Jack of All Trades Series

Jack Bell, a builder, has a local job in a large house with four flats by West Ham Park. He's employed to knock down a garden wall and replace it with a fence, a task made less easy by the tension among the tenants. But pretty soon, he has a developing romance with the childminder living on the ground floor. With an invitation to dinner, life is going well. Until the murder, with Jack bang in the middle, and a body to dispose of in Epping Forest...

A standalone novel in the Jack of All Trades crime series (#3). Jack, an East London builder, is working at Bramley, an independent school near Billericay in Essex. The school is in trouble. Graham DeNeuve insists on total control, but his daughters and wife decide they must get rid of him, one way or another, to save the school from financial disaster. As Jack becomes increasingly involved with one of the daughters, Ellie, he begins to work out what is happening, to his own peril.

Bricklaying in a park is not the pastoral interlude Jack hoped for. Possibilities of love with Liz, who runs the greenhouses, are thwarted by Ian, the bullying park manager, who has his own schemes afoot. Or there's Rose, Liz's sister, made homeless and sleeping secretly in the bowling green pavilion. But for the park workers, it's all hands on deck as they prepare for the coming of the Mayor. Until murder intervenes, with Jack too involved.

The old lady next door has disappeared. Who in this house is set to join her? Jack points the brickwork high on a scaffolding tower, keeping a wary eye on Mike, a half stoned musician. But Mike wants to use Jack as a babysitter so he can concentrate on the cleaner, while his wife Jean is out earning the money to keep him. When Jean returns early there is an almighty row, with Jack drawn in as she turns to him for solace.

Death comes to a quiet street in Forest Gate, London, when Jack Bell takes on a building job in a house squatted by anarchists. Unknown to him, they are planning a robbery. Another job next door involves him with an Asian family, where the father faces a drastic choice to protect his family's reputation. Jack is forced to juggle work troubles, demanding people and a developing affair - until everything crashes down on him when he becomes a hostage in an armed siege.

Jack, a builder, is working in a house owned by brother and sister, Paul and Lynn. The hostilities between the siblings are heightened by Paul's two 18-year-olds who are going off the rails. As Jack is reluctantly drawn into this family conflict, from left field comes a nightmare. When two bodies are found in Epping Forest, the police quickly realise Jack knows how they got there.

It's dirty, dusty work for Jack, a builder, working in a small apartment block after fire damage. His boss, Ben, also employs his own son, Tony. Tony does anything but work, and his dad spends too much time searching for him. Left alone in the dust, Jack is soon distracted by the woman living on the ground floor. But work stops dead, when a body is found in a flat.

Jack, a builder, is working in a seedy hotel where the manager has no qualms what the guests get up to, providing they pay. When a young woman is found dead in one of the rooms, it appears to be from heart attack. The police suspect there may be more to it and Jack is asked to keep watch. A simple request that puts his life in danger.

Jack, a builder, has a job in the local cemetery making a memorial bower. His work is obstructed by the manager, whose brother runs the crematorium. The two brothers are at loggerheads, goaded by Jack's employer and the woman who runs the flower stall, all part of the same family who are major shareholders in the cemetery. It's a bad blood ménage, overseeing the business of the dead, complicated by murder with Jack as suspect and sleuth.

Jack, a builder, is working at the Lodge guest house. His health isn't good, so should he be digging and laying concrete? The Lodge is full, giving Cleo, who runs it, a headache. The more so, as a guest is blackmailing her; her son turns up out of the blue and she has to find space for him. Clyde, another guest, should not be in town at all if he wants to go on living. So why is he here?   All together at the barbecue, tensions running high, a discarded wife turns up, Jack's daughter is out of her depth with Cleo's son, and there's a fight between guests. When a body is discovered, there's a house full of suspects, giving Jack a headache of his own, sorting out how and by whom.

One brother goes bankrupt, owing Jack thousands, but Ace, the slick brother offers Jack lucrative work he can't refuse making a kitchen island and spying on Nadine, his wife. But once in the house, Jack is ensnared with the family, the brothers fighting, Nadine warming to him and a daughter selling drugs at school.   Jack for a favour to Nadine does a job in the community garden opposite, hoping their relationship will blossom as he fobs off his employer. Money rots the soul, Jack learns, but jealousy is the worm in the apple. Amongst the greenery, everything converges with a murder, illegal water and a gunman on the loose.

Jack is jailed for being drunk and hitting a cop. On release, he forks out his last cash to get his van out of the pound. He must get work although he is hobbling on a badly sprained ankle. Willing to take anything, he accepts a job in a card business doing repairs, and as a sleuth, as the owner says her husband is out to kill her. Jack must find out which of her workers is in her husband's pay and so prevent his client's murder. There's romance from an unlikely source, and danger as Jack finds out too much for his own good.   Part of the Jack of All Trades series.

Jack is out on Wanstead Flats, late at night, with his telescope. There's a cry for help, some way off. He rushes over to assist, to find, to his amazement, the body of his employer. Jack phones the police. They'll sort it out, surely. But when they come, the cops confiscate his van, his telescope, and arrest him for murder. How will he get off? Who is fitting him up? Why? In prison, awaiting trial, evidence piling up against him, Jack needs help or he'll be facing twenty years in the clink.