Maurice Procter – författare

US Federal agent John Dennison arrives in the UK to meet Chief Inspector Philip Hunter of Scotland Yard, and to find $300,000, smuggled ashore via Liverpool. According to Dennison, the smugglers are intent on buying diamonds, to ship back to the US.Two suspects are followed to a London hotel and the diamonds are found. Shockingly, they are discovered to be real . . . but synthetic.The diamond deal, involving an eccentric middleman, exposes a much bigger racket. Hunter and Dennison have a complex plot to unravel, some dangerous men to deal with - and Dennison the beautiful, red-headed Martine to keep an eye on . . .

Bill Knight is disappointed when he receives his first assignment as a newly inducted policeman, fresh from college. He is asked to go undercover in a festering slum and is ordered not to set foot in police headquarters again until a thoroughly distasteful mission has been accomplished. So Bill becomes a plainclothes spy, and things take an even more complicated turn than anyone could have expected when he becomes involved with two girls while investigating the murder of a pub landlord and the theft of a valuable coin collection.

Lou Fingerhut's boxing career is finished, but a golden opportunity drops into his lap, one that could see him right for life. Soon he and his old ring mates, Goldie and China, are caught up in an ever-expanding net of crime and violence, chalking up a score of four murders and a jewel robbery.With the police moving in at one end and a rival underworld gang at the other, it dawns on them that they're in deeper than they could have imagined possible. Will they ever break out of this game alive?

It looks like a trivial enough incident: a would-be petty thief makes his escape before he has stolen anything. But when the beat constable arrives to look for damage, he finds something he hasn't been expecting - a dead man, with a wound in his back made by a broad blade ... possibly a spearhead.Scotland Yard get to work, following what turns out to be a very complicated business, especially when they find they are on the trail of smuggled diamonds leading all the way to South Africa ...

'The door was open. McCool stood in the doorway and switched on the light. He gazed at an open safe, and then he turned his head slightly to observe a heap of stained brown gabardine which lay on the floor. It was an untidy sight, even though the legs and feet which protruded from it were expensively trousered and immaculately shod.'Chief Inspector McCool has two murder cases on his hands - and one of the victims is his ex-fiancee, found dead after a reunion with him.

A cunning burglar is on the loose, nicknamed the Dog Man by police. House after house is broken into while savage dogs remain quiet. Then a wealthy local is murdered in his home and the intruder escapes despite the presence of a notoriously vicious hound in the grounds - and the search for a thief becomes a hunt for a killer.

Janey Elliott fails to return home one evening from a friend's, and her husband John goes out looking for her car. He and the friend's husband find Janey, brutally murdered.The gruesome killing of beautiful but wayward Janey Elliott calls for the special services of the Metropolitan Police. Does the element of sexual violence point to a frenzied killer, or is it a cover for a more straightforward motive? Scotland Yard soon find the answer to that question, but the murderer remains elusive.Someone is caught in the tangle of relationships that goes along with the wealth and social prestige the Elliotts and their circle enjoy ...

Hell is a City is the first of Maurice Procter's Inspector Martineau series and was made into taut, fast-paced film in 1959 by Hammer Studios, set against the grimy back streets and rain-streaked bright lights of Manchester.When hardened criminal Don Starling escapes from jail, killing a prison guard in the process, Inspector Philip Martineau knows he will stop at nothing to make good his escape. The two men have known each other since childhood, and Starling blames Martineau for his incarceration a decade earlier. As the story hurtles to its conclusion, the two men meet in a final, violent confrontation.

'Maurice Procter's Chief Inspector Martineau is one of fiction's best policemen' New York Times The Plumber's men are swift workers, who take murder in their stride. But who is the Plumber himself - the brains behind the highly organized and disciplined gang terrorizing Granchester? And how, in a town where everyone is too scared to open their mouths for fear of being the next target, will Detective Inspector Martineau break up this tightly woven network?

Chief Inspector Martineau and Sergeant Devery have every motive for finding and pursuing a killer who murdered their friend and colleague Inspector Robert McQuade, especially as it now appears that the same person may have Martineau in his sights. But what does all this have to do with a crooked stockbroker and a man who is trying to frame the Chief Inspector for taking bribes? And could the investigation be putting his family in jeopardy?

