Books by Natasha Cooper

Why would anyone risk his life blowing up tanks of toxic chemicals?This is the question barrister Trish Maguire must answer in her ninth investigation. When the explosion rips through quiet fields in the north of England, it destroys much more than the innocent life of the man who farmed them. In her grief his widow, Angie, turns on the company responsible. Trish finds herself in turmoil when she is called on to defend not the ruined and heartbroken Angie, but the multinational company that owned the tanks. At the same time, she faces other explosions at home. Her adopted son, David, has a new school friend in the damaged and volatile Jay. When Jay's mother is found brutally beaten, Trish becomes embroiled in two huge battles - one for everything she has worked for, and one for everything she believes is right.

Can you ever trust anyone, however much you care about them? Things aren't always what they seem . . .In the eighth Trish Maguire novel, Abandoned as a baby and brutalised in care,sculptor Sam Foundling is the obvious suspect when his wife Cecelia is found beaten to death in his studio. Trish, who Maguire acted as his barristerfor him years ago, when he was an abandoned child being brutalised in care. She saved him then, but trying to protecting him b hopes he didn't do it. Her campaign for him ,now will brings her up against DCI Caro Lyalt, the senior investigating officer . . . and her own best friend.Evidence against Sam mounts up. Cecilia's powerful mother is pressing for his arrest. The police hierarchy want him charged for the brutal murder. If Trish is to save his sanity, and her own, she must unlock the secret offind out exactly what happened in the studio that morning, and time is running out . . .

Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me . . .In the seventh Trish Maguire novel London is awash with secret information and vicious rumour. A politician fights for his reputation. Gangs of organized criminals poison the streets with their lesson that greed and violence always pay. Some of those who hunt them bend the rules; others take their money. A whistleblower goes in fear of her life. Trish and her close friend, DI Caro Lyalt of the Met, will have to disentangle fact from fiction if they are to protect the innocent and pin down the guilty. But their actions bring danger horrifyingly close to home . . .

Why did investigative journalist Jamie Maxden have to die? Did someone need to stop him revealing the scandalous secrets of the food industry?In the sixth Trish Maguire novel, the coroner says Jamie's death was suicide. His family agree. The case is closed. Only one man fights to re-open it, but he's known as a conspiracy theorist and he can't make anyone believe him until he turns to Trish.Felled by food poisoning in the middle of a big trial, she is ready to believe almost any story about the adulteration of meat on sale in London. Even though she has more than enough to do with her work as a barrister, the fight to protect a child in terrible danger, and plenty of emotional complications of her own, she agrees to help. The investigation takes her deep into the countryside, showing that cruelty and intimidation can flourish in a ravishing landscape just as they do in the grimmest of inner-city housing estates.Moving between the two, trying to save lives and sanity, inexhaustible Trish is driven into a crusade that combines excitement, drama and agonising human tragedy.

How can a ravishing art collection be built on so much blood and pain?In the fifth novel in the series, London barrister Trish Maguire brings her forensic intelligence to bear on the dark secrets behind the paintings in the collection. Hidden away end of the First World War, they are now curated by an expert with scandal in his past and all too many threats to face in the present. Taking a crash course in the dark mysteries of the art world, Trish must also help her young half-brother come to terms with his mother's violent death. Having learned about the agonizing reality of life in the trenches, lightened only by an engrossing love story, she uncovers a web of deceit that has spanned the decades since 1918. Now the innocent, the violent, and the victims all have to free themselves. And not everyone can escape with their life.

How could anyone refuse to help an eight-year-old boy running for his life?In the fourth Trish Maguire novel, her whole world is changed when the boy is knocked over by a skidding car outside her London flat. Fighting to save his life, the casualty team find Trish's name and address sewn into his clothes. He looks so like her that the police are convinced he's her son. Only she knows he can't be. So who has sent him? And why?Her desperate search for his identity takes Trish to a brutal inner-city housing estate, where she picks up the trail of a violent murder. It is not long before she discovers that the chief suspect is her father . . .

