Raymond Flynn: 6 books

Robert Graham is mugged when he's mistaken for a stalker instead of a law-abiding detective chief inspector. His loyal but over-enthusiastic dog inflicts an embarrassing wound on Graham's atacker. a peeping tom outsmarts the police force. and a fast-talking barmaid disappears just like her one-time...

Someone is blackmailing a local supermarket chain. And getting away with it, thanks to a very clever payoff method involving hole-in-the-wall bank machines and a bit of glaring police incompetence. When the blackmailers descend on Eddathorpe, Robert Graham is called in. He thinks it's an inside job...

Someone disliked Eddathorpe's distinguished industrialist Sir Jeremy Blatt enough to bash him on the head, pack him into a lorry and despatch him on a North Sea ferry... Detective Chief Inspector Robert Graham has too many suspects: several wives, one of them Sir Jeremy's own; the exploited...

The corpse in a plastic sack is the perfect climax to Detective-Inspector Graham's bank holiday weekend: the east coast is sweltering under the August sun, the town is full of trippers and the deceased has been dumped on the busiest part of the beach. Vince Lowther, ponce, welfare scrounger...

One cocked hat, one red robe trimmed with black rabbit and one silver-gilt chain with a gold and enamel knobbly bit at the end... Eddathorpe's mayoral regalia has disappeared in the possession of Councillor William 'Klondike Bill' Lynch, a colourful drunk who has devised the perfect revenge...

Alice Draper was everyone's sweetheart. She was fun-loving and pretty and the wasn't fussy about her lovers: they included middle- aged businessmen and teenage tearaways. Years after she died, her murderer is still unpunished. Six of her lovers still have lives blighted by unspoken suspicion. Exiled...