MC Halliday's Page

The Detective Inspector Octavia Cambridge Mysteries

Middle aged, shrewd, educated and upper class, Octavia Cambridge downs bottles of red wine, smokes too many cigarettes and eats microwave dinners at her kitchen counter.

Her specialty is murder.

Assigned to Major Enquiries with the London Metropolitan Police Service is difficult enough, but Octavia is also struggling with intense sorrow made worse by a lifetime of self imposed emotional isolation. Due to her vulnerability and history of falling for cads, she tries to ignore her attraction toward a charming superior officer, the exceedingly handsome DC Superintendent Dan Richmond.

Woven into each noir psychological mystery are the intimate thoughts and closeted personal challenges of potential suspects, as well as the hidden truths of the officers working closely with Inspector Cambridge.


A BRIBE AGAINST THE INNOCENT
Detective Inspector Octavia Cambridge Mystery I

In this enquiry, a bizarre crime is red flagged as a duplicate of a twenty year old unsolved murder. To further complicate the investigation, the reclusive victim was not honest with her psychologist and the only lead in the case is an old snapshot of eight young men and women. DI Cambridge uses it to find a person connected to both victims, identifying and interviewing ‘the group of eight’ survivors. She deduces all of them are lying. But for what reason? As she probes into the past, Inspector Cambridge quite inappropriately courts a charismatic suspect, hoping it will hasten her wade through layers of deception. What she discovers are horrific dark secrets that resulted in suicide within the group of eight but more so, culminated in murder.

A LION FROM THE FOREST
Detective Inspector Octavia Cambridge Mystery II

The desiccated body of a woman is found in Kensington Gardens. With no means of identifying the strange corpse, Detective Inspector Octavia Cambridge begins a search of missing persons. As each day passes, one body after another turns up in the Gardens, each in an increasingly mutilated condition and each victim unable to be identified. Surmising the recent murders of women lead to one killer, Octavia is assisted by a criminal profiler, Dr. Tom Fuller. Sergeant Nyland has a hunch the profiler is not what he seems and oddly, the man fits his own criteria of the killer.

Once again, hidden histories and horrid dark secrets are revealed: sexual dysfunction and shame, abuse and hatred, romantic love and fixation, familial commitment and malevolence, dedication and soul-devouring regret.

DI Octavia Cambridge must deal with her own tribulations and those of fellow officers, while wading through layers and layers of deception to uncloak a heinous serial killer.