Also available outside the above series:

Joker in the Pack    

This is a fast-paced spy novel set in London and Prague. When a Cabinet Minister who was a former student radical asks to see the file MI5 kept on him in the past, he receives threatening emails. Determined to discover who informed on him in those days he realizes one of the informers will go to any lengths not to be unmasked - including murder.     Realizing that there is a mole in MI5, he sends his researcher to Prague to contact a former friend and to discover what happened to one of the mystery informers. Old memories of the repression which took place after the Prague Spring of 1969 are painfully revived and old rivalries between the CIA and MI6 lead to the death of more than one agent. The dénouement is both tragic and a complete surprise. 

For background information on the Prague Spring see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring

To purchase:      Joker in the Pack

A Local French Affair

or in French

 Le Grand Mystère de Gornac

For those of you who love France my novel  about a local scandal in a small village in the Gironde, south western France,  will fascinate you:

The Great War is over, and life is slowly modernising in rural France, but old attitudes and prejudices die hard in the small village where 19-year-old Marie is growing up. When valuable precious jewels go missing in the household where she works as a maid, Marie is accused by the family of stealing them. The close-knit village is quickly divided by the accusation and daily life becomes difficult for Marie and her father. Struggling to deal with the fallout and scared her future will be forever tainted by the rumours, Marie and her new husband seize the opportunity to emigrate to Quebec, hoping for a fresh start. But with recession hitting Canada over long, desperately cold winters, life for the young French couple isn’t everything they hoped it would be. Can they beat the odds, or will the extreme conditions in Quebec prove as much a challenge as the attitudes they left behind in the village?

For further background information:

https://www.gornac.fr/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicoutimi

To purchase: A Local French Affair

  Book 1 in the Commissaire Pierre Rousseau series:

  Achilles' Helmet

The background to this thriller starts with the Siege of Troy, more than three thousand years ago. When Zeus commands Paris, Prince of Troy, to judge which of the goddesses Hera, Aphrodite or Athena is the fairest, Paris decides in favour of Aphrodite. She awards him the love of Helen, Queen of Sparta and wife of King Menelaus. With Aphrodite's help Paris carries off Helen to Troy and the stage is set for the Trojan War. During the siege of Troy Achilles lends his armour to  his friend Prince Patroclus. First Patroclus falls in battle and then Prince Achilles himself. The two are buried together, their ashes combined in a single golden urn.  

 In modern times, a private collector commissions two London art dealers to find their tomb and to retrieve the battle helmet the two heroes shared. They engage a team of Italian tomb robbers to find it, but unbeknown to them, a rival collector sends another gang to keep watch on their progress and to steal the helmet from them. The tombaroli find the tomb and extract the helmet, all the time also observed by the Interpol team of French and Greek detectives, who bide their time in the hope of tracking down the collectors who have commissioned the thefts. The tombaroli fall out amongst themselves and are double-crossed by their own leader. The rest of the gang exact terrible revenge.

    The bid to smuggle the helmet out of Greece to London hots up as the rival gangs compete to keep control of the helmet. During a sea chase around the Greek Islands and across the Mediterranean the helmet changes hands more than once. But Commissaire Pierre Rousseau from Lyon and Chief Inspector Antonia Antoniarchis from Athens are never far behind and the reader is left wondering who has the real helmet and who has the replica.

    "The plot is a real page turner. The international cast is involved in murder, treachery, romance and deception. A must read."  

For further background reading :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_War

http://www.visitgreece.gr/

          To purchase:    Achilles' Helmet 

 Book 2 in the Commissaire Pierre Rousseau Mysteries series:

                   The Athenian Connection

The same gang of Italian tombaroli are behind an attempt to steal a valuable fourteenth century icon out of Greece. A French gang of jewel thieves becomes involved and the two cases intertwine with fatal consequences for both sides.     Rousseau and Antoniarchis need to discover the link between the two gangs and the reason why the leader of the French gang has drawn attention to the fact that he has escaped from prison. If he is not the man behind bars in Lyon, who are they holding in his place?    When a local Greek millionaire's wife is kidnapped with their son, the tombaroli warn Rousseau and Antoniarchis not to interfere. But is the kidnap as straightforward as it seems and what exactly do the kidnappers want? Has an icon really been stolen from the Athens museum? If so, by whom? Why have the American collectors turned  up again?

    Pierre Rousseau and Antonia Antoniarchis need the help of former Greek resistance fighters to solve the mystery.

