Read an extract from Silent Running featuring Art Marvik, now published in paperback

Silent Running, the first in the series to feature former Royal Marine Commando, Special Boat Services Officer, Art Marvik, is now available in paperback.  It is also published in hardcover, as an ebook and in Large Print, and in July 2016 will be available as an unabridged audio book.

In Silent Running, Marvik finds himself being seconded to work undercover for the National Intelligence Marine Squad (NIMS) headed by Detective Chief Superintendent Crowder. It is Marvik's first mission for NIMS and he is sucked into a dangerous and deadly mission, in a race to find a killer whose slaying spree spans the decades.

The second in the Art Marvik marine crime series, Dangerous Cargo, will be published by Severn House in hardcover in the UK on 31 May 2016 and in the USA on 1 September 2016.

The first in the Art Marvik marine crime series

Read an extract - Newtown Harbour, Isle of Wight


By the time he reached Newtown Harbour the wind had risen but the rain had come to little more than a few threatening and erratic flurries. He secured the boat and made for the cottage feeling troubled. A blackbird flew squawking into the air. On the surface everything looked the same. The cottage door was shut, the windows too; it was exactly as he had left it that morning. But there was something.

He scrutinized the garden and surrounding area. There was a branch of a shrub broken but nothing else. The rear door was locked and the alarm still set. He disengaged it and stood motionless for a moment, listening. Only the sound of the wind and the birdsong came to him. He studied the kitchen. Nothing had been disturbed or defiled. The kettle was exactly where he had left it on the dark blue range, the kitchen cupboards closed and his lap top computer was on the table in the centre of the room. He stiffened. No, that was wrong. It wasn’t exactly how he had left it. It had been moved just perceptibly. Or was that just him getting compulsive, obsessive and paranoid?

He crossed to it and studied it the computer and the table around it. The lid was down. It was the same distance from the edge of the table, the chair was in the exact position and yet as he studied both he knew there it was a fractionally different. Was it just his imagination? His eyes swung to the door which led into the hall and his pulse quickened. It was ajar as he had left it but he remembered looking back as he had set the alarm before leaving and like a snapshot the image reframed itself in his mind. Having a photographic memory was a gift and he’d developed that to become a skill over the years in combat. The door was open slightly wider than when he had left and Charlotte couldn’t have done that because she had been beside him when he had set the alarm.

Swiftly he went through the rest of the house looking for more signs of the intruder. He found them in his bedroom and in the living room. They were minuscule and would not have been noticed by anyone else but he knew exactly where and how everything had been left. There was a drawer not quite closed, a book slightly at an angle, a tube of toothpaste moved ever so slightly in the bathroom. Whoever had been here had been no common burglar because nothing had been stolen or wrecked. He had no television, no valuables, no money lying around, only his lap top and that was practically an antique. Whoever had entered the house had been expert, but not expert enough. His blood was pumping fast, the adrenalin was coursing through his body – not caused by fear or anger, he swiftly acknowledged, but with by exhilaration.

He recalled the flash of light he’d seen earlier through his binoculars and knew that Charlotte had been correct. Someone had followed her here and someone had been watching the cottage.

Newtown Harbour one of the locations for Silent Running, featuring Art Marvik

 

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