Frances Harman 01-03 – Judith Cutler Free Audiobook

Written by Judith Cutler
Read by Diana Bishop

Life Sentence

An unidentifiable woman is found on a roadside – beaten into a coma and raped. The man who finds her, troubled by his inability to resuscitate her, spends hours at her hospital bedside, talking to the woman everyone calls Elise. Two years later Elise’s condition is downgraded to persistent vegetative state — if the hospital takes her off life support, Elise’s attacker will be guilty of her murder.
Now months away from retirement, Chief Superintendent Frances Harman has been assigned to investigate Elise’s case. This is stacked on top of Fran’s growing obligation to her elderly parents, a duty that takes her from Kent to Devon, and back, every weekend. .
Fran verges on overload as she takes on more and more responsibilities — her parents, Elise, a child abduction, the disappearance of her only witness, and the growing affection that she and her long-time colleague Mark Turner seem to share for one another. In a satisfyingly complex story of deadly crime, kidnapping, disappearance, and identity theft, can this warhorse of a detective beat the odds, the stress, and the danger that may just be too much for one woman to handle?

Cold Pursuit

When a colleague becomes seriously ill, Chief Superintendent Frances Harman has to delay her impending retirement to oversee an investigation into a recent spate of happy slappings and minor assaults in the Kent area. Initially, she begrudgingly takes a back seat in the case, but it is not long before she is once again perilously close to the action. The wave of assaults has ignited a media furor and Fran is concerned that an unnecessary atmosphere of mass hysteria is being generated in the area. She soon finds herself having to spend as much time trying to control the media as trying to catch the criminals. However, the local reporter that initially broke the story, Dilly Pound, may have personal reasons for taking such an avid interest in the case. Meanwhile, Fran in still in the throes of middle-aged love with her superior, Mark Turner, but struggling to adapt to their new domestic arrangements. There may be trouble on the horizon too in the form of new arrival DCI Jill Tanner who immediately seems to show an unhealthy fascination with Mark. As the crimes gradually escalate and the line between happy slapping and serious sexual assault becomes blurred, all mention of retirement is postponed until Fran can resolve the nightmare that has enveloped around her.

Still Waters

One cold, wet evening in an otherwise unusually dry April, a man falls from the fifth floor window of a hotel in Hythe. Did he jump or was he pushed? Detective Chief Superintendent Fran Harman is already struggling to juggle her work and private life: she is having difficulties finding a company willing to restore her and her boyfriendas new home and has to put Mark up in her own cottage while the work is completed.

And now, why did this man jump from a hotel balcony when he had a perfectly good balcony at home? A glitch with the water system and her boyfriendas troublesome daughter add more problems to Fran’s lot. Can she find the time to discover what it is that appears not quite right about Alec Mintonas death?