Inspector Faro

The events that cause Inspector Faro to reopen the case of 'The Gruesome Convent Murders' lead him into a labyrinth of passions, betrayal and greed concealed behind the respectable middle class exteriors of Edinburgh society.

Inspector Faro is invited to dinner at the house of the city's foremost police surgeon. Then the police surgeon's wife is reported missing, and a woman's torn and bloodstained cloak is found, but neither body nor real proof is present. As revelations regarding the woman's home life become more sinister and bizarre, Faro is convinced she is dead, and who has better opportunity for disposing the corpse of an unwanted wife than a police surgeon..

During a visit to the island where his mother still lives, Inspector Faro learns that a family friend has died of arsenic poisoning, and his investigation leads him to suspect both his teenage sweetheart and members of his family

A suicide from the unfinished Tay Bridge throws up a trail of sinister events in one of the most baffling and personal dilemmas of Inspector Faro's career involving the future of his doctor stepson Vince Laurie, the poet William McGonagall and a series of crimes which had tragic and far reaching repercussions several years later when the Tay Bridge fell in 1879.

1860: The young Inspector Faro stumbles on a plot involving the theft of a priceless jewel. His investigation leads him to Kent, and on to the trail of his nemesis Macheath. A chance encounter with an old friend leads to Faro's sojourn in William Morris's Red House while he continues his search.

1861. Constable Faro is heading to Orkney, pursuing a private investigation into the mysterious drowning of an ex-colleague’s relative, champion swimmer Dave Claydon. Was this an accident or does Claydon’s death have a sinister connection with missing artefacts recovered from the Armada galleon sunk off Spanish Cove? Faro’s holiday soon turns into a nightmare as finds himself in deadly danger, his life threatened by circumstances beyond his control.

The body of a woman is found in an Edinburgh close and the police label it as a random act of violence, until Detective Constable Faro finds a playing card, the nine of diamonds, planted on the corpse. His superiors scoff at his suspicions, but days later a man is attacked in the street, and left with the nine of diamonds in his pocket. Faro seizes on the connection, but what is it that links the victims? Beset by hostile superiors and a policehating public, Faro feels he may never crack this confounding case.