Umiko Wada never set out to be private detective, let alone become the one-woman operation behind the Kodaka Detective Agency. And with her former boss recently deceased in mysterious circumstances, Wada is careful to choose the cases she takes very carefully. But her interest is gripped by a mysterious businessman who wants her to track down his estranged son. But she should have known that the simplest cases are never what they seem.

Soon she finds herself pulled into a labyrinthine conspiracy with links to a twenty year old investigation and to the chaos and trauma of the dying days of the Second World War. As Wada uncovers a dizzying web of links between then and now, it becomes clear that someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the past buried. And the deeper Wada digs, the more danger she finds herself. Soon those she loves most will be sucked into the orbit of one of the most powerful men in Tokyo. And he will do whatever it takes to hold on to that power...

The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction is another tour de force from the cunning mind of master storyteller Robert Goddard. Spanning seventy years, it takes the reader on a head-spinning journey of twist and counter-twist which keep you guessing until the final pages.

From the author of the BBC 2 Between the Covers hit, The Fine Art of Invisible Detection 'The world's greatest storyteller' Guardian 'One of the finest crime writers of any generation' Daily Mail 'Our finest practitioner of the double-cross plotting' Mick Herron ______________________________________ Umiko Wada never set out to be a private detective, let alone become the one-woman operation behind the Kodaka Detective Agency. But so it has turned out, thanks to the death of her former boss, Kazuto Kodaka, in mysterious circumstances. Keen to avoid a similar fate, Wada chooses the cases she takes very carefully. A businessman who wants her to track down his estranged son offers what appears to be a straightforward assignment. Soon she finds herself pulled into a labyrinthine conspiracy with links to a twenty-seven-year-old investigation by her late employer and to the chaos and trauma of the dying days of the Second World War. As Wada uncovers a dizzying web of connections between then and now, it becomes clear that someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the past buried. Soon those she loves most will be sucked into the orbit of one of the most powerful men in Tokyo. And he will do whatever it takes to hold on to his power... The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction is another tour de force from the cunning mind of master storyteller Robert Goddard. Spanning seventy years, it takes the reader on a head-spinning journey of twist and counter-twist which keep you guessing until the final pages. __________________________________ Readers love the Umiko Wada series: ***** 'Guaranteed and satisfying escapism' ***** 'Twists and turns right up to the last page' ***** 'Edge-of-the-seat stuff' ***** 'Fresh and inventive' ***** 'The master of twists and suspense ... sublime' ***** 'Scintillating and wickedly twisty'

Ten years since it was first published in hardback, and now for the first time in mass market paperback, this volume of short stories by the cream of British crime writing talent celebrates 75 years of the quintessential Detection Club. The Detection Club represents the cream of British crime writing talent. Founded on the cusp of the 1930s, the Club's first President was G.K. Chesterton, and since then the mantle of Presidency has passed to some of the most significant names inthe history of crime fiction, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Julian Symons. The Club meets three times a year - to dine, to plot, and to exchange ideas. This anthology includes eleven new stories by the Best of British: Robert Barnard, Lyndsey Davis, Colin Dexter, Clare Francis, Robert Goddard, John Harvey, Reginald Hill, P.D. James, H.R.F. Keating, Michael Ridpath and Margaret Yorke, and has been edited by the Club's President, Simon Brett. Among the authors are a number of bestsellers, as well as winners of both Diamond and Gold Daggers. This outstanding collection is a must for crime lovers everywhere. P.D. James * The Part-Time Job Michael Ridpath * Partnership Track H.R.F. Keating * A Toothbrush John Harvey * The Sun, the Moon and the Stars Lindsey Davis * 'Going Anywhere Nice?' Colin Dexter * Between the Lines Robert Barnard * The Life-lie Margaret Yorke * The Woman from Marlow Robert Goddard * Toupee for a Bald Tyre Clare Francis * The Holiday Reginald Hill * Fool of Myself