How can you prove a convicted killer is innocent when everyone hates her?In the third novel featuring London barrister Trish Maguire, Deb is serving a life sentence for the murder of her father. At first Trish is sure Deb didn't do it, but the more she learns about the family's secrets and the jealousies that boiled beneath the surface of their lives, the more troubled she becomes. Then another of Deb's supporters is murdered.With pressure mounting, and with her own father at death's door in hospital, Trish finds her personal and professional lives crashing together with explosive force.

How do you bear it when your 4-year-old child goes missing? When Antonia Weblock's daughter, Charlotte, vanishes from a London playground, even her enemies are sympathetic. Villified for putting her City career above her child's welfare, she has plenty of those.She turns to barrister Trish Maguire for help. As a specialist in the darkest cases involving children, Trish knows exactly what can happen to them at the hands of abusive adults. While she does everything she can to support Antonia, the police pull out all the stops to find Charlotte, asking the questions that are in everyone's mind: did she wander off or was she kidnapped? Could her apparently devoted nanny have killed her and hidden the body? Why wasn't her stepfather looking after her as he'd promised? And where was her real father when she disappeared?No one who knows Charlotte can be above suspicion and it is not long before Trish herself is at risk.Trish Maguire is a memorable character whose strong ideals and fierce intelligence belie her private torments and vulnerability. Creeping Ivy is a menacing story of manipulation and betrayal which will stay in the mind long after the book is finished.

The brilliant and idealistic Trish Maguire returns in a devastating case of corruption and conspiracy. In a particularly difficult case of alleged child abuse, Trish knows that the jury's decision hinges on the persuasive testimony of her friend and star witness, Kara Huggate. When Kara doesn't appear at the trial, she realizes that something must have gone terribly wrong. She returns to her chambers after court to find the police waiting for her with some horrifying news: Kara has been brutally raped and murdered. At first it seems as though her attacker was the Kinsford Rapist - a serial rapist and killer who has managed to elude the police. Then several inexplicable clues indicate that the murderer may have been a copycat. Trish receives a letter from Kara, posted the night of her death, asking her to help a suspicious man named Blair Collons. Although Trish decides to help him out of loyalty and affection for her friend, she cannot understand why Kara cared so much for the paranoid and strangely obsessive Blair. Soon Trish finds herself mired in his unhappy story, with potentially devastating consequences. Fault Lines is a tense and disturbing examination of the power of corruption and the lengths to which people will go to protect themselves.

Now a full-time mother and bestselling writer, Willow King is content to leave crime-solving to her police chief husband. Yet she can't resist a case involving Andrew Lutterworth, accused of a fatal hit-and-run that landed him in prison for manslaughter. His wife suspects he was forced to confess and was incarcerated on purely circumstantial evidence. But what could motivate a man to admit to a crime he did not commit a willingly go to jail because of it? The truth behind the puzzle is as dark and perplexing as the human psyche-and as tragic as the half-truths of self-deception that lead to murder. 'Elegant . . .deeply satisfying.' Library Journal 'With her deft characterizations and intriguing puzzle, Cooper provides a . . . fine British cozy.' Publishers Weekly

Fruiting Bodies is a compelling novel featuring female sleuth, Willow King, set within the fraught corridors of an NHS hospital. Just as Willow is giving birth to her first child, her obstetrician is found dead, face-down in his own birthing pool. To her he has always been charming, supportive and reassuring, but someone hated him enough to hold his head under water until he drowned. She has to find out why. Her husband, Superintendent Tom Worth, warns her that it is neither easy nor safe to pre-empt a police murder investigation, but Willow cannot stop. Interviewing a hospital administrator at one moment and a leading member of WOMB (Women Overtake Male Birthing) the next, Willow starts to find out what lay behind the obstetrician's facade of charm and professional competence. When she and her baby are released form hospital, the scope of her enquiry widens. But she soon discovers that Tom was right and, in a violent confrontation, she pays a high price for her curiosity. In Fruiting Bodies Natasha Cooper once more mixes an entertaining, light-hearted mystery with a sidelong glance at some of the more intractable antagonisms of contemporary life and a shrewd psychological insight into the minds of those who love, those who hate, and those who cannot believe that they have to abide by the same rules as the rest of us.

