A midnight delivery. A sole eyewitness. No loose ends.Christmas is looming, and investigator Catherine Berlin is out of a job. Broke, and with a drug habit that's only just under control, she quickly agrees when an old friend offers her work. It's a simple investigation with a generous fee, looking into the dealings of a small-time entrepreneur. The only catch? It's in Russia. But when Berlin arrives in Moscow, things are not so straightforward. Shadowy figures stalk her through the frozen streets. She's kicked out of her hotel, her all-important medication confiscated by police. Strung out and alone, Berlin turns to her interpreter, an eccentric Brit named Charlie. But Charlie's past is as murky as Berlin's own, and when the subject of the investigation disappears, Berlin realises Charlie may be part of the web. The only way out is to hunt down the truth, even if it kills her. 'Highly addictive . . .?probably her best book?. . .?Most?impressive is the plotting, which...

1961. In the drawing room of an imposing Hong Kong residence, a British lord brutally assaults a young Chinese boy. His grandson watches, helpless. But he will never forget.Wapping, London, present day. It's a warm spring in the capital, and heroin addict Catherine Berlin feels the clammy breath of the past on her neck. Battling to stay clean, and bearing the scars of her most recent case, she is struggling to outpace her demons. An old contact has offered her a job investigating a violent attack by a seventeen-year-old public schoolboy, a Chinese orphan on a prestigious scholarship. The victim has gone missing, and the boy's patron, a shadowy peer, claims the case is being manipulated by the Chinese government. Seduced by the boy's vulnerability and the peer's allegations, Berlin journeys to Hong Kong, where she uncovers a conspiracy that reaches from the Pearl River Delta to the Palace of Westminster...House of Bones is the fourth...

Treachery becomes a habit.? London is in the grip of a stifling heatwave. The?city has slowed to a claustrophobic shuffle.?Heroin-addicted investigator Catherine Berlin suffers while working the lowest?of investigations: matrimonial. The city's junkies are in the grip of a drought of a different kind. Sonja Kvist a?strung-out ghost from Berlin's past, turns up on her doorstep.?Sonja?daughter is missing. An unpaid debt leaves Berlin no choice but to take the case of the missing ten-year-old.? Berlin is back. And soon the hunter becomes the hunted: corrupt detectives are on Berlin's tail chasing drugs she doesn't have, a young girl is murdered and the matrimonial case unravels. And the temperature keeps rising. A Bitter Taste?is addictive, fast-paced crime fiction spiked with grit and grunge.? 'Fast-paced and gripping and just perfect for the crime-fiction junkie.' Geelong Advertiser 'Tough, fast-paced and peopled with believable...

The first in a series of crime novels starring the magnificent Catherine Berlin, a civilian investigator whose long-standing heroin addiction is only part of her story.On a bone-chilling February morning, Catherine Berlin, investigator with the Financial Services Agency, finds the almost-headless body of her informant, 'Juliet Bravo', rolling in a shallow reach of the Thames. That Juliet Bravo's death is linked to an investigation of local loan shark Archie Doyle is no surprise to Berlin, but when Berlin's own unorthodox methods are blamed for the murder, she realises bigger predators are circling.To start with, it looks as though Berlin will pay only with her job. And then, on a routine trip to her GP (one of a dying breed who will still prescribe heroin to long-term addicts), she stumbles across a second body. Suspended, incriminated, and then blackmailed into cooperation by the detective leading the murder investigation,...