Jack is working in a seedy hotel where the manager has no qualms what the guests get up to, providing they pay. When a young woman is found dead in one of the rooms, it appears to be from heart attack. The police suspect there may be more to it and Jack is asked to keep watch. A simple request that puts his life in danger.
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Jack of All Trades
Jack at Death’s Door
Jack, a builder, has a job in the local cemetery making a memorial bower. His work is obstructed by the manager, whose brother runs the crematorium. The two brothers are at loggerheads, goaded by Jack’s employer and the woman who runs the flower stall, all part of the same family who are major shareholders in the cemetery. It’s a bad blood ménage, overseeing the business of the dead, complicated by murder with Jack as suspect and sleuth.
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Jack Recalled
Jack, a builder, is working in a house owned by brother and sister, Paul and Lynn. The hostilities between the siblings are heightened by Paul’s two 18-year-olds who are going off the rails. As Jack is reluctantly drawn into this family conflict, from left field comes a nightmare. When two bodies are found in Epping Forest, the police quickly realise Jack knows how they got there.
Jack of Spades
Jack Bell has a local job in a large house with four flats by West Ham Park. He’s employed to knock down a garden wall and replace it with a fence, a task made less easy by the tension among the tenants. But pretty soon, he has a developing romance with the childminder living on the ground floor. With an invitation to dinner, life is going well. Until the killing, with Jack slap bang in the middle, and a body to dispose of in Epping Forest.
Jack O’Lantern
Jack, an East London builder, is working at Bramley, an independent school near Billericay in Essex. The school is in trouble. Graham DeNeuve insists on total control, but his daughters and wife decide they must get rid of him, one way or another, to save the school from financial disaster. As Jack becomes increasingly involved with one of the daughters, Ellie, he begins to work out what is happening, to his own peril.
Jack by the Hedge
Bricklaying in a park is not the pastoral interlude Jack hoped for. Possibilities of love with Liz, who runs the greenhouses, are thwarted by Ian, the bullying park manager, who has his own schemes afoot. Or there’s Rose, Liz’s sister, made homeless and sleeping secretly in the bowling green pavilion. But for the park workers, it’s all hands on deck as they prepare for the coming of the Mayor. Until murder intervenes, with Jack too involved.
Jack in the Box
Death comes to a quiet street in Forest Gate, London, when Jack Bell takes on a building job in a house squatted by anarchists. Unknown to him, they are planning a robbery. Another job next door involves him with an Asian family, where the father faces a drastic choice to protect his family’s reputation. Jack is forced to juggle work troubles, demanding people and a developing affair – until everything crashes down on him when he becomes a hostage in an armed siege.
Jack on the Tower
The old lady next door has disappeared. Who in this house is set to join her?
Jack points the brickwork high on a scaffolding tower, keeping a wary eye on Mike, a half stoned musician. But Mike wants to use Jack as a babysitter so he can concentrate on the cleaner, while his wife Jean is out earning the money to keep him. When Jean returns early there is an almighty row, with Jack drawn in as she turns to him for solace.
Jack of All Trades
It seems a dream job for Jack, a small builder in Forest Gate, when he gets the contract to repair the summerhouse of a millionaire couple in Chigwell. The two months’ work will pay his debts, and give him space to sort out his personal demons. Except the couple are at war, both having affairs, their marriage beyond salvage. The husband fires Jack, she takes him back on – and suddenly he is too involved with their scheming. Complicated further when he falls for her secretary. And when there’s a murder, using his tools as the weapon, Jack is prime suspect.
Derek Smith 