From the author of the BBC 2 Between the Covers hit, The Fine Art of Invisible Detection 'The world's greatest storyteller' THE GUARDIAN 'One of the finest crime writers of any generation' DAILY MAIL On a stifling afternoon at Police HQ in Algiers, Superintendent Taleb, coasting towards retirement, with not even an air-conditioned office to show for his long years of service, is handed a ticking time bomb of a case which will take him deep into Algeria's troubled past and its fraught relationship with France. To his dismay, he is assigned to work with Agent Hidouchi, an intimidating representative of the country's feared secret service, who makes it clear she intends to call the shots. They are instructed to pursue a former agent, now on the run after twenty years in prison for his part in a high-level corruption scandal. But their search will lead them inexorably towards a greater mystery, surrounding a murder that took place in Paris more than fifty years ago. Uncovering the truth may be his responsibility, but Taleb is well aware that no-one in Algeria wants to be reminded of the dark deeds carried out in the struggle for independence - or in the violence that has racked the nation since. Before long, he will face a choice he has long sought to avoid, between self-preservation and doing the right thing. And, ultimately, the choice may not even be his to make.

The Financial Crisis was a cross-sector crisis that fundamentally affected modern society. Regulation, as a concept, was both blamed for allowing the crisis to happen, but also tasked with developing and implementing solutions in the wake of the crash. In this book, a number of specialists from a range of fields have contributed their insights into the effect of the Financial Crisis upon the regulatory frameworks affecting their fields, how regulators have responded to the Crisis, and then what this may mean for the future of regulation within those industries. These analyses are joined by a picture of past financial crises - which reveals interesting patterns - and then analyses of architectural regulatory models that were fundamentally affected by the Crisis. The book aims to allow sector specialists the freedom to share their insights so that, potentially, a broader picture can be identified. Providing an interesting and thought-provoking account of this societally impactful era, this book will help the reader develop a more informed understanding of the potential future of financial regulation. The book will be of value to researchers, students, advanced level students, regulators, and policymakers.

The Financial Crisis was a cross-sector crisis that fundamentally affected modern society. Regulation, as a concept, was both blamed for allowing the crisis to happen, but also tasked with developing and implementing solutions in the wake of the crash. In this book, a number of specialists from a range of fields have contributed their insights into the effect of the Financial Crisis upon the regulatory frameworks affecting their fields, how regulators have responded to the Crisis, and then what this may mean for the future of regulation within those industries. These analyses are joined by a picture of past financial crises - which reveals interesting patterns - and then analyses of architectural regulatory models that were fundamentally affected by the Crisis. The book aims to allow sector specialists the freedom to share their insights so that, potentially, a broader picture can be identified. Providing an interesting and thought-provoking account of this societally impactful era, this book will help the reader develop a more informed understanding of the potential future of financial regulation. The book will be of value to researchers, students, advanced level students, regulators, and policymakers.

Umiko Wada has recently had quite enough excitement in her life. With her husband recently murdered and a mother who seems to want her married again before his body is cold, she just wants to keep her head down.

As a secretary to a private detective, her life is pleasingly uncomplicated, filled with coffee runs, diary management and paperwork.

That is, until her boss takes on a new case. A case which turns out to be dangerous enough to get him killed. A case which means Wada will have to leave Japan for the first time and travel to London.

Following the only lead she has, Wada quickly realises that being a detective isn't as easy as the television makes out. And that there's a reason why secrets stay buried for a long time: because people want them to stay secret, and they're prepared to do very bad things to keep them that way...

