St Pauls, Bristol. 1980. Joseph Tremaine Ellington, now 57 years old, has long abandoned his former career as an enquiry agent for the safety of teaching. But his old life draws him back.One of the very few lights from Ellington’s dark and violent past has flickered out. His fiance Ruth Castle is dead – leaving him again heartbroken and alone to bring up his fifteen year old niece, Chloe. Ellington’s days are long and lonely, his nights tormented by old ghosts.When the wife...

'Brother, a dead body can't run from a coffin, but their spirit sure as hell can try.'Life is tough for JT Ellington. As an ex-cop he isn't exactly built for the job of morally corrupt private eye. But it's 1967 in St Paul's, Bristol, and he doesn't have a choice. He's still trading in favours, helping those wary of the police. And as the cousin of Vic, Harlem's newest crime lord, JT's business is booming.As he travels to New York and becomes entan...

'Saying farewell to the dark side doesn't mean the dark side wants rid of you.'It's a new decade, and in a new career as a school caretaker, JT Ellington is desperate to rid himself of the guilt that creeps into his present and the ghosts that haunt his dreams. As Ellington's nights of torment turn into days, an unwelcome figure from the past, Superintendent Fletcher, arrives with an offer he can't refuse, plunging JT into a demi-monde of vice, violence an...

Longlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2015It's 1965, and a young woman has vanished from the streets of Bristol. A Caribbean immigrant, unable to hear or speak, she is invisible to the police and lost to the biting winter night.Enter Joseph Tremaine Ellington. An ex-cop fleeing a broken heart and a tragic past in Barbados, only to find himself choosing between starving or freezing to death in England. That is, until local big shot Earl Linney hires him to track do...

'It's quite simple, Mr Ellington. When you find Fowler, just ask where we can find the truth.'It's a straightforward case. Find the doctor and retrieve the stolen documentation. Yet following in the footsteps of Dr Fowler unearths more than expected. An illicit secret, a sticky end outside a gangland pub and the words of a dying man whose reputation is in tatters.Though he is relentless in his pursuit of the truth, the streets of 1960s Bristol lead...

Salonica Greece, 1976. Hellenic Gendarme, Major Mikhail Remis is a man in demand. A dark soul with a fearsome, brutal reputation who operates in the twilight world left after the end of the murderous Regime of Colonels. Feared as much by fellow officers as the criminal underworld, Remis grapples with his own sense of rough justice. When the body of Mossad undercover agent, Konrad Tafel is found deep in the Balkan Mountains, Remis is ordered by his veiled, powerful master, Manolis Callas to...

Bristol in the early 1960s: Joseph Tremaine Ellington is a Barbadian ex-policeman who, like many of his generation in the West Indies, has come to the UK to make a new life in the mother country. But the land of opportunity is not all it is cut out to be. It is not just the weather that is cold: so is the welcome. Facing hostility and prejudice at every turn, Ellington struggles to make ends meet. But then he meets community bigwig, Earl Linney, a man with a finger in every pie, who has ma...

St Pauls, Bristol, 1980. Joseph Tremaine Ellington, now 57 years old, has long abandoned his former career as an enquiry agent for the safety of teaching. But his old life draws him back. One of the very few lights from Ellington’s dark and violent past has flickered out. His fiancée Ruth Castle is dead – leaving him again heartbroken and alone to bring up his 15-year-old niece, Chloe. Ellington’s days are long and lonely, his nights tormented by old ghosts. When the wife of a locally resp...

'It's quite simple Mr Ellington. When you find Fowler, just ask where we can find the truth.' With these words, private detective J.T. Ellington embarks on a seemingly simple case of tracking down a local GP with a dubious reputation and retrieving a set of stolen documents from him. For Ellington, however, things are rarely straightforward. Dr Fowler is hiding a terrible secret, and when he is gunned down outside a Bristol pub, his dying words send J.T. in pursuit of a truth more disturbi...

‘Brother, a dead body can’t run from a coffin, but their spirit sure as hell can try.’ 1969, Bristol. Bajan ex-cop and reluctant private detective, Joseph ‘JT’ Tremaine Ellington is still trading in cash and favours, lending a helping hand to those too scared to go to the police or anyone trying to stay one step ahead of them. Life is tough for JT, who is broke. It is about to get a lot tougher when he receives a telegram informing him of a tragedy that has unfolded thousands of miles away...

1970, Bristol. What's buried doesn't always stay buried. It's a new decade and J.T. Ellington has taken himself out of the investigation game. But when an old friend asks him to help a doctor whose son disappeared hours after his wedding, J.T.'s commitment to a life lived under the radar is tested. His quest hurls him back into the underworld he's worked so hard to leave behind. Charred remains in a churchyard, the savage beating of a Hindu priest and a series of cold-blooded threats are s...

The last time Tess de Vere saw William Benson she was a law student on work experience. He was a twenty-one year old, led from the dock of the Old Bailey to begin a life sentence for murder. He'd said he was innocent. She'd believed him.Sixteen years later Tess overhears a couple of hacks mocking a newcomer to the London Bar, a no-hoper with a murder conviction, running his own show from an old fishmonger's in Spitalfields. That night she walks back into Benson's life. The price of...