The master of a Victorian mansion dies suddenly – and his sister is convinced it was murder…. When Cora is savagely murdered with a hatchet, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother Richard’s funeral suddenly takes on a chilling significance. At the reading of...Read more
The story begins with a stolen tractor, hardly a job for DCI Banks and his Homicide and Major Crimes team, but the new police commissioner has put rural crime high on her agenda. At the same time, an apparent crime scene is discovered in an old hangar at an abandoned World War II airfield....Read more
A river cruise may be sunk by a ruthless criminal in this novel by “the doyenne of traditional mystery writers” ( The New York Times ).
Inspector Alleyn’s wife, the artist Agatha Troy, has a special fondness for Constables—the paintings, that is, not the policemen. So she jumps...Read more
One of Ngaio Marsh’s most popular novels, this time featuring one of her best creations – Lucy Lockett, the crime-solving cat.
When the exuberant president of Ng’ombwana proposes to dispense with the usual security arrangements on an official visit to London, his old school mate...Read more
Hercule Poirot gets an an alarming telephone call late at night, in which the phrases “it’s life and death” and “the table with the yellow irises," are whispered. It results in Poirot rushing to the luxurious restaurant Jardin des Cygnes. He's desperate to stop an impending murder, and find...Read more
A beautiful June day in the Yorkshire Dales, and a group of children are spending the last of their half-term freedom swimming in the river near Hindswell Woods. But the idyll is shattered by their discovery of a mans body, hanging from a tree.
DI Annie Cabott soon discovers he...Read more
Agatha Raisin's neighbouring village of Ancombe is usually the epitome of quiet rural charm, but the arrival of a new mineral-water company - which intends to tap into the village spring - sends tempers flaring and divides the parish council into two stubborn camps.
When...Read more
When Joe and Josie Macintosh are found stabbed to death, John Coffin has to discover not only their killer, but their true identities. The answers seem to lie in the past - bizarre, terrifying and horribly real.Read more
When Max Jeopard, a charismatic writer is found dead, Thanet discovers he had several enemies, including his father-in-law and members of his own family. He uncovers jealousies which lay beneath Max's seemingly perfect life.Read more
Rodney Williams's disappearance seems typical to Chief Inspector Wexford -- a simple case of a man running off with a woman other than his wife. But when another woman reports that her husband is missing, the case turns unpleasantly complex.Read more
With this novel of mounting tension among apparently normal people, Ngaio Marsh achieved a triumph on a level with her most famous detective novels Surfeit of Lampreys, Scales of Justice and Off With His Head.
On a cold February night the police find the third corpse on the...Read more
Three wives murdered.
Three husbands disappeared.
No apparent connection between the couples all of whom were supposedly happily married.
No apparent motive.
So why had the killer targeted them?
You'd better ask yourself because ..... IT...Read more
Private detective Fitzroy Maclean Angel is not your ordinary private detective. The world he inhabits is strange and it is about to get stranger. A new born baby means no more cases, no more fingerprinting and no more espionage and, with the arrival of his aging, hippy mother, he has...Read more
At the doors of a charming country church, an unspeakable act destroys a wedding party. A huge manhunt ensues. The culprit is captured. The story is over.
Except it isn't. For Alan Banks, still struggling with a tragic loss of his own, there's something wrong about this case —...Read more
Antony Maitland, barrister and very confidential detective, reluctantly journeys to a gray town in the English Midlands to defend a young boy who is, on the face of it, guilty of murder and art theft. Maitland’s problems are not reduced by the boy’s mysterious unwillingness to say anything...Read more
The new psychological thriller featuring Dalziel and Pascoe, the hugely popular detective duo and stars of the long-running BBC TV series, following on from the bestselling Death of Dalziel He may have been in a coma but it would take an act of God to put Superintendent 'Fat' Andy Dalziel...Read more
When the Russian wife of the owner of one of the most valuable private collections of modern art in the UK is found dead, Detective Chief Inspector David Brock is drawn into a world of high-end art, a world very different to his own. From the dealers and galleries in London's West End, his...Read more
Troy Alleyn, Inspector Roderick Alleyn's beautiful young wife, is engaged to paint a portrait of Sir Henry Ancred, famed Shakespearean actor and family patriarch, but she senses all is not well in the dreary castle of Ancreton. When old Hnery is found dead after a suspicious dinner and an...Read more
It sends a shiver down Detective Superintendent Alan Markby's spine when he hears that a rambler has stumbled on human bones in Stovey Woods in the heart of the Cotswolds.
Twenty-two years ago, as a fresh-faced young inspector, he had a rare failure in the hunt for a brutal...Read more
Often regarded as her most interesting book and set on New Zealand's North Island, Ngaio Marsh herself considered this to be her best-written novel. It was a horrible death -- Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die. Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far...Read more
One phone call from a concerned neighbor has inadvertently led police to Terence Payne, the elusive serial killer known only as "Chameleon." Now the fiend is in custody, perhaps dying, and a long nightmare appears to be over at last. But is it? In Acting Detective Superintendent Alan Banks'...Read more
The party's over when murder makes an entrance...
With the notion of bringing together the most bitter of enemies for his own amusement, a bored, mischievous millionaire throws a house party. As a brutal snowstorm strands the unhappy guests, the party receives a most unwelcome...Read more
In 1141, two monks have arrived in Shrewsbury from Winchester, where their abbey was destroyed. Now Brother Humilis, who is very ill, and Brother Fidelis, who is mute, must seek refuge at Shrewsbury. And from the moment he meets them, Brother Cadfael senses something deeper than their...Read more
While guest-teaching a semester at Schuyler Law School, Kate Fansler gets to know an extraordinary secretary named Harriet, who patterns her life after John le Carré's character George Smiley. Harriet reveals that Schuyler has some serious skeletons swinging in its perfectly appointed...Read more
When a fortune teller from a previous case informs Agatha Raisin that her destiny--and true love--lies in Norfolk, she promptly rents a cottage in the quaint village of Fryfam. No sooner does she arrive than strange things start happening. Random objects go missing from people's homes, and...Read more
Ngaio Marsh's most popular novel begins when a young New Zealander's first contact with the English gentry is the body of Lord Wutherford -- with a meat skewer through the eye...The Lampreys had plenty of charm -- but no cash. They all knew they were peculiar -- and rather gloried in it....Read more
Will the Archbishop of York's final days be spent in peace? As the race to be his successor gathers pace, Owen must catch a determined killer who dwells among the archbishop's guests at Bishopthorpe Palace.
York, 1373: While the...Read more
The middle-aged woman lying on the footpath is biggish and unattractive. Yet even in death her eyes hold a defiant look. Everyone in this Kingsmarkham neighborhood knew her name was Rhoda Comfrey and that she was down from London visiting her invalid father. But when Inspector Wexford looks...Read more
Inspector Alan Markby and his long-time friend Meredith Mitchell have taken a cottage in the country for a much needed holiday. But so sooner are they relaxing with a neighbor over a glass of blackberry wine, when Markby is being badgered for an "off the record" opinion about a somewhat...Read more
It begins, dramatically enough, with a trial for murder. The distinguished criminal lawyer Venetia Aldridge is defending Garry Ashe on charges of having brutally killed his aunt. For Aldridge the trial is mainly a test of her courtroom skills, one more opportunity to succeed--and she does....Read more