Jack Delaney Chronicles Series

A murder occurs in a public park, and the daughter of a jailed mob boss is kidnapped. So the action begins. All this violence is just a warning to put pressure on a jailed mobster to prevent him spilling all to the authorities. The mobster’s gardener is arrested for the murder, and a lively courtroom drama follows. The lawyer, Jack Delaney, and his private investigator are hired to find the missing child. The search leads to a mob farm on the Highveld near Johannesburg, into the slums of Hillbrow and then into the township of Soweto. Discovery of further clues leads to a mad dash into neighbouring Zimbabwe to rescue the investigator’s young brother in law from a group of rogue Zimbabwean soldiers involved in rhino horn poaching and reaches its terrifying climax in an encounter with an enraged Hippopotamus in the Limpopo riverbed in a remote part of Southern Africa.

A South African crime boss institutes divorce proceedings against his wife who defends the action. Later, she is found shot dead in her apartment and the criminal husband charged with her murder. But have the police been too blinkered in their approach and too quick to conclude that the husband’s criminal connections automatically make him the killer? So starts a flying trip to New York by the notorious lawyer, Jack Delaney, to investigate the husband’s mafia connections followed by a trip to a 'Big 5' Game Reserve in South Africa to investigate his criminal connections in the highly illegal, but lucrative, rhino horn and elephant tusk trade. While this shows the husband to be a most unsavoury character, does it make him a wife murderer? Why would the husband have started divorce proceedings and then killed his wife? If murder was on his mind, would it have not been simpler and cleaner for the wife to take a long, long vacation -  mafia style? The murder trial starts and after many twists and turns, the evidence presented often leaves the reader to wonder if the husband was the actual killer or if he hired the killer and colluded with him. The 'grande finale' comes during the trial with the unmasking of the murderer.

Rhinos are being poached from a Private Game Reserve and Jack Delaney and his team are called in to investigate and put a stop to this blight. There is little time to waste and the non-stop action moves from the offices of the owners of the Big 5 Game Reserves into the bushveld setting of the Game reserve. Crocodile and hippo infested rivers become potential murder weapons as a Game Ranger is kidnapped - and murder, too, rears its ugly head. The mob are ruthless in their attempts to take over control of a Private Game Reserve so that they can use it as a staging post for their smuggling and poaching activities, and the battle for control comes to a head in the dark of an African night in and amongst the crocodiles and hippos in a river bed.

Another rip-roaring adventure from the pen of Terry Hayward. "Who Takes This Woman" sees the action beginning with a wedding in a chapel beside an African river with elephants as uninvited guests. The action then moves to a courtroom where drama ensues with a kidnapping but returns to the veld (bush) with lions and crocodiles, all of which will keep you turning the pages.  Jack Delaney and his sidekick, Mo Dhlamini (Shla-Mee-nee), prosecute both poachers and smugglers in the courts of law, but in their spare moments they track kidnappers and escaped prisoners from highrise cities through and across the bushveldt of the "Big 5" Game Reserves.  Visits to gang leaders in prison and clashes with mob hit-men are all part of their daily action.  Now the mob are trying to take over, illegally if necessary, a Big 5 Game Reserve near an international border so it can be used as a staging post to smuggle wild animal parts and illicit diamonds out of the country and drugs back in. Mo and Jack must now do what they do best, and that is put a spoke in the bad guys’ proverbial wheel.  

When the Mob try to purchase a luxury, “big five” game reserve, right next to an international border in South Africa, all hell breaks loose! A kidnapping, to menace the owners of the reserve to sell, becomes the catalyst in a host of actions and re-actions leading to unexpected alliances, coupled with violence, murder and confrontations with lions, elephants and crocodiles in the wild. This action is interwined with investigations into the illegal poaching of rhinos and elephants and the smuggling of animal products out of the country. Add to this the emergence of illicit diamond buying and smuggling, the tracking of escaped prisoners, and the parry and thrust of a high stakes courtroom drama, and you have a real page-turner you won’t be able to put down. The action is high octane, keeping the story moving quickly with changing scenes as Jack Delaney follows the clues and investigates the latest exciting mystery !!!