The second pot didn’t have as many crabs in, but it did have a couple of lobsters courtesy of the salted dogfish that John had baited the pot with. With a grin, John wrapped elastic bands around their pincers and placed them into a separate tub. That would be an easy twenty or thirty quid right there, plus a free pint for John from the chef at the Blakeney Hotel. It was the chef’s way of making sure that he got first dibs on the best of the catch, and it was an arrangement that John had enjoyed for years.
John hauled up the third and final pot of the batch in this section. He had baited this one with mackerel, so was expecting crabs. When he tipped it into the tub, though, he saw that he had netted some rubbish. At the bottom of the tub, with several small crabs scuttling over it, was a glove. John tutted, annoyed at what people would throw overboard. He couldn’t remember the last time he didn’t catch some sort of crap in one of the pots.
He made his way aft in his boat to grab a bin liner that he kept for rubbish. Once he had finished this pot, he thought as he struggled to open it with his thick gloves on, he would stop for a smoke and cup of tea from his flask to watch the sunrise. Then he would move to the next batch of pots a few hundred metres further out over the chalk beds.
When he picked up the glove, it was heavier than he was expecting, and a small crab was clinging onto the open end for dear life. John dislodged the crab, flicking it back into the sea. That was when he saw the grey flesh and bone inside the glove. It wasn’t rubbish. It was a hand.
John barely made it to the side of the boat before he vomited. He threw the glove into an empty tub and watched the remains of his breakfast floating away. Fingers trembling, he eased his hands out of his gloves and pulled his phone from his pocket.
‘Police, please?’ John asked the woman who asked him a few seconds later which emergency service he required.
Single Handed is available for pre-order on Amazon
The Gareth Dawson Series
Blind Justice - Gareth Dawson Series Book 1
An innocent man sent to prison for life. A lawyer gives him a second chance. Can they overcome an unfair system to clear his name?
Gareth Dawson is innocent. He's not a murderer. His main problem is that the British justice system doesn’t agree with him. He might be a reformed thief guilty of many things in his past, but not murder. In the space of a few short months, Gareth has gone from being married to the woman of his dreams to facing a life sentence.
Inside Her Majesty’s Prison Whitemoor, a Category A prison in Cambridgeshire, Gareth’s got all the time in the world to go over the events that led to the guilty verdict. The guilty verdict which cost him everything in the world that he loved. His dignity. His freedom. His wife.
Gareth is approached by a lawyer, Paul Dewar, who claims to have information that will vindicate him. But is it enough to set him free? As threats against Gareth increase on the inside, Paul Dewar’s challenge, and Gareth’s fight for freedom, begins.
Blind Justice is available on Amazon
Finding Milly - Gareth Dawson Series Book 2
Jimmy Tucker is dying. There’s only one person he wants to tell. His daughter—Milly. But when he gets home from the hospital, she’s vanished without a trace.
The inoperable brain aneurysm deep within Jimmy’s head could burst at any time—a cough, a sneeze, or a blow to the head could kill him instantly. With the police not interested in Milly’s disappearance, Jimmy takes things into his own hands and begins to look for his only daughter. But it doesn’t take him long to realise that his daughter is not the woman he thinks she is.
As he gradually discovers Milly’s shocking private life, Jimmy enlists the help of Gareth Dawson, an ex-crook with a big heart. But Gareth can only help Jimmy up to a point.
As the pressure mounts, can Jimmy uncover the truth about Milly’s disappearance before it’s too late—for either of them?
Finding Milly is available on Amazon
Single Handed - Gareth Dawson Series Book 3
When a dismembered hand is discovered in a lobster pot off the North Norfolk coast, it’s one less missing person for the police to look for. Until something much darker emerges…a blackmail note.
Gareth Dawson, a reformed criminal whose gruff exterior hides a kind heart, is trying to deal with the aftermath of his stepfather’s death. But if the extortionist reveals the shameful secret that Gareth’s stepfather has been hiding, the truth will destroy both his memory and the lives of those mourning him. As well as those who aren’t.
With his mother refusing to go to the police, Gareth realises that he will have to deal with the situation—alone and single handed. But who is telling the truth? And who is lying?
Can Gareth identify the blackmailer and uncover the truth about his step-father? Or are some family secrets best left hidden…?
Single Handed is available for pre-order on Amazon
Standalone Thrillers
Man Down
You don't have to be killed in action to be a casualty of war.
Medics Paul Adams and Lizzie Jarman are one of the most welcome sights to injured soldiers in the war-torn poppy fields of Afghanistan. With red crosses on their arms and medical equipment strapped to their backs, they thunder into battle in a Chinook helicopter – straight into areas everyone else is desperate to get away from.
