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Jill McGown

This page lists novels by Jill McGown. One book published using the pen name Elizabeth Chaplin is also included.

Cover images are, where possible, of the first UK edition and a recent paperback or digital edition.

 

Jill McGown: Novels

A Perfect Match

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1983

A Chief Inspector Daniel Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill novel.

"The news rocked the town. A woman's body found in a boathouse. And the woman's last known companion Missing Presumed Fled. To the people of Stansfield it's an open and shut case. But Detective Inspector Lloyd - teamed up once more with Sergeant Judy Hill - isn't so quick to jump to conclusions. To begin with he's certain of only two things. First, that nothing can stop the reawakening of his tender feelings towards his colleague. And second: in a murder enquiry you don't rule out . . . ."
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Record of Sin

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1985

"Alan Blake's dead body is discovered at the bottom of a quarry. Above him, a group of people gather in the gloom near his abandoned Mercedes. They're all people whose lives he has touched, but only one of them knows that they're free at last from his blackmailing and bullying now. Or are they? It seems that from the grave Alan Blake’s influence is still real enough. Real enough to frighten Frankie, who was never afraid of him in life – real enough to set at each other’s throats people who love each other. And it's red-headed, fighting Frankie, at odds with the world, who takes it all on her insubstantial shoulders, determined that Alan will hurt no-one else. But the eighth deadly sin, that of omission, is one shared by each of the people in the little frightened group at the edge of the pit."
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An Evil Hour

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1986

"No one was more stunned than Annie Maddox when they found the body of Gerald Culver MP. Because Annie, the manager of the Wellington Hotel, Amblesea, was Culver’s mistress. Enter Harry Lambert, ex-policeman-turned-reluctant-private-eye, who's hired by Culver's wife to find her husband's killer. Annie's world is now filled with menace, because somewhere out there, along the edge of a wintry sea, a killer stalks."
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The Stalking Horse

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1987

"Sixteen years ago, Bill Holt was jailed for the murder of two people: Alison, his lifelong friend whom once people had assumed he’d marry, and a private detective. He knew he was innocent, but jury, judge and all his friends declared him guilty. Now he's out on parole, and his first journey is back to the scene of the crime, the town where he worked and lived and where he had shares in Greystone, his grandfather’s firm. He finds that fashion has changed, the currency has changed, even the railway station is different. But the people are all still there;Alison’s husband, Bryant, Jeff and Thelma Spencer, his cousin Cassie Stone, smooth Charles Cartwright and Holt’s ex-wife, Wendy. One of them is a manipulative killer – one of them framed him, and he’s spent sixteen years behind bars while the murderer grew fat and sleek on the profits of his company."
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Redemption

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1988

A Chief Inspector Daniel Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill novel. Published in the US as Murder At the Old Vicarage.

"A white Christmas. Deepening snow isolated the village from the outside world. By the time the body in the vicarage was discovered, Byford was cut off altogether . . . A domestic murder - Chief Inspector Lloyd thought it would be an open and shut case. But it turned out to be as complex and perplexing as his relationship with Sergeant Judy Hill. And both of them seemed to be slipping from his grasp."
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Murder Movie

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1988

"Frank Derwent , known in the business as FD, the multibillion-dollar director and Hollywood hotshot, has come to western Scotland to shoot a simple movie of love gone wrong. But most of the real action here happens off-screen. If you could put secrets in a box, the things this cast are hiding would be too large to carry. Still, the show must go on. Unless someone is murdered, of course – and that someone is Barbara, the budding starlet, who also happens to be FD’s nineteen-year-old mistress. Not quite as sweet as she seemed, she knew knew how to blackmail like a professional. Although talented Detective Patterson is on call to lend the local police a hand, he can’t prevent a second murder. And when a third dead body makes everyone suspect one another, even Patterson discovers that no one is safe from their past."
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Death of a Dancer

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1989

A Chief Inspector Daniel Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill novel. Published in the US as Gone to Her Death.

