'Sheer fun' The Times Trieste in 1906 is of vital strategic importance and one of the world's greatest seaports. But assorted nationalist movements are threatening to pull the place apart and the militarist regime has trouble keeping a lid on things. Amid all the chaos the British consul goes missing, and Special Branch Seymour is sent to find him. Born to an immigrant family in London's East End, Seymour has an acute linguistic ear - crucial in turn-of-the-century Trieste. As he attempts to solve the riddle of the consul's disappearance, Seymour discovers dark and disturbing corners of the city and finds that it holds the secrets of his own family's past. Praise for Michael Pearce's A Dead Man in . . . series 'The steady pace, atmospheric design, and detailed description re-create a complicated city. A recommended historical series' Library Journal 'His sympathetic portrayal of an unfamiliar culture, impeccable historical detail and entertaining dialogue make enjoyable reading' Sunday Telegraph

The churning politics of Trieste in 1906 provide the perfect backdrop for murder in the first in a series set in British embassies and consulates in the early 1900s featuring Special Branch officer Seymour. When the British consul goes missing, who's responsible: the secret police, revolutionaries, or a mysterious lover?

Lionel Scampion, British consul in Naples, has been stabbed to death while bicycling through the piazza of the Porta Carmine. According to his sister, he had no enemies. The Neapolitan police suggest he was murdered by a bicycle-racing rival. In Naples, every mystery is attributed to the Camorra, a powerful criminal society; could its members be involved? Scampion enthusiastically backed the Italian invasion of Libya and befriended army officers of the newly formed Italian Bicycle Brigade. Now the Foreign Office in London has heard that international politics emanating from Rome might have been involved. Seymour of the Special Branch is sent to find out the motive for the murder and, incidentally, to identify the culprit. From the Hardcover edition.

Malta, 1913, and hot air balloons hover over the Grand Harbor. But one of them falls from the sky, the balloonist dying later from his injuries. He is not the only one to die unexpectedly at the Naval Hopspital, however, as a letter to The Times points out. Special Investigator Seymour of the Foreign Office is sent out from London to uncover the truth. Malta is still a British protectorate; indeed, with its red post boxes, English beer and English language, it seems like an exotic "Little Britain." But as the rumblings of war reach the small island, many of the old Maltese families are becoming divided in their loyalties, as some start to question Malta's subordinate status and wonder whether the time has come to strike out an independent path for themselves. The letter to The Times has touched a raw nerve, as Seymour soon finds out: is it simply a critique of bad nursing practices? Or is there a different, more sinister explanation to these sudden deaths?

The fifth exciting crime novel in Michael Pearce's Dead Man series.

An old Italian woman seeks a reunion with her son, fathered by an SS officer and taken away by German authorities sixty-two years ago, while she remembers and discusses the atrocities committed in Northern Italy during World War II.

In the summer of 1977, seventeen-year-old Mona Manoliu falls in love with Mihai, a green-eyed boy who lives in Brasov, the romantic mountain city where she spends her summers. But under the Ceausescu dictatorship, paranoia infects everyone; soon Mona begins to suspect that Mihai is part of the secret police. As food shortages worsen and her loved ones begin to disappear, Mona realizes that she too must leave. Over the next twenty years, she struggles to bury her longing for the past, yet she eventually finds herself compelled to return, determined to learn the truth about her one great love.

Athens, 1913, the capital of a country on the brink of war. The new Greek prime minister, Venizelos, tired of the Ottoman overlords, has what he calls the Great Idea - a vision of a new Greece that unites all the Greek people scattered around the Mediterranean. Not such a great idea, in the view of other countries, among them Britain, which believes in letting sleeping dogs lie. And cats. Including the one recently poisoned in Athens and which belonged to the exiled former Sultan. Unfortunately, as is the way with the Balkans, rumours start flying around; one being that this was a sighting shot for the ex-Sultan himself. This, in the Balkans, could start a war and so Britain has to sit up and take notice. Something has to be done. Fast. And - please, urge the diplomats - low-key. The lowest key of all is to send out a police officer from Scotland Yard to investigate, and, as it happens, the Foreign Office has a person in mind: Seymour, of the CID, who has had some experience of this sort of thing before . . . Praise for Michael Pearce's A Dead Man in . . . series 'The steady pace, atmospheric design, and detailed description re-create a complicated city. A recommended historical series' Library Journal 'Sheer fun' The Times 'His sympathetic portrayal of an unfamiliar culture, impeccable historical detail and entertaining dialogue make enjoyable reading' Sunday Telegraph

Barcelona, 1912. A city still recovering from the dramatic incidents of the so-called 'Tragic Week' when Catalonian conscripts bound for the unpopular war in Spanish Morocco had rebelled at the city's dockside against the royalist forces. In the fighting, many were killed, and afterwards, even more put in prison. Including an Englishman, who was later found dead in his cell. The dead man had been a prominent businessman in Gibraltar, so what had he been doing in Barcelona? What part did he play in the illicit three-way trade between Gibraltar, Spanish Morocco and Barcelona? And just how did he really meet his end - murdered, in a prison cell? The case, in Gibraltar's view, cries out for investigation - and by someone independent of the Spanish authorities. So Scotland Yard are summoned to send out one of their men - but who? Seymour ticks all the right boxes - he has experience of the tangled diplomatic world in that part of the Mediterranean. He speaks foreign languages. And possibly most importantly of all - he grew up near the docks of London's East End, so with any luck he knows how to swim if pushed in the water . . . PRAISE FOR MICHAEL PEARCE'S A DEAD MAN IN . . . SERIES 'His sympathetic portrayal of an unfamiliar culture, impeccable historical detail and entertaining dialogue make enjoyable reading' Sunday Telegraph 'The steady pace, atmospheric design, and detailed description re-create a complicated city. A recommended historical series' Library Journal 'Sheer fun' The Times

From the author of the award-winning Mamur Zapt books, the second in a series introducing Seymour of Special Branch and set in the British embassies and Consulates of Europe in the early 1900s. The Second Secretary of the Embassy in Istanbul has died in decidedly strange circumstances while attempting to swim the Dardanelles Straits, the passage between Europe and Asia, heavily used by warships, liners, tankers and cargo vessels of all kinds. A romantic attempt to repeat the legendary feat of Leander, as the Embassy says? Or an attempt to spy out a possible landing place for a British military expedition, as the Turks insist? Whichever, Cunningham has ended up with a bullet in his head. The suspicious circumstances of his death have to be investigated so the Foreign Office sends out an officer of the Special Branch: Seymour. As Seymour tries to untangle the threads that lead to Cunningham's death, their ends lead him into all parts of the city, from the little box shops of the Avenue of Slippers to Les Petits Champs des Morts, where fashionable Turkish ladies loiter among the tombs to eat sweets; from the crowded coffee houses around the Galata Bridge where men sit all day smoking bubble pipes to the heart of the Topkapi Palace itself. Praise for Michael Pearce's A Dead Man in . . . series 'The steady pace, atmospheric design, and detailed description re-create a complicated city. A recommended historical series' Library Journal 'Sheer fun' The Times 'His sympathetic portrayal of an unfamiliar culture, impeccable historical detail and entertaining dialogue make enjoyable reading' Sunday Telegraph