Mark McManus

When an auto mechanic is sadistically burned to death and his business partner goes missing, the detectives puzzle over a motive. Suspicion falls on two ruthless brothers recently released from prison, but why would they want to kill someone with no criminal connections?

Burke and company investigate the apparent suicide of a top army recruit and the hit-style killing of two retired soldiers. However, Ross is hindered by the code of silence at the base, powerfully imposed by a hardnosed drill sergeant.

The ritualized murder of a young woman echoes a case Burke investigated 18 years ago. For help, he turns to an old colleague: a forensic pathologist and now the celebrated author of a true-crime book. After a second murder, Burke believes that a copycat killer is on the loose.

Burke suffers a bullet wound to the neck, and another officer is fatally shot. Tipped off by the dead cop's partner, Ross, Reid, and Fraser focus their attentions on a small-time crook and his part in a smuggling operation.

During confession, a man inquires of a parish priest the penance for what he is about to do. Shortly afterwards, three people are killed, with drug use seeming to connect them. But Reid's investigation takes a different tack--back to the priest and the secret he can never reveal.

Could a bad review really have led to the death of a restaurant critic? Or was there another reason for the journalist's murder--perhaps something related to the large amounts of money he had mysteriously accumulated?

The murder of a young trophy wife casts suspicion on her husband, who claims he was aboard the family yacht at the time of her death. Then two other bodies turn up--one a marina worker, and the other a former policeman who had been trailing the dead woman.

A university student is battered to death in a children's playground; a day later, a nurse is killed in a similar fashion on the banks of the River Clyde. A therapy group seems to provide the link between the victims, and Reid goes undercover to investigate the members.

An infatuated Ross covers for his new girlfriend when she finds a dead body in her country cottage. One lie leads to another, however, and soon the detective is in over his head. Meanwhile, an old murder case comes back to haunt him, but reopening it may provide the key to solving the current crime.

Why would someone fake the murder of a middle-aged librarian who had already died of natual causes? Could it be linked to the killing of a joyriding homeless teenager? The detectives follow the trail to a very unexpected place.

After a young woman overdoses, her death is quickly followed by two murders: a drug-ferrying cab driver and the woman's father, a city jeweler. A lawyer who represents a local crime boss--and who introduced the victim to drugs--seems to be the link between the deaths. But there are others with secrets to hide and motives that lie closer to home.

A series of stabbings with hypodermic syringes puts the detectives in pursuit of a clinical killer. Their chief suspect is a disgraced doctor whose drug trials caused the death of a patient. But the man has a cast-iron alibi. The case takes a macabre turn when a local reporter starts receiving body parts in the mail.