Bill Rogers is a Bolton based author who specialises in  Crime Thrillers set in and around Manchester and the North West.  He has 10 books published to date, and two more due out 2014. 

The Cleansing was shortlisted for the LongBarn Books Debut Novel Award, and received the Ebookpublishing consortium Writer's Award.  A Trace of Blood reached the semi-final of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2009.

All 9 of his DCI Caton Manchester Murder Mysteries have figured in the Amazon Kindle UK top ten most popular British Crime Fiction Novels.

The car was still there. He edged a little closer, hugging the side of the towering railway viaduct. He stopped for a moment and listened. Other than the sound of his own breathing, and the rustling of the trees beyond the archway, there was silence.
He decided to wait for a while, to recover his breath, and take stock. This was not a place that people would come, approaching midnight, unless like him they had mischief in mind. The car, parked close to the kerb, just short of the entrance to the arch, had been there for over five hours. At first he had thought it a Mercedes saloon, but the arrow head badging with the double M logo was one that he had never seen before. Whatever; it was large, and flash, and worth a mint. He still could not understand why it was parked here, rather than on the car park further down the street where the CCTV camera kept watch.
The first of the iron gates creaked noisily as he made the dog-leg exit between the railings. He paused, before stepping out from deep shadow into the pool of moonlight spilling over the cobbled street, glinting silver on the gaping radiator grill. He ducked instinctively, and cursed, as a bat swooped low above his head. His fingers closed reassuringly over the tool that lay deep in the zipped compartment of his bomber jacket. He pulled his baseball cap further down over his forehead and walked quickly towards the passenger door.

Crouching low, he peered inside the car. It was still there, in the front passenger foot well. He unzipped his pocket, withdrew the centre punch, and pressed it against the bottom right hand corner of the window. The sound, like a muted gun shot, echoed in the tunnel created by the archway walls, and hung for a moment above the parkland beyond the gates. A fraction later, it was replaced by the wail of the car alarm. Golden flashes from the wrap-around headlights threw his silhouette into sharp relief. Straightening up, he placed the punch in the centre of the window, against the now crazed glass. A hole appeared the size of a golf ball. Two blows with his elbow were sufficient to allow his arm inside. The door release catch refused to respond. Cursing, he hammered the window with his elbow twice more until he was able to squeeze his right arm, head, and shoulders, into the car. With his body pivoted over the door panel he was able to grasp the handle of the briefcase. The shoulder strap caught momentarily on the rake adjustment lever before he was able to tug it free, and flee towards the park gates.
He jinked through the dog-leg like a rugby league winger, and sped onto the broad cobbled way his Nan still referred to as Fitzgeorge Street. He took the first right fork uphill, not slowing until he reached the exit at the side of the Mayflower pub. Pausing only to stuff the briefcase up the front of his jacket, he stepped out onto the pavement on Rochdale Road.
The steel grey shutters were down on Mays’ Pawnbrokers and Second Hand Jewellers, the bright red walls a muted glow in the glare of the street lights. To the right, he could just make out the communication mast of Collyhurst Police Station, less than half a mile away. He hurried across the road, and jogged by the side of the Youth Centre, past the impressive mural on the outside wall that he had helped to create. He slowed crossing Teignmouth Street, and entered Ryder Street, briefly disturbing an ancient German shepherd and a mangy sheepdog in one of the back yards, before disappearing like a phantom into the maze of maisonettes and three storey flats.

The sound of the alarm ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The lights flashed despairingly for several seconds, and gave up. Only then was it possible to hear the feeble tapping inside the car boot. A long-eared owl, attracted by the sound, perched on the fence beside the car. With three dimensional hearing it was acutely, if indifferently, aware of the futility of the struggle within. The owl sat there for a full five minutes, his head rotating from time to time through three hundred and sixty degrees. He listened as the sounds became weaker, and finally stopped.
Scanning the horizon one last time, he ruffled his feathers, spread his wings, and soared imperiously away, leaving the arches to the bats, the silence, and the night.