This book provides a critical assessment of the development of the Stewardship Code 2020, which sets out principles regarding the role of institutional investors in corporate governance. It discusses how the regulatory framework for stewardship evolved before and after the financial crisis, and how that evolution resulted in the 2020 Code. It then critiques the Code from a practical and academic perspective, as well as evaluating the wider regulatory framework; in particular, the position of the FRC (ARGA). The book concludes by offering insight into different pathways that the evolution of stewardship may continue to take. Stewardship Codes modelled on the U.K.'s original 2010 version have been introduced in numerous markets and as such the book will be relevant for an international audience of academics, regulators and policymakers in financial regulation, investment regulation and financial services.

On assignment in Vienna, photographer Ian Jarrett falls passionately in love with the mysterious and beautiful Marian. Back in the UK, Ian resolves to leave his wife for her - only to find Marian has disappeared, and the photographs of their brief time together have been savagely destroyed. Searching desperately for her, Ian comes across a quiet Dorset churchyard. Here he meets a psychotherapist, who is looking for a missing client of hers: a woman who claims she is the reincarnation of Marian Esguard, who may have invented photography ten years before Fox Talbot. But why is Marian Esguard unknown to history? And who and where is the woman Ian Jarrett has sacrificed everything for?

When the creak of the garden gate heralds the arrival of an unexpected stranger, William Trenchard is puzzled but not alarmed. He cannot know the destruction this man will wreak on all he holds most dear. The stranger announces himself as James Norton, but claims he is in reality Sir James Davenall, the man to whom Trenchard's wife, Constance, had been engaged, and who had committed suicide eleven years ago. Sir Hugo, James's younger brother, and his mother, Lady Catherine, refuse to recognize Norton and force Trenchard into an uneasy alliance against him. But Trenchard must plumb the depths of his own despair before the dark secrets of the Davenall family can finally, shockingly, be revealed.

One summer's day in 1981 a two-year-old girl, Tamsin Hall, was abducted during a picnic at the famous prehistoric site of Avebury in Wiltshire. Her seven-year-old sister Miranda was knocked down and killed by the abductor's van. The girls were in the care of their nanny, Sally Wilkinson. One of the witnesses to this tragic event was David Umber, a Ph.D student who was waiting at the village pub to keep an appointment with a man called Griffin who claimed he could help Umber with his researches into the letters of 'Junius', the pseudonymous eighteenth century polemicist who was his Ph.D subject. But Griffin failed to show up, and Umber never heard from him again. Tamsin Hall was never seen again either. The Hall family fell apart under the strain. Sally Wilkinson wound up living with Umber, whom she had met at the inquest. But she never recovered from the incident, suffered increasingly from depression, and eventually committed suicide. In the spring of 2004 retired Chief Inspector George Sharp receives a letter signed 'Junius' reproaching him for botching the 1981 investigation. tragedy has always seemed dubious. Obliged to accept Umber's denial of authorship of the letter, he nonetheless forces him to join in a search for the real culprit - and hence the long concealed truth about what happened 23 years previously. It is a quest that both will later regret having embarked upon. Too late they come to understand that some mysteries are better left unsolved.

From the author of the BBC 2 Between the Covers hit, The Fine Art of Invisible Detection 'The world's greatest storyteller' Guardian 'One of the finest crime writers of any generation' Daily Mail 'Our finest practitioner of the double-cross plotting' Mick Herron ______________________________________ Umiko Wada never set out to be a private detective, let alone become the one-woman operation behind the Kodaka Detective Agency. But so it has turned out, thanks to the death of her former boss, Kazuto Kodaka, in mysterious circumstances. Keen to avoid a similar fate, Wada chooses the cases she takes very carefully. A businessman who wants her to track down his estranged son offers what appears to be a straightforward assignment. Soon she finds herself pulled into a labyrinthine conspiracy with links to a twenty-seven-year-old investigation by her late employer and to the chaos and trauma of the dying days of the Second World War. As Wada uncovers a dizzying web of connections between then and now, it becomes clear that someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the past buried. Soon those she loves most will be sucked into the orbit of one of the most powerful men in Tokyo. And he will do whatever it takes to hold on to his power... The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction is another tour de force from the cunning mind of master storyteller Robert Goddard. Spanning seventy years, it takes the reader on a head-spinning journey of twist and counter-twist which keep you guessing until the final pages. __________________________________ Readers love the Umiko Wada series: ***** 'Guaranteed and satisfying escapism' ***** 'Twists and turns right up to the last page' ***** 'Edge-of-the-seat stuff' ***** 'Fresh and inventive' ***** 'The master of twists and suspense ... sublime' ***** 'Scintillating and wickedly twisty'

