A DC Smith / Kings Lake Investigation Series

When a young man drowns after a boisterous party in a small riverside town, his friends and family report it to the Kings Lake police as a devastating accident.

DC Smith, newly returned from leave, and the young, ambitious trainee Christopher Waters are assigned to the case as a routine investigation. But the post-mortem reveals violent injuries, witnesses give contradictory accounts of the events leading up to the drowning and locals seem determined to redirect their attention.

Becoming increasingly suspicious of institutional caution and external interference, Smith and Waters strike out on their own. As they get closer to the truth, they realise the danger is not quite over.

"We are living in the departure lounge," said Ralph Greenwood, "and flights leave with monotonous regularity." So when another resident of the Rosemary House care home is found dead in her chair one Saturday evening in December, no-one is very surprised – not until the results of a routine post-mortem reveal something extraordinary.

Police Sergeant DC Smith and his team have to tread carefully as they investigate what took place, and Smith himself has to confront some difficult memories. Others, meanwhile, seem intent on getting him to leave the force altogether, while, despite his best efforts, his social life also becomes a little more complicated.

To top it all, Kings Lake has been waiting weeks for the snow to fall, in a winter that seems as if it will never end...

When a worker goes missing from a North Sea gas platform, there seem to be just two possible explanations: it was a tragic accident or a suicide.

It does not take Smith and his detectives long, however, to discover that James Bell led a double life back onshore in Kings Lake -- a life complicated enough to make him at least one dangerous enemy. Before the case can be unravelled, Smith must get a new team working together; Waters and Murray are still there but one of Wilson’s men is transferred to him, and the female detective constable from Longmarsh poses some unexpected problems for her new sergeant.

Together they begin to investigate the links between the companies and the people that bring ashore the oil and gas, and they also find themselves caught up in the seamier side of life that exists beneath Lake’s everyday comings and goings. The curious writer Jo Evison begins to delve more deeply into the story of the Andretti murders, and Smith himself has to face the fact that he might no longer be considered fit for duty.

In the peace and tranquillity of the woods at Pinehills on a Saturday afternoon, a mobile phone begins to ring. The phone belongs to DC Smith and it isn’t unusual that the call is from Kings Lake Central police station; what is unusual is the fact that he seems to be the subject of an investigation rather than taking part in one.

What can the links be between a prisoner’s violent death in another county, the disappearance of two teenagers and the highest profile case in Kings Lake for many years? As Smith and his team begin to untangle the threads, one thing becomes clear – they are dealing with some of the most dangerous people that they have yet encountered.

Two weeks of rest and recuperation – that’s what the doctor ordered. Detective Sergeant DC Smith could listen to some music, make some of his own and maybe even catch up on his reading; he is almost looking forward to it. And then there is a knock on the door.

It’s only his next-door neighbour but it is the beginning of a sequence of events that will bring him face to face with some of the darkest episodes and the most dangerous people from his own past. Smith has done countless investigations, but this time it’s personal.

Mark Randall lay dead in a field near Lowacre long before Smith had done what he had to do in Belfast.

By the time he went back to work, the investigation was well underway. “It’s not my case” he says more than once, and he really doesn’t need it to be; he has enough to think about as it is. But going around the Norfolk countryside dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, speaking to the local farmers and the Brothers of St Francis from Abbeyfields, Smith begins to suspect that the investigation might be heading in entirely the wrong direction.

Arrests are made, charges are brought and Christopher Waters asks Smith if he has ever seen the wrong man convicted in a murder case. The answer is yes, and the next question is, what can be done to prevent it happening again?

Change is afoot at Kings Lake Central police station.

A most unexpected new detective inspector takes up his post this Monday morning, and the oldest detective in the place takes a momentous decision. Around them, other officers are considering their own situations, and even the building itself seems to be facing an uncertain future. But life and death go on, nevertheless, and by lunchtime someone will make a grim discovery on the Norfolk saltmarshes. A stranger seems to have suffered a slow and agonising death out there.

As the team from Kings Lake uncover his story, they reveal another, much older one with its origins far back in the previous century. In the tide that governs the affairs of men, it seems, love and loss, betrayal and revenge are timeless themes.

When fourteen-year-old Zoe Johnson doesn’t come home on a Monday night in early December, the alarm bells in Kings Lake Central police station do not ring straight away – after all, she’s from the Dockmills, one of the toughest estates in the town. But for Detective Sergeant DC Smith, due to retire in just three weeks’ time, there are some strange echoes of the case that has haunted him for the past thirteen years. Maybe it’s simply his over-developed sense of irony, or maybe, in his final days as a police officer, Smith must look once more into the eyes of a serial killer.

Detective Sergeant Chris Waters got the call at 05.29 that July morning. This is it, said DCI Reeve, you’ll be first there, it’s all yours, you’re the crime scene manager. Suddenly, after months of waiting and wondering, Waters finds himself in at the deep end, and alone at the scene of a puzzling murder.

As the investigation proceeds, the detectives at Kings Lake Central find themselves visiting familiar places and talking to some familiar faces, while old enmities reappear in the incident room. Before this is over, Chris Waters will need to make a career-changing decision, and another member of the CID team will find herself facing an unexpected challenge. And Smith? Gone but not forgotten? Surely, he would say, you cannot write me off with a worn-out cliché like that…

The new Kings Lake Central murder squad is about to spend its first morning on team-building exercises and reviewing cold cases when the call comes in that the body of one of the city’s rough sleepers has been found in a shop doorway.

It happens, someone says, he isn’t the first to die on the streets and he won’t be the last, but the story the new team begins to uncover is far from routine. New characters appear and new relationships form as the pressure grows on Detective Chief Inspector Cara Freeman to deliver a result and show that Kings Lake’s first specialist team is worth the money. Detective Sergeant Christopher Waters discovers links to a previous investigation, learns that there is more than one way to run a successful squad and finds flower-arranging more interesting than he would ever have imagined.

Life, as DC Smith used to say, is just one thing after another – as one investigation ends, a new one begins.

But, for reasons unknown to the rest of the Kings Lake Central murder squad, their next case will haunt DCI Cara Freeman. It sends them into the seamy side of life in the town, and one of their number will have departed before this new investigation is over. Perhaps Detective Sergeant Chris Waters should have seen it coming – but he has a lot more than work on his mind these days.

He said if he hadn’t heard from you by high noon today, he was going to strap on his six-guns and ride back into town. So I think you should call him, Charlie. Call him before you come home.

Charlie Hills, former desk sergeant at Kings Lake Central, is in trouble. He hasn’t told Smith, his old friend and sparring partner, but someone has, and now the two former policemen are about to embark on a difficult and potentially dangerous search for the truth. For one of them, it could be life changing.

When Caroline Thorpe succeeded in casting doubt on the verdict of the inquest into her brother’s death, she could not have anticipated what would follow.

Freddie was Earl Thorpe of Burnham, and as the Kings Lake detectives, headed by DCI Cara Freeman, soon begin to realise, influential people have gone to considerable lengths to cover up a potential scandal surrounding the young man’s death.

Their investigation will take them from Norfolk into the capital, and from idealistic young campaigners to people at the heart of government. The stakes have never been higher for the detectives from Kings Lake Central.