A Morbid Habit

A crime-fiction series with a twist - private investigator Catherine Berlin, is a damaged soul struggling with a heroin addiction, but she still manages to do her best, even when her own neck is on the chopping block.

The third gripping instalment in Annie Hauxwell's phenomenal Catherine Berlin crime series.

Annie Hauxwell was born in London. She abandoned the law to work as an investigator and now combines this with writing. She lives in a small country town in Australia when not in London. Her career includes prize-winning short crime fiction and professionally produced theatre and film, and her feature screenplays have been optioned in the U.S. and Australia. Her working life has also included stints as a psychiatric nurse, cleaner, sociologist and taxi driver. She is the author of the Catherine Berlin series which includes In Her Blood and A Bitter Taste.

The hands were warm. Soft fingers, but flesh inflected with iron. Squeezing. The tongue lolled and protruded from the mouth. Vertebrae fragmented, one, two, three, until finally the hands relaxed and the limp body slid from their embrace. 
 
Blood turned to ice and sealed the nostrils. 
 
It’s the week before Christmas. Catherine Berlin sits alone gazing at a bank of monitors, each capturing a slice of a vast industrial estate. A van appears: two men delivering crates, moving quickly. Her boss tells her to ignore them, but she can’t. 
 
Berlin’s scars have faded, but she still walks with a limp. She's broke and working nights as a relief CCTV operator, and looking for something more substantial. Her heroin habit is under control – only just. 
 
The night shifts end, but now Berlin herself is being watched. When an old friend offers her a job in Russia, she quickly agrees. The details are vague: a mysterious businessman with money to spend, a UK company offering a high fee for Berlin to investigate. Easy enough. 
 
But Berlin arrives in Moscow to find that her problems are only just beginning. She is soon forced to confront some uncomfortable truths about her past, and her present. A body is found at the airport: a man clutching a sign with her name on it. Her pursuers reappear, and her guide, a Brit named Charlie, has secrets to hide. When Berlin’s businessman goes missing, she realises that she cannot trust anyone or anything, if she is to survive.

A Bitter Taste

The second instalment in Annie Hauxwell's gripping London based crime series

Annie Hauxwell was born in London. She abandoned the law to work as an investigator and now combines this with writing. She lives in a small country town in Australia when not in London. Her career includes prize winning short crime fiction and professionally produced theatre and film, and her feature screenplays have been optioned in the U.S. and Australia. Her working life has also included stints as a psychiatric nurse, cleaner, sociologist and taxi driver. In Her Blood is her first book.

She was ten years old, but knew enough to wipe clean the handle of the bloody kitchen knife. The night was stifling; the windows were closed, sealing in the chaos. A table upturned, shattered crockery. Her distraught mother, bare shoulders raw with welts, knelt beside her motionless father. The child snatched up her backpack, and ran… 
 
London sweats in the height of midsummer, and Catherine Berlin hides her scars from prying eyes. At the methadone clinic, she meets an old friend, Sonja Kvist, who begs her to help find her missing daughter. But the case is not as straightforward as it first appears, and Catherine soon realises that in order to find the girl, she must tackle a far greater threat … 
 
A Bitter Taste is the thrilling second instalment in the magnificent crime series featuring civilian investigator Catherine Berlin, whose long-standing heroin addiction is only part of her story.

In Her Blood

When danger is an addiction, death becomes a habit.

This is powerful and uncompromising fare from an intriguing writer.

[A] blood-soaked world of corruption and abuse updated for the 21st century... Berlin is both tough and fragile but far from stereotypical... Her closest relative in modern fiction is the alcoholic DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect. Catch the wave now, while it’s building.

With meticulous detail and great character depth, In Her Blood is an assured start to Hauxwell’s career as a novelist.

A stylishly written and assuredly paced debut that heralds a promising new series.

The writing is sharp and suspenseful, the plot engaging, the characters enthralling. I’m hooked on Annie Hauxwell and hanging out for my next fix.

An absolutely cracking thriller that I read in one sitting.

The first in a series of crime novels starring the magnificent Catherine Berlin, a civilian investigator whose long-standing heroin addiction is only part of her story. 
 
On a bone-chilling February morning, Catherine Berlin, investigator with the Financial Services Agency, finds the almost-headless body of her informant, 'Juliet Bravo', rolling in a shallow reach of the Thames. That Juliet Bravo's death is linked to an investigation of local loan shark Archie Doyle is no surprise to Berlin, but when Berlin's own unorthodox methods are blamed for the murder, she realises bigger predators are circling. 
 
To start with, it looks as though Berlin will pay only with her job. And then, on a routine trip to her GP (one of a dying breed who will still prescribe heroin to long-term addicts), she stumbles across a second body. 
 
Suspended, incriminated, and then blackmailed into cooperation by the detective leading the murder investigation, Catherine Berlin has seven stolen days of clarity in which to solve the crime - and find a new supplier.

Annie Hauxwell

Vividly-drawn characters and fast-moving action make this a lively read.

With focused, trenchant writing, this is a clear demonstration that Hauxwell is the real deal.

1961. In the drawing room of an imposing Hong Kong residence, a British lord brutally assaults a young Chinese boy. His grandson watches, helpless. But he will never forget. 
 
Wapping, London, present day. It’s a warm spring in the capital, and heroin addict Catherine Berlin feels the clammy breath of the past on her neck. Battling to stay clean, and bearing the scars of her most recent case, she is struggling to outpace her demons. 
 
An old contact has offered her a job investigating a violent attack by a seventeen-year-old public schoolboy, a Chinese orphan on a prestigious scholarship. The victim has gone missing, and the boy’s patron, a shadowy peer, claims the case is being manipulated by the Chinese government. Seduced by the boy’s vulnerability and the peer’s allegations, Berlin journeys to Hong Kong, where she uncovers a conspiracy that reaches from the Pearl River Delta to the Palace of Westminster… 
 
House of Bones is the fourth novel in the inimitable Catherine Berlin series, and a breathtaking and blood-spattered thriller.

Annie Hauxwell

Books by Annie Hauxwell

Series by Annie Hauxwell

Catherine Berlin

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