What value can be put on a human mind? How Joe Roberts does what he does is a mystery. He has a brain that seems able to outperform a computer. To a games company like Venstrom that promises big profits if his abilities can be properly exploited. So they send Nicole Nevinson to track him down and make him an offer too good to refuse. But Venstrom aren't the only people interested in Joe. His current boss, a shady businessman, is already making serious money out of Joe's talents and isn't going to let him go without a fight. And then there are other forces, with still darker intentions, who have their own plans for him. Almost before she knows it, Nicole's crossed an invisible line into a world where the game being played has rules she doesn't understand and where no-one can help her win. But win she must. Because the battle now isn't just for Joe's mind, it's for Nicole's life.

Spring, 1919. James ‘Max’ Maxted, former Great War flying ace, returns to the trail of murder, treachery and half-buried secrets he set out on in The Ways of the World.

He left Paris after avenging the murder of his father, Sir Henry Maxted, a senior member of the British delegation to the post-war peace conference. But he was convinced there was more – much more – to be discovered about what Sir Henry had been trying to accomplish. And he suspected elusive German spymaster Fritz Lemmer knew the truth of it.

Now, enlisted under false colours in Lemmer’s service but with his loyalty pledged to the British Secret Service, Max sets out on his first – and possibly last – mission for Lemmer. It takes him to the far north of Scotland – to the Orkney Isles, where the German High Seas Fleet has been impounded in Scapa Flow, its fate to be decided at the conference-table in Paris. Max has been sent to recover a document held aboard one of the German ships.

What that document contains forces him to break cover sooner than he would have wished and to embark on a desperate race south, towards London, with information that could destroy Lemmer – if Max, as seems unlikely, lives to deliver it...

'The world's greatest storyteller' Guardian 'Is this his best yet?...Full of sinister menace and propulsive pace with twisty plotting' Lee Child Sometimes the danger is on the inside . . . High on a Cornish cliff sits a vast uninhabited mansion. Uninhabited except for Blake, a young woman of dubious background, secretive and alone, currently acting as housesitter. The house has a panic room. Cunningly concealed, steel lined, impregnable - and apparently closed from within. Even Blake doesn't know it's there. She's too busy being on the run from life, from a story she thinks she's escaped. But her remote existence is going to be invaded when people come looking for the house's owner, missing rogue pharma entrepreneur, Jack Harkness. Suddenly the whole world wants to know where his money has gone. Soon people are going to come knocking on the door, people with motives and secrets of their own, who will be asking Blake the sort of questions she can't - or won't - want to answer. And will the panic room ever give up its secrets? PANIC ROOM is Robert Goddard at his nerve-shredding best. A sliver of a mystery kicks off a juggernaut of a thriller. Layers of secrets, half truths and lies must be peeled back to reveal what really lies within.

In Robert Goddard's third novel, a bestseller in the United Kingdom and now back in print, is a masterful exercise in suspense set in Victorian-era England. On a mild autumn afternoon in 1882, thirty-four-year-old husband and father William Trenchard sits smoking his pipe in the garden of his comfortable family home. When the creak of the garden gate announces the arrival of an unexpected visitor, he is puzzled but not alarmed. He has no inkling of the destruction this man will wreak on all he holds most dear. The stranger offers his name as James Norton, but claims he is in reality Sir James Davenall, the man to whom Trenchard's wife Constance had once been engaged, and who had supposedly committed suicide eleven years ago. Davenall's mother and younger brother, who has since inherited the family's baronetcy, refuse to recognize this stranger as one of their own, and they soon force Trenchard--who fears the loss of his wife's affections and his own sanity--into an uneasy alliance against him. But Trenchard must plumb the depths of his own despair before the dark secrets of the Davenall family can finally, shockingly, be revealed.

