December and Andy Horton has a gruesome murder to solve

Read two short extracts from FATAL CATCH - it might tempt you to buy the book or borrow it from a library if you haven't already done so!

processing the toys and books he was buying for his daughter, Emma. It was Sergeant Cantelli and he’d only call if it was important.

And

Sergeant Elkins indicated the dirty white plastic container lying on the floor of the cockpit. It looked to Horton like the type used for containing ice cream or margarine bought from the wholesalers only there were no labels or markings on it and inside he could see the vague shape of something that caused him a puzzled frown. Elkins nodded at PC Ripley, who, with latex covered fingers, prised open the lid. Horton started with surprise but it was Cantelli, peering over the side of the boat, who voiced his initial thoughts.
‘My God! Is it real?’
‘It’s real all right,’ Elkins said solemnly. ‘You can see the arteries where it’s been severed at the wrist.’
And the blackened exposed tissue, thought Horton, quickly recovering from his initial shock, staring at the human hand. The flesh, although a yellowish colour and emitting a sickly odour, was intact, no sea creatures or insect life had eaten into it, and there was no decomposition, which meant it couldn’t have been in the sea for very long. The container could have protected it he supposed, it looked fairly waterproof. There were slithers of water in the bottom but they could have been caused when the container had been opened by the two fishermen. The hand was fairly broad but the fingers were thin, ringless and quite long. A man’s hand he thought, though he’d leave that for Dr Gaye Clayton, the pathologist, to confirm. Mentally he measured it against his own hand and decided that whoever it had once been part of had been leaner than him. The nails were short, possibly bitten. He couldn’t see any tattoos and he wasn’t going to turn it over to find out if there were any on the palm.
‘Could a boat propeller have sliced it off?’ asked Cantelli.
‘It could but that hardly accounts for it being in a container. And where’s the rest of him?’

"Plenty of red herrings and a surprising culprit. Series fans will appreciate additional clues about the unsolved murder of Horton’s mother, Jennifer, more than 30 years earlier." Publishers Weekly