"The murder of a deputy headmaster's wife on the night of the Sesquicentennial Ball at a minor-league boys' public school brings together the team of Inspector Lloyd and Judy Hill. Diana Hamlyn's body has been found on the school's playing field. Death had been caused by the traditional blunt instrument, her clothing was disarrayed, her underclothes missing. It was a particularly disturbing killing. As Lloyd and Hill begin the harrowing routine of a murder investigation they rapidly learn that the woman had been a nymphomaniac - her conquests many, her fidelities few, the list of suspects for her killing appallingly long. That list includes her husband, her lovers and her colleagues, none with perfect alibis, some ostentatiously lying."
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The Murders of Mrs Austin And Mrs Beale

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1991

A Chief Inspector Daniel Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill novel.

"Which is the odd one out: An ex-call girl wife of a wealthy crook, who has kept one step ahead of the law, a struggling artist married to Stansfield's prospective Conservative party candidate, or the telephone line which links them? Answer: the telephone line. It isn't dead. A double murder investigation brings Chief Inspector Lloyd and the newly promoted Inspector Judy Hill together again as colleagues. But the case is a severe test of both Judy's professionalism and Lloyd's ego, and soon threatens their more private relationship."
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The Other Woman

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1992

A Chief Inspector Daniel Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill novel.

"When the celebrity football match was abandoned just before half-time, Bartonshire police had no way of knowing that the swirling, choking fog had concealed much, much more than the striker's fancy footwork. But by the end of the evening Chief Inspector Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill were looking for a rapist - and a killer. And, somewhere in Stansfield, Melissa Whitworth was just beginning to discover the truth about her husband."
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Hostage to Fortune

Elizabeth Chaplin

Scribners/Macdonald

1992

"What was wholly unexpected was Susan Bantham’s more than one-million-pound win in the pools. For her lawyer husband Jeremy, the money is an answer to a prayer, giving him the comforts of a Rolls Royce and a new mistress. Susan’s reaction is more profound…more sinister. She has the chance to have a new image, different friends, an unexpected lover – and the opportunity to avenge herself for twenty years of frustration with Jeremy. All she has to do is concoct a plan to trap her husband in a noose of his own making. Unfortunately for them both, by the time he took a good look at his wife and her anger, someone had to die. But no one could have guessed who, when and why."
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Murder... Now And Then

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1993

A Chief Inspector Daniel Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill novel.

"Victor Holyoak made his millions by selling state-of-the-art security systems. In the end, even the most sophisticated devices were no protection against the intruder who murdered him in his own factory. The millionnaire's death shocked the townsfolk of Stansfield. But was there something they didn't know about their deceased benefactor? Chief Inspector Lloyd was convinced he had seen Victor somewhere before. Was his memory playing tricks again? Or did the murky past hold the clues to a murder that seemed to come under the heading of unfinished business?"
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A Shred of Evidence

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1995

A Chief Inspector Daniel Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill novel.

"Detective Inspector Judy Hill had seen the girl that evening, talking and laughing with friends on the bus home. Now she lay dead in the glaring arc-light of a scene-of-crime investigation; beaten, strangled, and possibly raped. Oakland School in Stansfield comes under a no less glaring spotlight as Judy and Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd begin their investigation into the murder of Natalia Ouspensky, aged fifteen, on a piece of open parkland in the centre of town. It is an enquiry which will uncover the secrets of staff and pupil alike, not least Natalia herself; and enquiry which will produce suspects and motives but to no witnesses; an enquiry which will deeply affect the lives of the innocent, but might well fail to convict the guilty. An enquiry, it seems, which is not going to yield a single shred of evidence."
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Verdict Unsafe

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1997

A Chief Inspector Daniel Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill novel.

"Four young women. Four horrific rapes. Committed by a man who called himself the 'Stealth Bomber'. Colin Arthur Drummond - a privileged young man from Malworth - now stands accused of these crimes. And, watching his trial from the public gallery, Detective Inspector Judy Hill cannot forget his chilling description of a fifth unreported rape. Or his threat that she was to be his sixth. In court Drummond denies all charges, his lawyer 'Hotshot' Harper claiming police corruption and brutality. But the prosecution has an open-and-shut case; he had been caught in the act by two independent witnesses, and they have a DNA profile which proves he is the rapist. What could go wrong? Something does. For sixteen months later, Colin Drummond is threatening Judy again. And as Judy sets out to prove his guilt for the second time - and save her own job - Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd is called to a horrifying scene. It appears Colin Drummond has picked his next victim."
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Picture of Innocence

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1998

A Chief Inspector Daniel Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill novel.