This book provides a critical assessment of the development of the Stewardship Code 2020, which sets out principles regarding the role of institutional investors in corporate governance. It discusses how the regulatory framework for stewardship evolved before and after the financial crisis, and how that evolution resulted in the 2020 Code. It then critiques the Code from a practical and academic perspective, as well as evaluating the wider regulatory framework; in particular, the position of the FRC (ARGA). The book concludes by offering insight into different pathways that the evolution of stewardship may continue to take. Stewardship Codes modelled on the U.K.'s original 2010 version have been introduced in numerous markets and as such the book will be relevant for an international audience of academics, regulators and policymakers in financial regulation, investment regulation and financial services.

It could be your average suicide. A man found dead in his car, engine running, parked at the end of a lonely track, a tube feeding deadly fumes from the exhaust through the window. Except for the seven-year-old boy still breathing in the boot... For Jonathan Kellaway, the past is somewhere he chooses not to go. Dead friends, lost lovers and a family dynasty hell-bent on self- destruction lie buried there. But if he is to uncover the truth, he must confront all the secrets which have consumed his life, and which may yet consume him...

1919. The eyes of the world are on Paris, where statesmen, diplomats and politicians have gathered to discuss the fate of half the world's nations in the aftermath of the cataclysm that was the Great War. A horde of journalists, spies and opportunists have also gathered in the city and the last thing the British diplomatic community needs at such a time is the mysterious death of a senior member of their delegation. So, when Sir Henry Maxted falls from the roof of his mistress's apartment building in unexplained circumstances, their first instinct is to suppress all suspicious aspects of the event. But Sir Henry's son, ex Royal Flying Corps ace James 'Max' Maxted, has other ideas. He resolves to find out how and why his father died - even if this means disturbing the impression of harmonious calm which the negotiating teams have worked so hard to maintain. In a city where countries are jostling for position at the crossroads of history and the stakes could hardly be higher, it is difficult to tell who is a friend and who a foe.And Max will soon discover just how much he needs friends, as his search for the truth sucks him into the dark heart of a seemingly impenetrable mystery.

There's no such thing as easy money. As surgeon Edward Hammond is about to find out. Thirteen years ago he performed a life saving operation on a Serbian gangster, Dragan Gazi. Gazi is now standing trial for war crimes in the international court in The Hague. After his life was saved, his men went on to slaughter thousands in the Balkan civil wars.
Now Gazi's family want more from him: in exchange for keeping Hammond's dirty little secret, they want him to find for them the man who holds the key to all the money Gazi squirreled away before he was locked up. But Italian financier, Marco Piravani, doesn't want to be found, not by Hammond, not by anyone. No sooner has Hammond tracked him down, than Piravani has disappeared again.
His pursuit will take him first to the Hague, and then to Milan to find the Italian, and then finally back to the scene of his crime, Belgrade, where he must confront the decisions he once so easily took. Only then will he be able to lay the past to rest.

LIES. SECRETS. REVELATIONS.

1919 – The truth has never been in such short supply.

Ex-flying ace James 'Max' Maxted’s attempt to uncover the secret behind the death of his father, Sir Henry Maxted, has seemingly ended in failure – and his own death.

Unaware of Max’s fate, the team continue to pursue their only lead, travelling to Japan in search of a mysterious prisoner held by Sir Henry's old enemy, Count Tomura. Once there, they encounter former German spymaster, Fritz Lemmer, now rebuilding his spy network in the service of a new, more sinister cause.

