Murder Room
35 total works
When Virginia Freer spends a weekend with her friends the Boscotts the last person she expects to meet is the lying, light-fingered charmer who was her husband. She and Felix have been separated for several years.
Yet within a few hours of a party given to celebrate the engagement of a local poet and a best-selling novelist, the novelist's sister arrives distraught on the Boscotts' doorstep to announce that she has found her shot dead in their bungalow next door. And when Virginia, Felix and the Boscotts reach the scene they find that something very strange has happened to the corpse . . .
Margot Dalziel, the well-known journalist, was due in London on Friday and expected at her rural cottage on Saturday. By Sunday it had become apparent that she had vanished.
Margot's country neighbours are soon swept into a web of mystery and suspicion. A murder that seems simply a wanton act becomes a focus for people already taut with fear - and the villagers have already made their collective mind up as to who is responsible . . .
'A first-class writer of detective stories' C. P. Snow
Dr Charles Gair was found hanged, but that is not what killed him. This was the first of the bizarre surprises awaiting those who penetrated the home of the head of the Martindale research establishment on a Sunday morning to see what was amiss.
Even more startling was the discovery of a second body, perfectly mummified . . .
'The writer who may be the closest of all to Christie in style, plotting and general milieu' Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
Antonia Winfield sensed someone was following her. She'd seen a man in a brown suit. He was even behind her in the travel agents where she'd booked her holiday abroad. But perhaps she'd just imagined things.
This year she was going on a restful, comfortable trip to a lovely Greek island - but that's not the way things turned out. Mrs Winfield's niece was going on the trip with her, and the two ladies soon had a third companion: the man in the brown suit . . .
The prospect of a weekend on the French Riviera was an attractive one. Yet most of the nine people whom Major Mark Auty invited to join him hesitated before accepting his invitation. Each of them knew something about Auty's past - and because of their knowledge, had good reason to suspect some sinister intention.
Their doubts were not unwarranted. Before the flight took off for Nice murder had been committed - and one of the nine guests had to be guilty. But it was Major Auty himself who was the victim and it seems he was killed just in time . . .
'The Lying voices' were the clocks that filled the room where Arnold Thaine was shot dead. They ticked in a hundred different rhythms but every single one was wrong. So the fact that a bullet had stopped one of them gave no clue to the time of his murder . . .
On the day of Thaine's death, Justin Emery was visiting his old friend Grace DeLong, who had been to visit Thaine that morning. But who was the woman in the brown mackintosh who had entered Thaine's study? Who were the other two visitors? And was anything to be learned from the broken clock?
When Toby Dyke and his companion, George, get caught in torrential rain one night, they are surprised to find that they are not the only ones out in such a fierce storm: Edgar Prees, aging botanist of prestige and reputation, is attempting to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff top.
The two men drive Edgar home, collapsed and shaken. When he is then found the following morning shot dead with his own revolver, it seems that his attempt at suicide has succeeded - but is the case really as clear-cut as it appears?
Burnham Priors was a quaint English village, not a place where one would expect to find a murder. But murder was exactly what confronted Robina Mellanby when she moved there.
Robina was a young widow with two children when she married Sam Mellanby. She had no idea that the tiny village where Sam had lived, and where his one-time love Martha Birch still lived with her husband, was filled with terrible events that would now threaten Robina's own life . . .
What happens to a woman after she has been acquitted of murder? Can she ever take up a normal life? And what happens when a journalist sees easy money in ghostwriting her memoirs?
What happens when a helpful young woman, checking on the details of the story, gets caught up in the ugly world that surrounds Teresa Swale, legally acquitted - and possibly a victim herself - of murder?
'A consummate professional in clever plotting' Washington Post
When Meg Jeacock let out the furnished cottage next to her house she did not care that her new tenant had certain rather sinister characteristics - he'd paid three months' rent in advance. But Meg's husband Marcus sensed he was a crook.
And when the stranger shows an inexplicable interest in Shandon Priory, the big house nearby, whose elderly owner has recently died, it becomes clear that there is trouble brewing - which, when it comes, takes the form of double murder . . .
The dog was old and unappealing - which may have been why Virginia Freer decided to adopt him; that and the fact that he had belonged to her mother's old friend Helen Lovelock, who had recently died.
The tensions evident among the mourners at Helen's funeral soon erupt, and before long one of them is dead, and so is the dog. When Virginia calls in her ex-husband Felix, the Freers discover the death was convenient for several who attended the funeral. But why should anyone poison the dog? Yet someone had - and therein lay the solution to the murder . . .
'An engrossing whodunit' Publishers Weekly
What has happened to Aunt Violet? Helen Gamlen isn't sure anything has, but when Martin Andras turns up unannounced on her doorstep one night, implying that her aunt has disappeared, she feels she should try to clear things up once and for all.
Martin's interest in Violet's fate is purely selfish: her house in Burnstone had belonged to his grandfather, who left it to his faithful housekeeper for her lifetime. When she dies it will return to Martin's mother, and later, of course, to him.
But when Helen arrives on her aunt's doorstep, she finds she isn't the only person looking for a missing lady . . .
Why, on a wet and stormy night, did the old and very ill novelist Dan Braile decide to take a walk?
When he doesn't come back his family are at first reluctant to call the police, despite the fact that he had claimed someone was trying to poison him. But they become steadily more tense as the evidence points towards a horrifying conclusion - and under the strain their united front begins to crack . . .
'A consummate professional in clever plotting, characterisation and atmosphere' Washington Post
Christmas in Adelaide promises to be a pleasant vacation for Andrew Basnett, retired professor of botany and amateur sleuth. But the shadow of an unsolved murder hangs over the lives of his hosts, Tony and Jan Gardiner. The police still suspect Jan of her first husband's murder - and then a second killing takes place under the same bizarre circumstances.
What can a guest do in such a case but try to clear the name of his hostess and solve the crime?
'Very readable' Glasgow Herald