Mark Treasure Mysteries
16 total works
Llanegwen - on the coast of North Wales - used to be an attractive, healthy place for respectable people. But now it's a mixed bag of allsorts - there's a masked rapist stalking the streets, a petty thief with an eye to the main chance and anonymous businessmen who take over the local sweet factory after a highly convenient death. And when there is a polite and discreet demonstration by the workers outside his home, Mark Treasure is drawn into a fight to save their pension fund and even their jobs.
Treasure needs all his skills as a banker to uncover the layers of greed and deceit at the factory. But he must turn sleuth again when a saucy scamper around the shop-floor ends in a bizarre double murder. Can he get to the heart of the mystery before everything goes sour and another life is lost . . . ?
`His sense of character is as keen as his sense of place, and the plot, while as thick as the sugar syrup it involves, is also completely convincing. Tasty fare.' Financial Times
`Treasure is a likable suave hero' Booklist
`An efficient, deft thriller.' Publishers Weekly
The Closter Drug company is going to double in value as soon as it perfects its cure for migraine: most of the directors are set to make sizeable fortunes as they float the company on the Stock Exchange.
When a group pledged to stopping experiments on animals demonstrates at a Closter news conference, the action is seen as no more than embarrassing. But the kidnap of one of the Closter directors that follows cannot be so easily ignored, especially when, instead of a ransom, the kidnappers demand that the other directors sell their company shares at a crippling loss...
No one understands what the kidnappers themselves are gaining by this, until banker Mark Treasure - the non-executive Chairman of Closter Drug - returns from an American trip and works out what's really happening. Even so, he is too late to prevent two murders and the stock market skulduggery that decimates Closter management and threatens to wipe out the company.
The fourteenth of David Williams' elegant and intelligent Mark Treasure murder mysteries, Prescription for Murder is a perfect corporate puzzle with a cast of truly unique characters.
The plan to save the Elizabethan stately home Vormer House by selling part of its deer park for a golf and hotel complex has a mixed reception from local politicians, and others. Merchant banker Mark Treasure is financial advisor to the property group behind the development. He and his wife Molly drive up to attend the Thatchford town meeting called to air the project. Scandalous accusations are made, but worse is to come when a party in the house where the Treasures are staying is interrupted by the police, come to question the local MP after finding his glamorous secretary ghoulishly murdered.
While the probable suicide of the likeliest suspect promises a swift and easy solution to the case, it's too much so for the conscientious DCI Furlong, especially when another less explicable death occurs. But when Treasure discovers that Furlong is about to arrest someone who the banker is positive is blameless, he sets up his own investigation.
Planning on Murder is the sixteenth, and penultimate, Mark Treasure mystery - and is bursting at the seams with mystery, comedy and Williams' sparkling wit.
Sir Ray Bims is about to be charged as the principal in a Caribbean bank that's laundering international drug money. Lord Grenwood, octogenarian chairman of Grenwood, Phipps, the London merchant bankers, is appalled. Three years ago he sold the Eel Bridge Rovers Football Club - known as the Eels - to Bims. The club was founded by Grenwood's grandfather and is still associated with the Grenwoods in the public's mind. Now his lordship wants to buy it back to avoid the suggestion of family involvement in Bims's disgrace.
Only hours after refusing Grenwood's offer for the Eels, Bims commits suicide - except that Detective-Inspector Jeckels of the Fulham CID concludes gradually that it was murder. And he discovers a string of people with motive and opportunity to dispose of Bims - among them the husband of Bims's mistress; the Eels' manager whom Bims had been about to fire; a well-known concert pianist; a curiously religious pest controller; not to mention several Eels players, and Bims's wife and ex-wife.
`Williams continues to astonish with his command of subtlety and assured comic invention' Daily Telegraph
`A nicely wily Williams whodunit' Sunday Times
Could the take-over of Rigley's Patent Footbalm by the giant American Hutstacker Chemical Corporation really be scuppered by Mrs Ogmore-Davies's parrot finding a body in Panty Harbour?