In the middle of the fiercest fighting British troops have seen since the Falklands War, the medics are the last defence from death on the ground in some corner of a foreign field. But in Afghanistan, where a hostile is only obvious when they raise a weapon, there's no such thing as a non-combatant. And not all enemies are on the other side.
Despite the heroic efforts of the medics on the ground and in the air, someone in the field hospital is determined to finish what the Taliban has started. Wounded soldiers – who should be living – are dying. Their deadliest enemy is much closer to home than they realise.
As the death toll and the temperature rise, can the medics finish their tour of duty, or will it finish them?
Man Down is available on Amazon
The Rub a Dub Dub Series
Rub a Dub Dub is a novella (100 pages) and a companion piece to the best-selling dark comedy trilogy featuring the same characters. It’s British humour—spelt with an extra ‘u’—at its best. It’s available for FREE download on Amazon, and has a link to an exclusive further novella - Three Maids in a Tub - in the book.
Rub a Dub Dub
What really goes on behind the twitching net curtains of middle England?
Meet Emily Underwood. She works for the Food Standards Agency. Based in Partridge Towers in the heart of Norwich, her job is to keep the people of England safe from all sorts of nastiness in the food chain. When she gets sent to a house on the outskirts of the city that may or not be operating as a restaurant, she discovers that things aren’t quite as she thought.
Meanwhile, her flatmate Catherine is in trouble with the law, and not for the first time. When she gets into a spot of bother in a layby that’s a favourite haunt for night-time outdoor enthusiasts, Emily and her boyfriend Warren do their best to help her out. But it’s not Warren's fault that he’s a bit useless. That’s just the way he is.
Will Warren and Emily ever get some personal time together? Can Catherine stay out of prison? And what’s actually going on behind the twitching net curtains of the house Emily’s desperate to inspect?
Rub a Dub Dub is available on Amazon
The Butcher
She thought it was pork. She was wrong.
The first time hapless food inspector Emily Underwood meets butcher Frank Pinch, he’s not got much at all in his display counters. But what he does have is a rather unusual plan to restock his shelves. The next time they bump into each other, he’s won an award for his sausages but is running out of meat.
Can Frank keep up production of his unusually tasty sausages? Will Emily discover the source of Frank’s award-winning meat? And what will happen the next time she tries to ins
pect his butcher’s shop?
Book 1 in the Rub-a-Dub-Dub trilogy, this deliciously British dark comedy will change the way you look at sausages forever.
The Butcher is available on Amazon
The Baker
They thought it was organic bread. It wasn’t.
Food Standards Agency’s most unfortunate inspector, Emily Underwood, is finally doing okay at work. Apart from finding the odd dead customer in a kebab shop that is. When she has an expected brush with a Bishop, things start to go downhill fast.
Rupert Graves is the leader of the smallest cult in East Anglia. Although his motley crew of militant vegetarians are primarily focused on sex and drugs, they’re also determined to highlight the suffering of animals — by fair means or fowl. They’re just not very good at it.
Amateur baker Hannah’s attempts to fund her boyfriend’s cult by selling her produce start off well, and her artisan bread rolls made from organic flour are soon in demand. The only problem is that Hannah’s kitchen in Hill Top Farm will need to pass a Food Standards Agency inspection or be closed down.
What will happen when Emily returns to Hill Top Farm? Will Hannah’s kitchen pass the food inspection? Or can Emily discover what’s really in the flour?
The sequel to The Butcher, and Book 2 in the British Rub-a-Dub-Dub trilogy, this dark comedy about flour power will make you think twice about having a bacon sandwich ever again.
The Baker is available on Amazon
The Candlestick Maker
Is he a fitness instructor? Or a fatness instructor?
Jack Kennedy is a fitness instructor with a difference. He’s got an unhealthy obsession with other people’s weight, and not in a good way. He also makes candlesticks.
Inept Food inspector, Emily Underwood, is still having her ups and downs – both at work and at home. Emily’s relationship with her mostly harmless boyfriend, Andy, is on rocky ground. Then her flat mate, Catherine, loses her job over an unexpected live stream of the new boardroom table being christened. Things start to go rapidly downhill for the intrepid trio, but when Catherine meets a nice young man at her local gym, they go from bad to worse.
Can Emily uncover Jack Kennedy’s dark past before it’s too late for Catherine? Will Andy finally man up and fight for what he loves? And why is Jack making an enormous candlestick in his workshop at Hill Top Farm?
The final book in the Rub-a-Dub-Dub Trilogy, this hilarious dark British comedy will make you want to count your calories very carefully indeed.
The Candlestick Maker is available on Amazon
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