Website : www.catonbooks.com
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Titles by Bill Rogers

The Cleansing

Christmas approaches as a killer haunts the streets of Manchester. This is his reckoning.  DCI Tom Caton and forensic profiler Kate Webb follow the trail from the old mass cholera graves, through the penthouse opulence of the canalside apartment blocks and The Gay Village, to the Victorian grandeur of the Town Hall.

Time is running out for Tom, for Kate, and for the City!

Shortlisted for the LongBarn Books Debut Novel Award

The 1st of the Tom Caton Manchester Crime Series

 

" A good juicy crime read."

dovegreyreader

www.dovegreyreader.com

Voted the UK's Number 1 Literary Blogg 2010

Price £9.99

Details

• ISBN 9781-1-906645
• Publisher Grosvenor House Publishing
• Genre Fiction
• Setting Greater Manchester
• Extent 370pp

The Head Case

Roger Standing CBE, Head of Manchester's Harmony High Academy School, and the Prime Minister's Special Adviser for Education, is dead.  DCI Tom Caton is not short of suspects.  But if this is a simple mugging gone wrong then why is MI5 ransacking Standing's apartment, and disrupting the investigation?  And why are the widow and her son taking the news so calmly?  Something is rotten in the corridors of power.  And the killer is poised to strike again.

 

The second in the Tom Caton Manchester Crime Series

"As a fan of Val McDermid, Ian Rankin and Stuart Macbride, I'll have to add Bill Rogers to my list."  A.Duchmann

Price £9.99

Details

• ISBN 978-0-9564220
• Publisher Caton Books
• Genre Fiction
• Setting Greater Manchester
• Extent 352pp

The Tiger's Cave

Twelve bodies, no motive, the hunt is on.  A lorry full of illegal Chinese immigrants arrives in Hull.  Twenty four hours later their bodies are discovered close to the M62 motorway.  Two young men man and a girl are missing, and their lives are at risk. Supported by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, Caton must travel to China to pick up the trail.  But he knows that the solution is closer to home in Manchester's Chinatown...and time is running out.

 

The third book in the Tom Caton Manchester Crime Series

"Fast moving,descriptive,well researched and full of intrigue.  An excellent example of the genre."  Alan Wheatley

Price £9.99

Details

• ISBN 9780956422019
• Publisher Caton Books
• Genre Fiction
• Setting Greater Manchester
• Extent 349pp

A Fatal Intervention

A successful barrister, a wrongful accusation, a mysterious disappearance.  It's the last thing Rob Thornton - up and coming Manchester barrister - expects; an early morning knock on the door, arrested for rape.  When his mysterious accuser Anjelita Covas disappears he sets out to find her in London's criminal underworld and then back in Manchester.  A series of rhyming messages arrive each of them signalling a murder.  In tunnels, deep beneath the city lies a heart of darkness, where Rob most confront his nemesis, and make the hardest decision of his life.

 

The fourth in the Tom Caton Manchester Crime Series - can equally be read as a stand alone.

 

"Spellbound throughout.  The tempo was fast and action-packed with plenty of unepected twists."  James Dubois

 

"Pace,intrigue,and twistsa plenty...first class! Joe Capello

Price £9.99

Details

• ISBN 9780956422033
• Publisher Caton Books
• Genre Fiction
• Setting Greater Manchester
• Extent 331pp

Bluebell Hollow

DCI Tom Caton's world is rocked when he learns of a son by a former lover.  Then the first of the bodies is discovered at the Cutacre open cast mine on the Salford/Bolton boundary.    The victims appear to have addiction in common.  Suspects include a prmiership footballer, a barrister, and just about everyone at the Oasis Rehabilitation Clinic in leafy Cheshire.  A sCaton digs deeper everything begins to fall apart.