It looked like it, but banker sleuth Mark Treasure took a different view when a second body was discovered the morning after he arrived in the little West Wales sailing village close to St David's. By then Treasure had already survived a murderous assault aboard the Fishguard Express, a pitched battle on Whitland Station, and the inexplicable disappearance of a battered Australian clergyman. And that was only the start of his exceedingly unquiet weekend.
The fourth in David Williams' superb series of Mark Treasure mysteries, and a finalist for the 1980 Gold Dagger Award, Murder for Treasure is a superbly witty whodunnit.
Marton Manor, in rural Herefordshire, makes a romantic setting even for a hastily organised wedding. And it is a quickly-arranged ceremony indeed that Fleur Jarvas is demanding - even though marrying before her twenty-first birthday means forfeiting a large inheritance. Naturally all the guests, including banker-turned-sleuth Mark Treasure and his wife Molly, are dying to know why. But that's only the first mystery lurking beneath the surface of this increasingly sinister country weekend. The real question is why the long-straying father of the bride shows up uninvited...
As the wedding-eve rituals gather pace, so does the tension. And when the next day dawns, it is not to bells and confetti but to two unexplained deaths, a pointed disappearance - and a testing case for Treasure.
University College, Itchendever is short of funds - and up for grabs. The rival parties in the proposed takeover seem to be the American Funny Farms Foundation, run by the widow of a board-games mogul, and a calculating Arab prince. Banker sleuth Mark Treasure tries his hardest to adjudicate, but instead finds a baffling murder on his hands.
And this isn't a mere case of finding the culprit - there are other knotty problems with a bearing on the case. Who sent the gory sheep's head to the eccentric American millionairess? Was the celebrated Dr Goldstein, senior tutor and TV personality, behind the bomb scare? And why have the Arabs kidnapped an English Literature lecturer?
The second of David Williams' wonderfully witty murder mysteries, starring the urbane banker and classy detective Mark Treasure, Treasure by Degrees is sure to delight.
Hardly anyone attends St Martin's Church, Kengrave Square, in West London, and it's very nearly falling down. But when news gets out that it's to be closed, and possibly sold, there's a significant flurry of interest. The site is worth millions. Aziz Developments are after it, and so is the Community of Investors for Jesus - a curious American group of televangelists. Enter Kengrave Square resident, the Honourable Mrs Monica Lodey, whose grandfather built the church. The venerable Mrs Lodey is determined to save St Martin's. She's not only rich but she can also exert huge influence: her brother is Chairman of Grenwood, Phipps, the merchant bankers, where Mark Treasure is Chief Executive.
When the vicar's wife launches a fund to repair St Martin's, there's a rowdy parish meeting where Treasure's actress wife Molly is the first to promise money. Treasure hopes that can be the extent of his involvement. But when a sudden death follows, spawning more dramatic events, both he and Molly find themselves gradually drawn into yet another investigation, and this time very close to home.
As cleverly plotted and wryly funny as ever, Holy Treasure! is another thrilling escapade from fiction's best banker-detective.
It's high summer in Oxford. The university vacation has just begun. The eight governors of the Moneybuckle Endowment architectural library are assembling at All Saints College for the annual dinner before their meeting under chairman Mark Treasure, merchant banker.
The talk at the table is of some pricey sketches said to be by Constable, and an offer from a dealer in the town. But the talk turns to shock when murder is done in Walton Street, with the sketches as the obvious motive. The police are quick to make an arrest, but Treasure is sure they've got the wrong suspect - even though all other likely culprits are Moneybuckle governors, or Moneybuckle's custodian himself...
Treasure in Oxford marks the twelfth outing for David Williams' utterly charming banker-turned-detective in a cleverly plotted mystery that is sure to delight.
To steal a painting from the Hermitage museum in Leningrad is going to take planning, nerve and ingenuity - and that's how Sergey Vasilefski does the job, unaided. But there's no way he'll be able to get the painting out of Russia alone...
The police come to suspect that members of the Baroque Circle - a cultural group on a visit from England - are implicated in the theft, and their suspicions deepen when a Circle member is brutally murdered during the interval at the Kirov Opera House. The President of the Circle is horrified - and so is her husband, merchant banker Mark Treasure, who suddenly finds himself in the most beautiful of Russian cities with a pressing need to uncover a murderer.