For further background reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/archive/my-life-as-a-tombarolo-the-art-newspaper-goes-underground-in-the-world-of-illicit-archaeology

To purchase: The Athenian Connection

Book 3 in the Commissaire Pierre Rousseau series:

The Crusader's Chronicle

A Crusader Knight is charged by King Richard to lead the remains of the Christian army back to Europe on foot as there are not enough ships to take them with him on his return to England and Normandy. During the journey Sir Geoffroi de Vinsauf learns that his wife has died in England of the plague and he decides to continue no further. He hands the leadership of the army to his squire and retires to a monastery in the Lousios Gorge in Greece where he wishes to spend his final days writing an eye-witness account of the battles with Salah-al-Din.

Centuries later a French book-dealer is commissioned by American collectors to find the original manuscript which may still be in the monastery. He in turn commissions an experienced Italian smuggler and tomb robber to do the work. But Lucca has earned himself enemies. A Parisian art dealer whom he has swindled in the past also learns of the search and is determined to track him down.

The book dealer is found dead in his flat in Bordeaux; the ruins of an ancient monastery in Greece are disturbed; the American collectors suddenly decide to take a holiday in Greece near the Lousios Gorge; Lucca, intending to double-cross the Americans, hires a young architect and researcher already known to the Bordeaux police, to authenticate the manuscript if it is found – all signs picked up by the Greek Art Fraud Squad.

The combined resources of the Greek and French Art Fraud Squads, with help from Italian colleagues, track the main players. The original manuscript is located and falls into the hands of the police who have a facsimile made and manage to feed it through to Lucca. When finally the Americans arrive to pay Lucca for the manuscript, they are convinced they have the genuine article. The sting set up by the French and Greek police leads to the collectors' humiliation at the US customs as they try to smuggle what they think is the genuine manuscript back into the United States.

For further background reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Crusade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_I_of_England

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saladin

To purchase: The Crusaders' Chronicle

Book 4 in the Commissaire Pierre Rousseau Mysteries series:

                Return to the Parthenon

When HMS Mentor sank off the island of Kythira in 1802, 17 crates filled with sculptures hacked off the Parthenon on the orders of Lord Elgin went to the bottom of the sea.  Later they were all salvaged and taken to  England.  Or were they?  Did the villagers rescue some of the sculptures before the salvage team arrived? 

Could they have concealed them on the island?  Why is an Italian diving club now searching the wreck? 

   Pierre Rousseau and his Greek colleagues become involved in what could be the find of the century. After 200 years, could there really be lost sculptures from the Parthenon which could be returned to Greece and placed in the new Acropolis Museum?  Or is the whole thing just a hoax to attract more tourists to the island?

For further background reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kythira

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon

To purchase:  Return to the Parthenon 

     Book 5 in the Commissaire Pierre Rousseau Mysteries Series:

          The Walking Man

In 1942, a German plane on a secret mission crashes in the Swiss Alps. The plane is loaded with stolen art from Greece and destined for a German General's private collection. When it emerges from the ice and is spotted by a party of tourist hikers the plane is empty. 

In the present, two works by Alberto Giacometti are discovered in a château in Brittany and a German tourist is found dead in the library.   

Pierre Rousseau is on holiday with his colleague Antonia Antoniarchis in Switzerland. Pierre plans to teach Antonia to ski and wants to visit the Reichenbach Falls, scene of Sherlock Holmes' encounter with Professor  Moriaty, near Meiringen.   Can he use the great detective's methods to make the connections between the death, or murder, in Brittany, the rediscovered Giacometti art works and the crashed plane?

For further background reading:

https://www.historynet.com/angels-of-mercy.htm       See Gauli Glacier entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Giacometti

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Problem

To purchase: The Walking Man

Book 6 in the

Commissaire Pierre Rousseau Mysteries series

The Moroccan Connection

It is 1612. A French ship carrying the Sultan of Morocco's precious library is seized on the high seas by the Royal Spanish Navy. The manuscripts are taken to the Escorial monastery library where they remain despite repeated requests over centuries for their return to Morocco.

In 2018 two Moroccan diplomats in Madrid form a plan to finally win the return of the manuscripts. When a Codex goes missing, word spreads. Who took it? Two men die. Were they the thieves? Who is prepared to kill in order to retrieve the manuscript?

The diplomats stage a publicity stunt in the new Athens Museum in front of the Parthenon statues. But who has the codex now? They return to Morocco and, sure of the killer's identity, they lure him to Marrakech. Will they succeed in pressuring the Spanish Government into returning the manuscripts to Morocco?

This is a mystery thriller with attitude. The theme channels the debate over the return of the so-called Elgin Marbles to the Acropolis Museum in Athens. In the same way, Morocco has requested the return of Arabic manuscripts held in the Escorial library for several centuries. The two themes run in parallel and involve theft, murder and a sting.

To purchase The Moroccan Connection press: Graham Bishop Author