Hania Allen
Hania Allen was born in Liverpool of Polish parents and holds an honours degree and a doctorate, both in physics, from the University of St Andrews. As a child, she wanted to go into space and came a fair way (but not quite far enough) in the Project Juno competition to find Britain’s first astronaut. She has worked in education: as a physics researcher, a maths teacher, a research programmer, an IT officer, and finally in information management as part of the University of St Andrews’ senior management team, a post she left to write full-time.
When not writing, she indulges her other passion, music, and can be seen at her local cinema watching operas from the Met, or playing the piano with her musically gifted godchildren, making up for in enthusiasm what she lacks in talent. She has lived in Scotland for longer than she has lived anywhere else and loves the country and its people, despite the nine months of rain and three months of bad weather. She currently resides in a fishing village in Fife.
Hania Allen is represented at Jenny Brown Associates by Jenny. For all enquiries contact jenny@jennybrownassociates.com
Books by Hania
The Maze
Constable, February 2024
When the body of a man is found in the countryside outside Dundee with a gun in his hand, DI Dania Gorska dismisses suicide in favour of murder. Italian voice coach, Luca Terranova, in the city to search for his missing twin brother Piero – a fashion designer whose clothes are on display at the V&A there – confirms that the dead man is indeed Piero.
Searching for a motive for the murder, Dania’s investigation leads her to Alderwood Manor Maze with its famous moving statues and hedges. Who was the person Piero was seen shouting at in the Maze? Could this be his killer? The McGarry family, who live at the manor harbour secrets of their own, and the more Dania delves into the case, the more she finds herself trapped in a maze of lies.
But it is when Marek, Dania’s investigative journalist brother, takes a trip to Italy and uncovers the history of the Terranova family that Dania learns the shocking truth – a truth that will put her in mortal danger .
The Unexpected Guest
Constable, August 2023
It was a quiet day for the funeral. Until the bomb went off…
Midwinter in Poland, and Dania Górska and her brother Marek are in Warsaw, attending the funeral of her old piano teacher, Jakub Frydman. At the graveside is Rabbi Salomo Steinberg and several former pupils.
As the service draws to an end, someone throws a wreath into the open grave. And as the mourners file out of the cemetery, they hear an explosion: the grave of Jakub Frydman has been destroyed and the perpetrator – the unexpected guest at the graveside – has made a clean getaway. But who was the intended victim? Was it an antisemitic attack – but against the old teacher, or the rabbi? Or was it drugs-related… and Dania and her investigative journalist brother the targets? Now Dania has to trade Dundee for Warsaw to follow up leads on an international drugs syndicate – and find a resolution to this most unexpected and deadly of crimes.
The Murder Stones
Constable, February 2022
Polish-born DS Dania Gorska is called upon to investigate a seemingly straightforward case of an RTA – a car has crashed into a tree, having first hit a deer on an icy road. But a witness has come forward to say he saw someone fleeing the scene and then the autopsy reveals vicious marks on the head of the dead man. Suddenly Dania is looking at murder.
The dead man, Eddie Sangster, has had an intriguing past – the youngest of three brothers, he inherited the family estate after the oldest committed suicide and the other simply disappeared. But decades on it would seem someone is out for vengeance as murder stones – carved headstones attesting to the brutal murders of both brothers – start to appear on the grounds of the estate.
Clearly the key to the puzzle of the murder stones lies at Sangster Hall, where a calamitous incident in the past is now shaping the present, and it is up to Dania to discover the murderous secret of the Sangster family.
The Ice Hotel
Constable, 2021
A seasonal hotel where murder can be made to disappear with the sun… Maggie Stewart travels with friends Liz and Harry to the Ice Hotel, a surreal building in Swedish Lapland constructed from ice cut from the nearby river. During the day, it is a museum housing ice sculptures, but at night it becomes a novelty hotel. Shortly after their arrival, the holiday turns into a nightmare. A near-miss snowmobile accident is followed by the discovery of the frozen body of one of the hotel’s American guests. Maggie is shocked to learn that this was no accident: the American was drugged and pushed out of his sleeping bag to freeze to death in the room. As the body count rises and Maggie finds herself in mortal danger, she realises that the only person she can trust is Thomas Hallengren, the detective leading the case. But can he uncover the killer’s identity before the Ice Hotel and other buildings – the Ice Chapel and Ice Theatre – melt back into the river, taking the clues with them?
Family Business
Constable, 2020
In the north of Dundee, DI Dania Gorska is leading the search for a missing boy, with the police and volunteers combing the dramatic landscape in hope of finding the child. What they discover in a derelict hut in the hills isn’t the boy, but is the remains of a body, chained to a wall.
This body isn’t the missing child but is identified as another young boy, Cameron Affleck, who disappeared many years before in a case that could never be solved. Dania contacts the boy’s father, who still spends much time digging around the fields where his son was last seen, in the hope of finding his body.
Dania begins to unearth the old case, determined to discover Cameron’s killer and looking for possible connections to the present-day missing child. But as she digs into the past, she realises that the Affleck family are hiding more than they let on and that there are some dark secrets that everyone wants to stay buried…
Clearing the Dark
Constable, January 2019
When DI Dania Gorska is called to investigate the shooting of a young man on a Dundee street, the nail hammered into his forehead suggests that local gangster, Archie McLellan has left his calling card. Clues point to his involvement in an illegal replica firearms venture, a scam that may include other members of the infamous McLellan family.
The chance discovery of human remains buried in the grounds of Breek House, once owned by the McLellans, convinces Dania the two cases must be related. But who was the mysterious tenant of Breek House at the time the bodies were put into the ground? Identifying them is complicated as all the teeth have been removed – post mortem, to prevent identification? Or was the back room at Breek House used by the McLellans as a torture chamber?
As Dania moves closer to discovering what went on at Breek House she disturbs dangerous secrets from the past which threaten the lives of those in the present…
The Polish Detective
Constable, January 2018
DS Dania Korsika is a stranger in a foreign land. Born in Poland and transferred from London to Dundee’s specialist crime division, she is called upon to investigate a series of grotesque killings where the victims are first brutally murdered and then displayed in a bizarre manner. Although seemingly unrelated, clues point to the victims having been members of a local druidic cult. While solving these murders is Dania’s priority, she finds herself increasingly drawn to the case of two runaway teenage girls. But when she learns they were also members of the same druid group, she becomes convinced their disappearance is linked to the murders. And despite what the evidence suggests, Dania starts to fear that the girls have not run away but are actually the newest, undiscovered victims of the killer…