Editorial: Head of Zeus

Synopsis of Dead Girls Dancing

In Dead Girls Dancing, in the middle of Cork, in the middle of the day, a fire blazes in a local dance studio. Thirteen women, all promising stars, die in the flames. Their young lives cut short by a tragic accident.

But where others see tragedy, DCI Katie Maguire sees murder. This is not the first fire to sweep through Cork. And in one previous case, the victims were dead before the fire was started.

As Katie Maguire investigates the strange, obsessive world of competitive Irish folk dancing, she must face her most chilling killer yet…

Synopsis of the book, by Graham Masterton, taken from Amazon

Synopsis of Living Death

In Living Death, the girl who teetered out of the doorway was exactly who they were looking for…

DS Katie Maguire and her team are stretched to their limit. A gang of dognappers is terrorising Cork. The city’s drug trade is at an all time high. Now they have a missing girl to find too – and all in the glare of the media spotlight.

As Katie closes in on the truth, she realises that the three cases might be connected. But with every second she spends investigating, the clock ticks on for the missing girl, trapped in a living death…

Synopsis of th book, by Graham Masterton, taken from Amazon

Synopsis of Buried

Katie Maguire knows that in this part of Ireland, the past can never stay buried . . .

In Blarney, Cork, an old millworker’s cottage guards its secrets.

In 1921, a mother, father, and their two young children disappeared from this house. And now, 95 years later, their mummified bodies have been discovered under the floorboards.

The neighbors cannot imagine who would have killed such a harmless family all those years ago. But as DS Katie Maguire investigates, the flames of old family rivalries flare up once more . . . and Katie is caught in the crossfire.

Synopsis of the book, by Graham Masterton, taken from Amazon

Synopsis of Taken for Dead

It is a sunny Saturday in county Cork, and an Irish wedding is in full swing. Drunk uncles are toasting the bride. The Ceilidh band have played for hours. But the cutting of the cake will bring the wedding to a horrifying end. For there, grinning gruesomely up from the bottom tier, is the severed head of the local baker.

Katie Maguire, of the Irish Garda, does not have any leads – until another local businessman goes missing in horrific circumstances. The murders appear to link to The Kings of Erin, a terrifying gang of torturers and extortionists. But these are dangerous men. And they will stop at nothing to throw Katie off the trail…

Synopsis of Taken for Dead taken from Amazon

Synopsis of Blood Sisters

Katie Maguire never thought Ireland’s nuns would need her protection…

In a nursing home on the outskirts of Cork, an elderly nun has been suffocated in her sleep. It looks like a mercy-killing – until another sister from the same convent is found viciously murdered, floating in the Glashaboy river.

The nuns were good women, doing God’s work. Why would anyone want to kill them? But then a child’s skull is unearthed in the garden of the nuns’ convent, and DS Katie Maguire discovers a fifty-year-old secret that just might lead her to the killer… if the killer doesn’t find her first.

Synopsis of Blood Sisters taken from Amazon

Synopsis of Red Light

Somewhere in the city of Cork, a woman’s cry echoes through the rainy streets.

On a bloodstained mattress in a grimy flat, a burly man lies dead. A terrified girl kneels over his body. She has been trapped here for three days. It doesn’t take DS Katie Maguire long to identify the murder victim: he’s a cruel and powerful pimp she’s been trying to convict for years.

It’s Katie’s job to catch the killer. But with men like this dead, the city is safer – and so are the frightened young women who are trafficked into Cork. When a second pimp is horrifically murdered, Katie must decide. Should she do her job, or follow her conscience? Should she allow the killer to strike again?

Synopsis of Red Light taken from Amazon

Synopsis of Broken Angels

As they came nearer, the black-clad body came into view, lying on its side in the shallows…

One cold spring morning in County Cork, two fishermen find a bundle of rags floating in the Blackwater River.

It is the bloated body of Father Heaney. His hands and feet are bound, and his neck bears the marks of garrotting wire. Worse still, he has been castrated.

When a second priest is found murdered, his body bruised and beaten and the same savage wound hidden beneath his soutane, Detective Inspector Katie Maguire finds evidence of a sinister cover-up at St Joseph’s Orphanage.

But the Catholic diocese still wields considerable power here, and the Garda are under pressure to close the case. Katie has to work alone if she is to catch the killer in time – but first she must shatter a wall of silence that for decades has hidden a terrible secret.

A secret that is beyond belief…

Synopsis of Broken Angels taken from Amazon

Synopsis of White Bones

One wet November morning, a field on Meagher’s Farm gives up the dismembered bones of eleven women. In this part of Ireland, unmarked graves are common. But these bones date to 1915, long before the Troubles. What’s more, these bones bear the marks of a meticulous executioner. These women were almost certainly skinned alive.

Detective Katie Maguire, of the Cork Garda, is used to dead bodies. But this is wholesale butchery. Her team think these long-dead women are a waste of police time. Katie is determined to give them justice.

And then a young American tourist goes missing, and her bones, carefully stripped of flesh, are discovered on the same farm. With the crimes of the past echoing in the present, Katie must solve a decades-old ritualistic murder before this terrifying killer strikes again.

Synopsis of White Bones taken from Amazon