Imprisoned for seven years for killing his fiancée's lover, now Guy Rainer has escaped, and Detective Inspector Martineau is on his trail.Martineau had sent Guy down. Now it's his job to find the escaped prisoner. But in the midst of the hunt for the killer, Martineau is faced with another problem: a nine-year-old girl, Dessie Kegan, has disappeared. Has Dessie been murdered? Has Guy Rainer taken her, for reasons of his own?Martineau has to work fast - and he knows it.

An anonymous telephone call reports two murders and a bank robbery, and the following day an advertisement in the local paper reports that £10,000 in notes has been found in the street. Chief Inspector Martineau believes that local Granchester mobster boss Dixie Costello is mixed up in the affair - and a woman known to police as 'Annie the Acrobat' is attracting a lot of attention.

When Sergeant Devery is allotted a female police office to assist him on a plain-clothes prowl he is concerned it will cramp his style. He soon changes his tune when the woman in question turns out to be 'unusually beautiful'.The Devil Was Handsome is a fascinating portrait of drug-dealing, assault and murder against the backdrop of mid-twentieth-century CID methods, written by a serving police officer.

There was an extra body in the morgue - a body stripped of all identification and with its face badly battered. But when Inspector Martineau was called to the scene he had a pretty good idea whose it was. That was, however, just the beginning. A big payroll robbery, a group of out-of-town mobsters and some odd behaviour in a local night spot all attract Inspector Martineau's attention. While, at a funeral parlour, the quick are considerably more active and dangerous a problem than the dead.

A millionaire's sage-green Rolls Royce has been discovered, empty, beside a graveyard, and a little later the murdered body of the millionaire is discovered inside the graveyard - above ground.The hunt for the murderer is complicated by the behaviour of the dead man's family, including his pretty second wife. And the members of a very different family, seemingly far less respectable, appear to be connected to this complex case. But Inspector Martineau and the Granchester police have handled difficult cases before ...

The XXC mob is giving Scotland Yard a run for its money, but the police have no idea who they are. As the gang is London-based, Granchester's Chief Inspector Martineau is not overly concerned.Then London gets too hot even for this gang. Cain, one of its members, decides they'll slip out of London one by one, so that Scotland Yard will think they've been done for.Then Martineau gets a 999 call early one Sunday morning: a safe has been broken into during the night.Martineau and team start to investigate, but they haven't got very far when there's another Granchester robbery. Martineau realises he's got the XXC gang on his hands - and that things are going to get pretty tough.

Inspector Martineau has a nasty murder to solve: that of a blonde girl, aged just twelve. Martineau knows that child murder can be habit forming, that such cases encourage copycats. They have to move quickly.But they aren't quick enough, and two days later, the girl's death is followed by another. Granchester Police redouble their efforts, yet the killer escapes them. Feelings run high: for the parents, neighbours and the murderer ... Then the police close in on Cherub - young, plump, his mother's darling. But have they got the right man?

Actor turned thief Rafe Tyrrel knows where more than two and a half million pounds is hidden, the proceeds of a Royal Mail train robbery and a post office job, both the work of his Islington gang.Now Rafe is in a high-security prison in Granchester. Detective Chief Inspector Martineau knows that every gang in England will want a cut of that money, and will try to get to Rafe.One of Rafe's gang, Pilgrim, moves the rest of the men to industrial towns around Granchester - ready to spring Tyrrel and get their share. But will stylish Granchester 'businessman' Dixie Costello and his associates get there first?

One Saturday, DC Brabant walks into the CID office of Granchester City Police. He has been at the football, looking for pickpockets, and has had his own wallet stolen. His boss, DCI Martineau, is amused, until Brabant reveals that his police warrant card was inside.The missing warrant investigation soon picks up momentum: an elderly businessman goes missing, and his secretary turns out to have much wider interests, that extend to Granchester City Football Club and a knot of conflict over money, greed and love to untangle ...

Two Granchester constables find a wrecked, blood-soaked car. But there's no one in it, and no one has turned up at the nearest village. Then, miles away, a body is found on the road.A patrolman on night duty opens an unlocked door at the shop of a dealer in gemstones, a man named White. The police want to talk to White. Meanwhile, White has talked to mobster Dixie Costello. White's safe has been broken into, and diamonds are missing, but he hasn't told the police what has been taken.Granchester Police will need every strategy they can think of to trap their man ...