Whilst organising a mock murder hunt for the village fete hosted by Sir George and Lady Stubbs, a feeling of dread settles on the famous crime novelist Adriane Oliver. Call it instinct, but it's a feeling she just can't explain...or get away from.
In desperation she summons her...Read more
Captain Hastings recounts 18 of Poirot’s early cases from the days before he was famous ...
Hercule Poirot delighted in telling people that he was probably the best detective in the world. So turning back the clock to trace eighteen of the cases which helped establish his...Read more
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
There was no sign of life. But not for a second did Pascoe admit the possibility of death. Dalziel was indestructible. Dalziel is, and was, and forever shall be, world without end, amen. Everybody knew that. Therein lay half his power. Chief constables might come and chief constables might...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
This splendid thriller shows us Antony Maitland as Prosecutor, an unusual role for him. Another unusual factor is that, although complete in itself, the story is in a sense a sequel to Weep for Her.
A young man has been charged with receiving stolen goods—to wit, a...Read more
A young local student has apparently committed suicide. Her body is found in an abandoned car on a lonely country road. She didn't own a car. Didn't even drive. How did she get there? Where did she die? Who moved her, and why?
Meanwhile a man in his sixties is found dead in a...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
In the space of a few days, a series of events will set Peter Pascoe and Andy Dalziel off on a case where the stakes have never been higher or more close to home. First, an attempt is made to abduct Peter Pascoe's wife, Ellie. Then Ellie's friend, Daphne Alderman, is assaulted by a man...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
London Society takes their problems to Sherlock Holmes. Everyone else goes to Arrowood.
The Afghan War is over and a deal with the Irish appears to have brought an end to sectarian violence, but Britain's position in the world is uncertain and the gap between rich and poor is...Read more
The dark of the night. Two girls are running for their lives. Terrified, one falls, and unable to get up, she forces her friend to go on without her, to save herself. For her there is no escape as their attackers close in…
The following morning the body of a young girl is found...Read more
It was a crime of passion in one of England's great houses, an open-and-shut case. But thirty years later, when the convicted nanny is freed, then spirited off to America before she can talk, Yorkshire's Superintendent Dalziel retums to the scene of the crime with Inspector Pascoe,...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
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
Society’s eligible women are in mourning. Lord Peter Wimsey has married at last, having finally succeeded in his ardent pursuit of the lovely mystery novelist Harriet Vane. The two depart for a tranquil honeymoon in a country farmhouse but find, instead of a well-prepared love nest, the...Read more
'Reginald Hill stands head and shoulders above any other writer of crime fiction' Observer Geraldine Lomas's son went missing in Italy during World War Two, but the eccentric old lady never accepted his death. Now she is dead, leaving the Lomas beer fortune to be divided between an animal...Read more
In T.L. Beddoes' play Death's Jest-Book, the dead won't lie still in the grave and the living often wish they could. And Reginald Hill's novel is much the same -- except perhaps for a few more jests.
The dead-pan joker, Franny Roote, is working on his dead friend's unfinished...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
A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The driver behind is spared. But only for a while...
One particular member of the local press is gunning for the Chief Inspector, distinctly unimpressed...Read more
A ravaged wood, a man in uniform long dead - this is not a World War One battlefield, but Wanwood House, a pharmaceutical research centre. Peter Pascoe attends his grandmother's funeral, and scattering her ashes leads him too into wartorn woods in search of his great-grandfather who fought...Read more
When James Lessiter returns to London to claim his family estate and is found bludgeoned to death, Miss Silver must investigate numerous suspects, including a jilted girlfriend, an angry husband, and a widow, to discover which suspect had the urge to murderRead 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
When the wife of a prominent QC is found dead at the bottom of a well, Inspector Thanet discounts accidental death. Virginia Mintar was no angel, her outrageous flirting knew no bounds and made her many enemies. On the night of her death she was surrounded by a group of people, many of whom...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
Brother Haluin slips while mending the roof after a bitter winter snow. his deathbed confession shocks all. but he does not die. on his recovery he sets out with Cadfael on a journey of expiation which leads to muder!Read more