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?

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.

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.

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?

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 ...