The quest Max embarked on in Paris will reach its dizzying end at Tomura's castle in the mountains of Honshu - and the full truth of what occurred thirty years before will finally be laid bare…

In Robert Goddard's haunting mystery a strange house links past and present, a murder, a political scandal and an unexplained tragedy. Recovering from the recent death of his wife in a cliff fall, Tony Sheridan goes to stay with her sister and her husband at their house in Rutland. The house, called Otherways, is in some sense a character in the story: a strange, circular, moted construction dating from Edwardian times.
Disturbed by memories of his wife and a growing attraction to her sister, and troubled by vivid dreams, Sheridan learns that a murder committed at the house in 1939 still has resonances for those living in the neighbourhood, including the sister of the murdered woman.
There is a scandal surrounding the murderer's brother, and enough hints of other mysteries to forewarn Sheridan of impending disaster as he embarks on a secret affair. But that disaster is far worse than a friendship betrayed. Its nature is revealed by the ghosts that have haunted Otherways over the years -- of whom he comes to fear that he may be one himself.

Harry Barnett is shocked to learn that he has a son - David Venning, a brilliant mathematician, now languishing in hospital in a diabetic coma. And this is only the first and smallest of the mysteries he is about to encounter. It is not known whether David's condition is due to an accident or a suicide attempt. But Harry discovers that his mathematical notebooks are missing from the hotel room where he was found. And two other scientists employed by the same American forecasting institute have died in suspicious circumstances. Driven on by the slim hope of saving the son he never knew he had, Harry goes in search of the truth and finds himself entangled in several different kinds of conspiracy - none of which he ought to stand the slightest chance of defeating.

Another classic mystery from the "master of the clever twist."
On a summer's day in 1981, a two-year-old girl, Tamsin Hall, was abducted during a picnic at the famous prehistoric site of Avebury in Wiltshire. Her seven-year-old sister Miranda was knocked down and killed by the abductor's van. The girls were in the care of their nanny, Sally Wilkinson.
One of the witnesses to this tragic event was David Umber, a Ph.D student who was waiting at the village pub to keep an appointment with a man called Griffith who claimed he could help Umber with his researches into the letters of "Junius," the pseudonymous eighteenth century polemicist who was his Ph.D subject. But Griffin failed to show up, and Umber never heard from him again. The two-year-old, Tamsin Hall, was never seen again either. The Hall family fell apart under the strain. Sally Wilkinson, the nanny, wound up living with Umber, whom she had met at the inquiry. But she never recovered from the incident, suffered increasingly from depression, and eventually committed suicide.
In the spring of 2004, retired Chief Inspector George Sharp receives a letter signed "Junius" reproaching him for botching the 1981 investigation. Sharp confronts Umber, whose explanation for being at the scene of the tragedy has always seemed dubious. Obliged to accept Umber's denial of authorship of the letter, he nonetheless forces him to join in a search for the real culprit -- and hence the long-concealed truth about what happened 23 years previously. It is a quest that both will later regret having embarked upon. Too late they come to understand that some mysteries are better left unsolved.

On a bright autumn afternoon in Truro, the Napier family celebrates one couple's golden wedding anniversary and another's marriage. But for one member of the clan, the day turns dark. Chris Napier, prodigal son, suddenly spots the ragged specter of a former friend, Nicky Lanyon--a man whose own family was ruined by the same twist of fate with which the Napiers were blessed. And the next morning, Chris is horrified to find Nicky dead, hanging from a tree where the boys once played....
For Chris, the suicide opens a floodgate of doubt and suspicion. How did his family's wealth slip out of the hands of a great-uncle, brutally murdered before he could change his will? Were the men convicted of the crime truly guilty? And who is the mysterious, seductive woman who claims to know the Napiers' darkest secrets? As the crimes of two families are exposed, a series of violent acts shadows him and suddenly Chris knows he's in uncharted waters...until a killer drops one last disguise--for the ultimate act of revenge.