Bøger af Declan Hughes

When her husband and two daughters disappear, housewife Clare Taylor discovers that her ordinary domestic life has been built on a lie. About to turn forty, her youthful dreams of becoming an actress abandoned, there's no doubt in her mind that suburban wife and mother-of-two Clare Taylor has settled. A wild week in Chicago may have shaken things up a bit, but as she turns her key in her Madison, Wisconsin home on the eve of Hallowe'en, she knows that what happened with her ex was nothing more than a distraction, that this is where her life is. Except it's all gone. The furniture gone, the house stripped, her husband Danny, her daughters, all gone; no message; no note, nothing. Outside in the dark, searching for a sign, she steps in one: the eviscerated body of the family dog. By dawn next morning, her supposedly mortgage-free home has been foreclosed against, one of Danny's childhood friends lies dead in her backyard, and Clare is caught up in a nightmare that began with her husband on Hallowe'en night, 1976. A nightmare that reaches its terrifying climax thirty-five years later.

Dublin PI Ed Loy thought he had laid all his ghosts to rest. But when two young women go missing from a film set, he knows his past has caught up with him. Twenty years ago, three girls disappeared while Loy's longtime friend, film director Jack Donovan, was shooting a movie in Malibu. They were never found. Now Donovan's filming an Irish historical epic on location?and production grinds to a halt when two female cast members fail to show up to work. Fearing that Donovan or one of his close associates is responsible, Loy races to uncover the truth before a third girl vanishes?a hunt that's pulling him far from home, back to L.A., leaving a cunning killer free to strike at what's dearest to Ed Loy's heart.

PI Ed Loy wants to escape his past--but it won't be easy. Soon after moving to a Dublin apartment from his childhood home on the city's outskirts, he's approached by Anne Fogarty, whose father was murdered fifteen years ago. Anne thinks the police nabbed the wrong person, and the three most likely culprits are two ex-IRA men and George Halligan--Loy's underworld nemesis. Jack Cullen, one of the other suspects, may somehow be connected with the death of a rising soccer star--another case Loy is asked to take on. And as his two investigations collide, Loy finds himself in grave danger in a city divided--where the wounded Celtic Tiger walks hand in hand with the ghosts of a violent past.

Even the best private eye needs more than a name to find a missing person?but that's all the information Ed Loy gets from Father Vincent Tyrrell, brother of prominent racehorse trainer F. X. Tyrrell. Loy is not without luck, however, and a phone number inadvertently discovered on an unidentified body sends him digging deep into the Tyrrells' family history. But there is more to this revered clan of horse breeders, traders, and gamblers than meets the eye?a fact confirmed by the death of two more people with connections to the Tyrrells. On the eve of one of Ireland's most anticipated sporting events, Loy is betting his life in order to disrupt a twisted killer's master plan. Deadly passions beget dark secrets in a chilling story that will have readers on edge throughout, as award-winning author Declan Hughes once again paints an arresting portrait of an Ireland not found in any guidebooks.

After twenty years in Los Angeles, Ed Loy has come home to bury his mother. But hers is only the first dead body he encounters after crossing an ocean.The city Loy once knew is an unrecognizable place, filled with gangsters, seducers, hucksters, and crazies, each with a scheme and an angle. But he can't refuse the sexy former schoolmate who asks him to find her missing husband?or the old pal-turned-small time criminal who shows up on Loy's doorstep with a hard-luck story and a recently fired gun. Suddenly, a tragic homecoming could prove fatal for the grieving investigator, as an unexplained photograph of his long-vanished father, a murky property deal, and a corpse discovered in the foundations of town hall combine to turn a curious case into a dark obsession?dragging Ed Loy into a violent underworld of drugs, extortion, and murder . . . and through his own haunted past where the dead will never rest.

Clare Taylor arrives home after a wild week in Chicago to discover that the house has been stripped bare and there's no sign of her husband and two daughters. By dawn next morning, her house has been foreclosed against, there's a dead body in her backyard, and Clare is caught up in a nightmare that began with her husband on Hallowe'en night, 1976.

Ed Loy has made some changes. He has moved into an apartment in Dublin's city centre, leaving behind his family home: he wants to break free of the ghosts of his own past, to live in the teeming present. But if that's what he wants for his own life, it's not always what his clients will permit: the baggage they bring with him propel him relentlessly into past. The police are working along similar lines with their new Cold Case unit. Looking back over a fifteen-year-old murder, they are satisfied by their original findings but not so Loy. He has been hired by the victim s daughter to investigate the suspects ignored by the first investigation: a rich property developer, an ex-IRA man and Loy s own nemesis, George Halligan. But Loy has to watch his back: in the murky world into which he has fallen, he can t tell which threats come from the IRA and which from the police protecting their old case. Can Loy persuade his longstanding friend DI Dave Donnelly to help solve the Fogarty case, or does he have to rely on the murderous George Halligan? Does it all go back to the IRA? Are the men who gave the commands now respectable citizens? In his toughest case yet, Ed Loy delves into the dirty side of life in the new Ireland, where progress comes at a price and no one is free of their past.

A new executive breed is emerging on the outskirts of Dublin - where once there was a sense of history and socialism, the corporate moguls have enslaved the idealists and turned them into entrepreneurs. But Marion and Kevin find their emotional prosperity threatened by an economic squall.

In the METHUEN CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS series this collection contains "Digging for Fire", "New Morning", "Halloween Night", and "Love and a Bottle".