The investigating authorities are hot on Treasure's heels and he must work with pace and intelligence to protect his fellow travelers, even if that means teaming up with the greatest cynic in the KGB.
Executed with David Williams' trademark verve and wit, Treasure in Roubles showcases the eponymous banker sleuth at his finest.
When Roger Rorch, the talented chairman of the London-based advertising agency RTB, supposedly commits suicide, banker and detective Mark Treasure is certain that all is not as it seems.
Treasure's search for foul play reveals a tangled web of deals and egos - Rorch was defying his partners by opposing a GBP2m takeover bid by a huge New York firm; RTB's most powerful client stands to lose a fortune if the sale goes ahead; and the head of the rival Fentley agency is also deeply involved, and not just because his wife has her own key to Rorch's riverside London penthouse...
With his own bank interested in the fate of RTB, it's up to Treasure to follow the clues and overturn the coroner's verdict of accidental death - and to substitute one of murder.
A classic 'ad-land' mystery, Advertise for Treasure is the seventh installment in David Williams' brilliantly witty Mark Treasure detective series and elicited comparisons to Dorothy L, Sayers' Murder Must Advertise when it was first published in 1984.
When Arthur Moonlight, a financially troubled aristocrat, has second thoughts about selling the family mansion to the fanatical 'Forward Britain' movement he calls in his friend, London financier Mark Treasure, to stop the sale. But the situation is far more complicated than it first seems and when evidence comes to light that a valuable Shakespearean manuscript is hidden at Mitchell Hall, the Moonlight family's former country seat becomes a centre of death and intrigue.
In the space of a few short days, an old lady has died of fright, a grave-digger has suffered a fatal fall, and linked to these strange incidents are a menacing American posing as a clergyman, a power-hungry MP, and a famous antiquarian supervising a team of Filipino labourers.
This, the first of Mark Treasure's investigations, will lead to even more startling revelations - and unexpected rewards.
It's action all the way in this classic and witty whodunit centred round the fate of the 19th-century Round House could wreck the multi-million pound development in a south coast resort. A dozen interested parties are in favour of knocking it down. They include an Arab oil sheikh, a sexy English Literature drop-out from Sussex University, the head of a construction company, and a romantic novelist. And where does Canon Tring's languorous young wife fit in to all this?
Only Louella, Lady Brasset, is committed to keeping the Round House standing; she believes it to be the joint creation of two famous architects, Sir John Soane and William Butterfield. But four hours after Treasure promises her a stay of execution on the house, it's Louella who is blown up-and another accident follows. Double accident-or double murder?
Roderick Copper, retired Major, and Benny Gold, elderly London cabbie, apply on the same morning for residential places with the Rudyard Trust for Retired Officers and Gentlemen. But its eccentric and drunken Director tells them the Trust is technically bankrupt, its multi-million pound assets about to be divided between the founder's descendants - a curious, motley crew.
Banker Mark Treasure is called in when Copper and Gold's bizarre scheme to preserve the charity goes wrong with terrifying consequences - kidnap, stabbing and sudden death - involving one of the bank's clients, ex-President Cruba of Ngonga, exiled in London with his sensuous third wife, his 15-year-old son, and Gerard Opac, his handsome, ambitious aide.
A wonderfully sophisticated piece of detective fiction, Copper, Gold and Treasure - the fifth Mark Treasure mystery - is sure to delight with its comedic wit.
Mark Treasure has no idea that accompanying his actress wife on location to a picturesque West Country town could possibly lead to murder . . .
The merchant banker is asked by Chiversley's Area Bishop to become involved in the financial affairs of the local covent - one with only three nuns left in residence and assets worth eleven million pounds. But
this simple challenge develops into a double murder mystery when it becomes clear that one of the people already responsible for managing the convent finances has died in suspicious circumstances, and when a second is found half-naked and strangled soon after leaving an important dinner party. And what of a callous arson attack on the convent itself?
Convinced that the police are about to arrest the wrong suspect, Treasure must use all his experience and ingenuity to uncover important evidence and unravel a complex web of deception. But time is against him and a killer is on the loose . . .
Packed full of humour and red herrings, Treasure by Post is classic mystery writing at its finest.