Murder on a Midsummer Night

The year is 1929, and Melbourne is in the grip of an exhausting heatwave. But for elegant and irrepressible private investigator Phryne Fisher, the temperature is the least of her worries. She finds herself simultaneously investigating the apparent suicide of a man on St Kilda beach, and...Read more

On Beulah Height

Into thin air...

Three little girls, one by one, had vanished from the farming village of Dendale. And Superintendent Andy Dalziel, a young detective in those days, never found their bodies--or the person who snatched them. Then the valley where Dendale stood was flooded to...Read more

Dumb Witness

Everyone blamed Emily Arundell’s accident on a rubber ball left on the stairs at her home in Market Basing by her frisky terrier, Bob. But the more she thought about her fall, the more convinced she became that one of her relatives was trying to kill her.

So, on April 17th she...Read more

Exit Music

It's late in the fall in Edinburgh and late in the career of Detective Inspector John Rebus. As he is simply trying to tie up some loose ends before his retirement, a new case lands on his desk: a dissident Russian poet has been murdered in what looks like a mugging gone wrong. 

...Read more

Matrimonial Causes

'Tell me about your first case Cliff. You must remember it.'
'Sure, but Christ, I haven't thought of that in a long, long time.'
'What was it about?'
'Back then? Divorce - what else? But there was a bit of perjury, fraud and murder as well.'

The...Read more

Friend Of The Devil

One morning in March, on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea, a woman named Karen Drew is found in her wheelchair with her throat slit. Back in Eastvale on that same morning, in a tangle of narrow alleys behind a market square, the body of Hayley Daniels is found raped and strangled....Read more

The Raven In The Foregate

It is Christmas, A.D. 1141, Abbot Radulfus returns from London, bringing with him a priest for the vacant living of Holy Cross, also known as the Foregate. The new priest is a man of presence, learning, and discipline, but he lacks humility and the common touch. When he is found drowned in...Read more

Death In The Clouds

From seat No. 9, Hercule Poirot was ideally placed to observe his fellow air passengers on the short flight from Paris to London. Over to his right sat a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite; ahead, in seat No. 13, sat a countess with a poorly concealed cocaine habit...Read more

Colour Scheme

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

End of Chapter

There is a saboteur hiding in plain sight at the publishing house of Wenham & Geraldine. An incendiary, and wildly libellous, passage has been slipped into a book somewhere between the final check and the printing press… a seemingly impossible task. Desperate to avoid a scandal, the...Read more

Death is Now My Neighbour

Why would a sniper shoot suburban physiotherapist Rachel James as she sips her morning coffee? Inspector Morse's hunt for answers kicks off with a tabloid journalist, winds through the strip clubs of Soho, then returns to Oxford, where two senior dons and their wives battle for a plum...Read more

The Raven's Eye

It's one of Brock and Kolla's bloodiest investigations. On the trail of a brutal killer with a meat cleaver and a grudge they're also watching their backs as new technologies threaten their jobs. A throat-stopping, heart-thumping mystery from one of Australia's most acclaimed crime writers...Read more

Gaudy Night

The dons of Harriet Vane's alma mater, the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford, have invited her back to attend the annual Gaudy celebrations. However, the mood turns sour when someone begins a series of malicious acts including poison-pen messages, obscene graffiti and wanton vandalism....Read more

O'Fear

Everybody liked Barnes Korean War veteran, slightly dodgy businessman, good drinking mate. When he was wiped out in a car sout of Sydney, people were lining up to say how sorry they were. Head of the queue was Todd's widow Felicia, closely followed by his business and army cronies.So how...Read more

Aftermath

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

Beneath These Stones

Twelve-year-old Tammy Franklin has learned too much about death, too quickly. Two years ago she lost her mother to a long, lingering illness and now the body of the woman her father married in an attempt to replace his wife has been found on a railway embankment close to the Franklin farm....Read more

Nemesis

In utter disbelief, Jane Marple read the letter addressed to her from the recently deceased Mr Rafiel - an acquaintance she had met briefly on her travels. He had left instructions for her to investigate a crime after his death. The only problem was, he had failed to tell her who was...Read more

Call the Dead Again

When Meredith Mitchell picks up a hitchhiker on a lonely road outside Bamford one evening she is left feeling distinctly uneasy. What business can this confident, yet secretive, young woman have at Tudor Lodge, the beautiful old home of Brussels-based lawyer Andrew Penhallow, where she asks...Read more

Chill Factor

Hennessey and Yellich are looking for a Mr Big

A corpse is discovered in the middle of the city of York. Male; no identification. Shot. And tortured before his murder. A professional hit, by the look of it. Gradually people talk; hints are dropped; and trails appear ? all leading...Read more

Death and the Dancing Footman

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

Death Notes

Sir Manuel Camargue, yesterday one of the most celebrated musicians of his time, today floats face down in the lake near his sprawling English country house. The consensus is accidental death -- but Inspector Wexford knows the stench of murder most foul when he smells it. Particularly in...Read more

End Games

Aurelio Zen's final case brings him to remote town of Calabria, at the toe of Italy's boot, on what is supposed to be a routine the death of a scout for an American film company. But the case is complicated by a group of dangerous strangers who have arrived to uncover another local mystery...Read more

Fen Country

Amateur detective and Oxford don, Gervase Fen, with the assistance of Inspector Humbleby solves a series of baffling mysteriesRead more

Death in Holy Orders

On the East Anglian seacoast, a small theological college hangs precariously on an eroding shoreline and an equally precarious future. When the body of a student is found buried in the sand, the boy’s influential father demands that Scotland Yard investigate. Enter Adam Dalgliesh, a...Read more

Cold in Hand

It's Valentine’s Day, and a dispute between rival gangs leaves a teenage girl dead.

Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick, nearing retirement, is hauled back to the front line to help deal with the fallout. But when the dead girl’s father seeks to lay the blame on Resnick’s partner...Read more

An Excellent Mystery

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

Man in the Shadows

Cliff Hardy returns to the Australian criminal underworld in a short novel and six stories focused on the private investigator

Gareth Greenway wasn't all he seemed, but Cliff Hardy was used to that. What he wasn't used to was the shadowy world Greenway leads him...Read more

An Author Bites the Dust

An Author Bites the Dust takes super-sleuth Napoleon Bonaparte to the house party of Mervyn Black, famous author and critic, where the host is found murdered among his literary friends.Read more

An Imperfect Spy

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

Cold Is the Grave

Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks has reached a turning point. With his wife now living with another man in London and his career in the doldrums thanks to Chief Constable Riddle, it is time to ring the changes. Perhaps a move to the National Crime Squad? Perhaps a second chance with...Read more

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