"More than half of Bartonshire, it seemed, had entertained murderous thoughts at some time or another about bullying farmer Bernard Bailey. Which might have explained why his property was protected by more security devices and surveillance cameras than Fort Knox. All, sadly, to no avail. After six months of highly publicised death threats, linked to a stubborn refusal to sell land for a new road, Bernard's bloodied corpse is discovered in his isolated farmhouse by his wife Rachel. A gruesome beginning to the working week which launches DCI Lloyd and DI Judy Hill into the most unusual murder enquiry of their careers. For as the initial evidence is sifted, the question for once isn't 'Who stood to gain from the death?' but 'Why didn't they do it sooner?' With the ever-present eye of the camera recording events, Lloyd and Hill have more evidence than they ever thought possible. But is it enough to stop a killer walking free . . . ?"
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Plots And Errors

Jill McGown

Macmillan

1999

A Chief Inspector Daniel Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill novel.

"Andrew and Kathy Cope, the proprietors of a debt-ridden detective agency on the verge of losing their home, are found dead in their fume-filled car. Few doubt that it was suicide. But Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd does. He knew Kathy, and doesn't believe she was a quitter. And why, he asks DI Judy Hill, were groceries put away on the wrong shelves? Why is Andy Cope's wheelchair still in the boot? Even Kathy's last case is a puzzle. Why, of all the detectives she might have employed, did a member of the super-wealthy Esterbrook family choose to hire the Copes? That night, the murder of matriarch Angela Esterbrook appears to vindicate Lloyd's doubts, but even he doesn't realize that the Copes' apparent suicide is just the curtain-raiser on a tragedy of almost Shakespearean proportions."
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Scene of Crime

Jill McGown

Macmillan

2001

A Chief Inspector Daniel Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill novel.

"It's three days before Christmas, and the Malworth Amateur Dramatic Society's rehearsal of Cinderella, scripted by GP Carl Bignall, is struggling thanks to a flu epidemic that has hit the production. But as rehearsals finally get under way at the Riverside Theatre, the police across town are entering Carl's house - and discovering the body of his wife, Estelle . . . Why was Carl so late for rehearsal? Why is Dr Bignall's neighbour so reluctant to tell the truth about what he witnessed? And why is Dr Denis Leeward, Carl's partner, sitting in his car, slightly bruised and in a state of guilty panic? All Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd knows for sure, as he takes charge of the investigation, is that one of them is a murderer."
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Births, Deaths and Marriages

Jill McGown

Macmillan

2002

A Chief Inspector Daniel Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill novel. Published in the US as Death in the Family.

"In an isolated cottage a woman has been bludgeoned to death; outside, a man has been crushed by a car, uttering the word 'intruder' before losing consciousness. That, and a row overheard earlier that morning, is all Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd has to go on. Who is the dead woman? Where's her handbag? If it was a burglary, why the extreme violence? A house-removal is in progress, but were the couple moving in or moving out? Were they a couple? Who was having the argument? If it was a domestic, why is the handbag missing? Who was the intruder? Was there an intruder? Who rang 999? Was it a love triangle? Who was driving the car found abandoned a mile away? Questions without answers, and Lloyd is short-handed; a baby has disappeared from Malworth, and DS Tom Finch has joined the team urgently searching for leads."
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Unlucky for Some

Jill McGown

Macmillan

2004

A Chief Inspector Daniel Lloyd and Inspector Judy Hill novel.

"February 13th: what seemed like Wilma Fenton's lucky night, when she scooped her biggest-ever win at bingo, turned out to be the night she died at the hands of someone lurking in the dimly lit alleyway leading to her flat. An eyewitness to the incident gives Detective Chief Inspectors Lloyd and Hill some hope. But the witness is Tony Baker, an ambitious TV journalist and TV personality, who, almost twenty years ago, single-handedly tracked down a serial killer. Did Baker see more than he claims? Does he want to beat the police to the punch again? This complication triggers a deadly chain of events when the man the media will come to call the Anonymous Assassin publicly challenges Baker to catch him before he strikes again. In the full glare of the national media, Lloyd and Hill must spearhead a force-wide hunt for a relentless killer."
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Last updated September 2018