THE SHANNON SERIES
Nick Shannon's planned future as an academic is thrown into chaos when his sister is mown down by a hit-and-run driver. Her boyfriend is killed and she is left paralysed from the neck down. And Nick can't refuse her the only thing in life she now wants - death. Result - found guilty of murder and sentenced to a minimum term of seven years in prison.

While in prison he is befriended by Arthur, a bouncer, who teaches him how to survive, and Norman, an embezzler, who cajoles him into preparing for life on the outside. Nick studies to be an accountant and on his release manages, somehow, to overcome the prejudices of employing an ex-con and land a job in 'due diligence' - assessing the price to be paid for the take over of a company.

Due Diligence begins with Nick's discovery of the headless body of his boss. Nick, ex-con and convicted murderer, is the prime suspect of DCI Collins - a man who values results more highly than the niceties of due process of the law. The only way for Nick to clear his name is to find the killer and serve him up on a plate to Collins. Not a job made easy by the long list of suspects and the fact that someone is trying to frame him.

In Collateral Damage, Nick is seconded to the newly created C squad of the Fraud Squad (now headed by Collins in what is meant to be a move where he can't cause his superiors any further embarrassment) and goes undercover in a security firm run by a senior ex-police officer. Nick is caught up in an old feud between Collins and the ex-policeman, who happens now to be married to Collins's ex-wife. Nick suspects he is being used, but by whom? Is the security firm really a front for more sinister purposes, or is Collins just out for revenge?

In False Profits, Nick is still seconded to the Fraud Squad and is sent undercover into an insurance company where the Finance Director has just been murdered - stabbed with a chisel and his body covered by the marks of a scourge. Fraud turns out to be the least of Nick's problems - drug barons, money laundering and his pursuit by the strange cult of St Jerome are all higher on the list.

In The Money Race, Nick is now a freelance fraud investigator. Set in a London borough that is a cauldron of boiling racial tension, Nick has to find missing money from the borough's accounts and the missing daughter of the leader of the council (as well as help the residents of an old peoples' home get their money back from a con man). Corruption and prejudice run deep in the borough, getting in the way of solving the case. And it's a race against time - with the price of failure a full-scale race war.

Throughout the series Nick is aided by Arthur, Norman and Arlene (an American tourist who he saved from a mugging in the opening chapter of Due Diligence). As we progress from book to book, Nick gets closer to the identity of the hit-and-run driver and a cover up by senior police officers. Each book in the series stands alone and can be read in any order - although chronological is still the best option.

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