng-lang rights: Accent Press
Translation: Marjacq Scripts
German rights: Rowohlt
WITHOUT TRACE (Trevor Joseph 1) (Accent Press, 22nd May 2006)
In the chilly half-light of dawn a bizarre Pierrot figure waits in the shadows
of a deserted stretch of motorway. The costumed hitchhiker's victim is a passing
motorist. The murder is cold-blooded, brutal, without motive. Doctors at the
local hospital Tim and Daisy Sherringham are blissfully happy. This is story
of the perfect couple. When an emergency call rouses Tim early one morning,
he vanishes on the way from their flat to the hospital. And Daisy is plunged
into a nightmare of terror and doubt...The driver watched, transfixed as the
blade moved slowly, inexorably towards him. His hands flew upwards in a desperate
attempt to wrest the weapon from the Pierrot's hands, but the defence was
too weak, too late. Before the driver's fingers even touched the knife, they
fell limply, landing with a dull thud on the leather-gloved steering wheel.
- First in the Trevor Joseph series.
Worldwide Eng-lang rights: Accent Press
Translation: Marjacq Scripts
German rights: Rowohlt
BY ANY NAME (Accent Press, 20th February 2006)
A blood-stained man runs half naked down a motorway at night dodging the traffic
- and worse. Cornered by police, admitted to a psychiatric ward suffering
from trauma-induced amnesia, all he can recall is a detailed knowledge of
weaponry and military techniques that indicates a background in terrorism.
When two armed soldiers guarding his room are murdered and Dr Elizabeth Santer,
the psychiatrist assigned to his case, is abducted at gunpoint a desperate
hunt begins for a dangerous killer. Terrorist - murderer - kidnapper - thief
whatever he is, he remembers a town in Wales and it is to Wales he drags Elizabeth
Santer with the security forces in pursuit. There, a violent confrontation
exposes a horrifying story of treachery and political cover-up. Is Elizabeth
in the hands of a homicidal terrorist or an innocent pawn? Her life depends
on the right answer.
Worldwide Eng-lang rights: Accent Press
Translation: Marjacq Scripts
German rights: Rowohlt
