Nighthawk – serie

1939, Cambridge. The opening weeks of the Second World War, and the first blackout - The Great Darkness - covers southern England, enveloping the city. Detective Inspector Eden Brooke, a wounded hero of the Great War, takes his nightly dip in the cool waters of the Cam. The night is full of alarms, but in this Phoney War, the enemy never comes.But daylight reveals a corpse on the riverside, the body torn apart by some unspeakable force. Brooke investigates, calling on the expertise and inspiration of a faithful group of fellow 'nighthawks' across the city, all condemned, like him, to a life lived away from the light. Within hours The Great Darkness has claimed a second victim. War, it seems, has many victims. But what links these crimes of the night?

Cambridge, 1940. Snow is falling thick and fast on a cold winter's night. As a college porter makes his nightly rounds, he is startled to hear a boy's desperate screams for help coming from the icy river below. But by dawn the river has claimed its victim.When the following night an Irish Republican slogan is left at the scene of a factory explosion, Detective Inspector Eden Brooke questions whether there could be a connection between the two events. As more riddles come to light, he begins to close in on a killer, but there is one last twist: it seems that the boy had his own startling secret.

A lone German bomber crosses the east coast of Britain on a moonless night in the long, hot summer of 1940. The pilot picks up the silver thread of a river and, following it to his target, drops his bomb over Cambridge's rail yards. The shell falls short of its mark and lands in a neighbourhood of terraced streets on the edge of the city's medieval centre.DI Eden Brooke is first on the scene and discovers the body of an elderly woman, Nora Wylde, in a house on Elm Street, two fingers on her left hand severed, in what looks like a brutal attempt by looters to steal her rings.When the next day Nora's teenage granddaughter Peggy, a munitions worker, is reported missing, Brooke realises there is more to the situation than meets the eye.

Autumn, 1941. The third year of war and still the siren sounds, driving the people of Cambridge from their beds to trudge to one of the city's crowded bomb shelters. At dawn, the body of a young man is found in a shadowy corner. Everything points to suicide, but Detective Inspector Eden Brooke has his doubts given the unidentified man has a suspiciously tropical suntan and the detective's office telephone number scrawled on the back of his hand. Did the victim know his life was in danger?Brooke's caseload doubles when a local factory making submarine periscopes discovers it has a saboteur on the workforce. The city's police are at full-stretch. Then two more men are found dead in the city's shelters. A blackout killer is on the loose. The trail leads Brooke to the university, a laboratory which hides a brutal secret, and the key to a startling mystery.

Autumn 1941. As the war continues and Cambridge endures nightly air raids, its bomb shelters are packed with those driven by the sound of the siren. At dawn, a young man is found dead in a shadowy corner, apparently a suicide, yet Detective Inspector Eden Brooke suspects otherwise: the stranger bears a tropical tan and Brooke's office number on his hand.With police stretched thin over a case of sabotage at a factory making periscopes, fear grips the city. Brooke follows a dark trail to the university, where a laboratory conceals a brutal secret and the key to a wartime killer's deadly game.

October, 1942. Thousands of American GIs are stationed across eastern England building airfields to bomb Nazi Germany and Cambridge's dance halls and pubs are a hot spot for Yanks on leave. Detective Inspector Eden Brooke is called to the aerodrome east of the city when the remains of an airman, identified by his dog tag, are uncovered by workers extending the runway. However, this is no recent burial.A fresh murder means that a black US serviceman faces the hangman's noose, but Brooke sees through the clouds of tension and prejudice and believes he sees an innocent man.

October, 1942. Thousands of American GIs are stationed across eastern England building airfields to bomb Nazi Germany and Cambridge's dance halls and pubs are a hot spot for Yanks on leave. Detective Inspector Eden Brooke is called to the aerodrome east of the city when the remains of an airman, identified by his dog tag, are uncovered by workers extending the runway. However, this is no recent burial.A fresh murder means that a black US serviceman faces the hangman's noose, but Brooke sees through the clouds of tension and prejudice and believes he sees an innocent man.