Chief Inspector Martineau Investigates – serie

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.

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.

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?