Death . . . and taxes Willow King, civil servant, and Cressida Woodruffe, author of sweeping romances, are one and the same. But it is the former who's called into play when she is asked to probe the case of Fiona Fydgett, a famous art historian whose tax affairs are under investigation by Inland Revenue. By all accounts, Fiona killed herself-and whispers of harassment by the tax office needs to be explored. But when Willow's police officer husband is mysteriously shot, and a fire in the tax office kills the investigator on the Fydgett case and nearly kills Willow, a simple case turns both urgent and very personal . . . 'A strong heroine, an inventive plot with an unexpected climax . . .' Booklist '. . . clever, unpredictable and thoroughly absorbing.' Publishers Weekly 'An elegant sleuth.' Cosmopolitan

Three people die, in agony, each the victim of a different person. The police are convinced that there is no connection. Inspector Tom Worth disagrees. So does Willow King. Risking not only the secrets of her double identity, but also her own life, Willow races to unmask the serial killer before anyone else is murdered. From the dreariness of her part-time job in Clapham to the luxury and extravagance of her life in Belgravia, this most unusual female sleuth takes up the challenge and becomes involved in an exciting but near-fatal adventure. 'Willy and elegant . . . an excellent read' Publishing News 'A well written, consistently enjoyable English antidote to the sometimes over-muscular American fashion' Marcel Berlins, The Times (Bitter Herbs) 'Willow is a beguiling heroine' Francis Fyfield, Evening Standard (Bloody Roses)

Passions run high in the world of publishing, but they rarely lead to murder - or do they? Gloria Grainger, wealthy bestselling novelist, is found dead in her room one morning. Everyone assumes she died of natural causes - except for Willow King. Despite Chief Inspector Tom Worth's mockery of her suspicions Willow is determined to uncover the sinister truth. She finds herself investigating a particularly nasty murder case, in which there seems no limit to the amount of emotional damage people can inflict upon each other. Then Willow herself becomes a target for the same murderous hatred that surrounded Gloria . . . 'This sparkling whodunnit effectively blends mystery, sophistication, and a dash of romantic melodrama' Publishers Weekly (Bloody Roses) 'Well plotted - and immense fun to read' The Times (Poison Flowers)

Willow is sure Richard Crescent couldn't commit murder. The police, finding him drenched in his colleague's blood in the locked Corporate Finance department, are sure he did. Rushing back from a Tuscan idyll with Chief Inspector Tom Worth to help her friend, Willow uses all her romantic novelist's imagination, her own experience as a high-powered woman in a man's world, and her understanding of an uneasy double life, to put herself in the other woman's shoes and learn why Sarah Allfarthing had to die. And as well as the high-tension world of merchant banking, conflict with Tom, and personal danger, Willow has to face the terrible possibility that the police could be right . . . 'This sparkling whodunnit effectively blends mystery, sophistication and a dash of romantic melodrama' Publishers Weekly 'Well plotted - and immense fun to read' The Times (Poison Flowers)

The Department of Old Age Pensions is not noted for drama. Nor for scandal, corruption or even the odd leak to the tabloids. Not until Algernon Endlesham, its high-flying Minister, is brutally bludgeoned to death. Willow King, Assistant Secretary (Finance), is noted for her formidably enquiring mind. Though an enquiry is the last thing she could wish for. Especially if daunting ex-SAS Inspector Worth uncovers her figment of an alibi and well-kept secret. Disconcertingly for Willow, however, someone has a very violent means of silencing the curious . . . 'A smart plot with some clever twists' Oxford Times 'Festering Lilies is witty and elegant. It is a pleasure to light on a new talent' The Bookseller 'Instead of the physical violence in which heroes of thrillers usually engage, Willow proves her superiority by verbal decimation . . . as she effortlessly trumps male condescension' Observer