Red For Rachel

Frank Lean is the pen name of Frank Leneghan who was born in 1942 and educated at Thornleigh College, Bolton and Keele University where he read history and politics.  He has worked in education in Manchester, where he now lives.

David Cunane is Manchester’s most off-beat private eye. Fond of drink, fatally attracted to the wrong women and champion of the lost cause, he walks a thin line… 
 
Rachel Elsworth is missing. Nineteen years old, she has mysteriously vanished into the city’s seamy underworld. Her father employs Cunane to find her. 
 
Rachel’s trail leads Dave into the maze of Manchester’s criminal fraternity; and gradually turns into a twisted path right to the heart of police corruption. 
 
As Dave find himself drawn further and further into a web of deceit and danger, he realizes that someone will stop at nothing to find Rachel before he does. The race is on, but Dave still doesn’t know quite how high the stakes are…

Above Suspicion

Frank Lean is the pen name of Frank Leneghan who was born in 1942 and educated at Thornleigh College, Bolton and Keele University where he read history and politics.  He has worked in education in Manchester and now lives in Manchester.

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'Frank Lean's novels, featuring stroppy Manchester private eye Dave Cunane, have evolved into beguiling entertainments, skilfully interweaving the righting of wrongs with knockabout violence and comic dialogue' Sunday Times 
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Money, football and crime: private investigator Dave Cunane dives deep into Manchester's seedy underbelly, knowing he may not make it out alive... 
 
When a baby girl is kidnapped and £500,000 is demanded for her return, the father - a famous international footballer - hires Dave Cunane, head of Pimpernel Investigations, to track down the girl's kidnappers rather than risk police involvement. 
 
Cunane soon realises that his new employer is involved in some highly illegal activities connected to the glamour and drama of the Premier League. As he digs deeper in the case, he uncovers evidences that some of Manchester's most successful criminals are being blackmailed - and as extortion escalates to murder, Cunane knows deep in his heart he has to stop the violence...

Nine Lives

Christmas morning greets Dave Cunane sourly. Manchester's most intrepid private eye is in jail. Often known to take the law into hi own hands, he now finds himself in the hands of the law. Framed and arrested for a cold-blooded murder, Cunane turns to the ever-tricky Delise, his part-time lover and full-time assistant, to save his neck and find out who the real killer is. But as the clock ticks away and the corpses pile up, Dave realises that more than one party want him out of the way, for good.

Boiling Point

Maverick detective Dave Cunane steps in when he sees a thug knocking Marti King around, but his actions are misinterpreted not only by her heavy-duty relatives but also his own nearest and dearest -  Marti's one of those girls you shouldn't get involved with.  When Dave comes across her again, he learns that her father, Vince, is doing life for a double murder, and she's looking for someone to prove his innocence.  Dave makes tentative enquiries - and the bodies begin to pile up.  Neither he nor the Manchester police can make sense of the killings, only Dave's become a little too close to them to be free from suspicion.  Temperatures are about to hit boiling point, but to cool things down, Dave needs to find answers to questions no one wants asked...

Kingdom Gone

When Fred Travis, multi-millionaire and eccentric political leader, is found with his throat cut and private eye Dave Cunane's card between his fingers, things quickly go downhill for the Manchester detective. It's hard enough persuading the police he had nothing to do with the murder, but when they arrest Clint Lane, the one person Dave knows couldn't have done it, hes forced to look for the real killer. His investigations lead him to a local pop star, a controversial cult leader, and the wife of a senior police officer. And as Dave digs deeper, the patterns surrounding the murder get more and more complex until he no longer knows who or what to believe.

Raised In Silence

'At last, a real rival for Ian Rankin's Rebus' Middlesborough Evening Gazette

At last, a real rival for Ian Rankin's Rebus

Frank Lean is the pen name of Frank Leneghan who was born in 1942 and educated at Thornleigh College, Bolton and Keele University where he read history and politics. He has worked in education in Manchester, where he now lives.

When student Meg Hands is found drowned in a Manchester canal, the authorities are only too anxious to classify her death as yet another sad result of alcoholic overindulgence. Her mother, Ruth, an internationally celebrated charity worker, is not so willing to accept this verdict. 
 
Frustrated in her attempts to interest the police, she turns to Dave Cunane, Manchester's last resort of the hopeless. Dave is unwilling to probe but tentative enquiries reveal a hidden world of vice behind the fashionable screen of Manchester's free and easy drinking scene.

Frank Lean

Billy Fox has disposed of fourteen women and gruesome evidence provides an open and shut case. But when David Cunane is employed to help research Billy's 'true life' story he soon reckons that nothing is what it seems. Somebody is trying to beat Billy's total. Is it a new killer? Or have the police - headed by Chief Inspector Sinclair - got the wrong man? A brilliant, totally original crime thriller which keeps you guessing to the bitter end.

Frank Lean

The Reluctant Investigator

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