 

"As a fan of Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, and Staurt mMacBride I'll have to add Bill Rogers to my list."  A.Duchmaan

List Price £9.99
Price £8.99

Details

• ISBN 9780956422026
• Publisher Caton Books
• Genre Fiction
• Setting Greater Manchester
• Extent 390pp

The Frozen Contract

When Premiership star Sunday Okowu-Bello is found dead, in chilling circumstances, DCI Tom Caton knows this case is going to be anything but straightforward. And with three security guards missing the last thing he needs is the newly appointed Commissioner of Police and Crime piling on the pressure.
At first sight, the victim’s predilection for easy sex and gambling provides both motive, and suspects. As Caton digs deeper he finds himself drawn into a bewildering nexus of gambling cartels, security firms, the victim’s Nigerian sponsors, Far Right extremists, and Far East and Russian syndicates jostling for ownership of the club.
When a second body is discovered Caton knows that the killing has only just begun. The National Crime Agency is waiting in the wings, and the clock is ticking...

Holt heard the ringtone, pushed back his chair and stood up. There were other apartments more conveniently placed along the canal, closer to the city centre, or down by the Castlefield Arena, but each morning this view from the balcony lifted his spirits. Sunset was for lovers. To be savoured from the pavement cafes on Deansgate, in the new financial centre in Spinningfields, or from the Cloud Bar in the Hilton Hotel. It was how you started the day that mattered.
He went inside and picked up.
‘Hello?’
‘You are still interested in the Titans?’
The voice was Eastern European, possibly Russian, like all the other calls. He still found it impossible to place.
‘I’m interested.’
‘Get down there now. Take something warm.’
There was a click. Call over.
Not even a Do svidaniya.
The streets were quiet. The first tram of the day gliding silently past redbrick warehouse hotels, a motorised street sweeper sucking up detritus from the night before. He lowered the windscreen visor against the blinding glare of the early morning sun. According to Manchester Radio it was not going to last.
Winter pansies spoke of spring in the planters beneath the towering shard of the Beetham Tower. He headed southwest past the Museum of Science and Industry until he hit the motorway. As he took the slip road by Barton Bridge an ominous bank of clouds threatened to blot out the sun.
Salford Titans, plucked from the Championship by foreign buyers, relocated to the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal, manager and players cherry picked with Chinese money. Two years, and the brand new Quanxi stadium later, they were champions of the Premiership, and through the qualifying stages of the Champions League. This region already had eight clubs in the Premiership, more than any other. It didn’t need another one. You only had to ask the fans at Old Trafford or the Etihad stadium. Or their nearest neighbours, the Salford Reds Rugby League side, with their own Salford City Stadium less than half a mile away.
There were rumours of corruption and dirty money. The mysterious phone calls he’d been getting had all but confirmed it. It was one reason why Holt had relinquished, mid career, his job as North West crime reporter for the News of The World. The other, was a little matter of redundancy

Price £0.00

Details

• ISBN 9780956422071
• Publisher Accent UK / Engine Comics (Magazine)
• Genre Fiction
• Setting Greater Manchester
• Extent 368pp

Backwash

The body of a young man is discovered in a terraced house in East Manchester. DCI Tom Caton is drawn inexorably into the dark side of the internet where nothing is as it seems, and where lurks a threat to his own happiness, and that of those closest to him. In two weeks Tom and profiler Kate Webb are due to tie the knot. An appointment that she fears he may never keep.

Part police procedural, part thriller, part mystery, this rich tapestry of a novel delves into the threats that face everyone who uses those social media that have become an essential part of our every day existence.

Number 8 in the bestselling DCI Tom Caton Manchester Murder Mysteries.

The fingers of his right hand danced a tarantella with the mouse.
Scroll, click, click.
Scroll, click, click.
His left hand hovered expectantly above the keyboard.
Lee was in his element. Today had brought a score of bites and a handful caught, hook, line and sinker.
Scroll, click, click.
He paused, read the comment twice, the second time to savour, and laughed out loud. Literally. None of that LOL nonsense. What had started as a nibble had become a record catch. The index finger and thumb of each hand flew into action. Their cadence rose and fell in time to the rush of words tumbling from his brain. A flush of heat welled in his chest, and spread towards his face and groin. He began to sweat.
There were footsteps on the stairs.
He signed off with his customary barb, clicked Home and leaned back in his eBay-bargain, tension-sprung, task chair.
‘Hi, Mum.’

Price £0.00

Details

• ISBN 9780956422095
• Publisher Caton Books
• Genre Fiction
• Setting Greater Manchester
• Extent 359pp