Murder Room
30 total works
A prominent American diplomat falls over a cliff to his death. The death is accepted as an accident, but could it have been suicide - or even murder? His widow finds a locked drawer in his desk and in it a file with a woman's name on it - but the file is empty.
Circumstances lead her to an elderly man bearing the same name, but he has a stroke and can neither speak nor write. And then she sees the car headlights coming at her, fast, at night, through an impenetrable mist ...
Publisher Tony Kane and his wife host a party in honor of best-selling author Amos Cottle at their Connecticut home. But all eyes are on the guests when an unseen hand slips cyanide into Cottle's drink.
Also present at the party is Basil Willing, a psychiatrist-sleuth who soon figures out that Cottle was not the man that his jacket-flap blurb said he was. Willing embarks on a course of literary detection, scouting for clues in book reviews, publisher correspondence, and other documents related to this rather ghostly writer ...
Girzel Graeme looked on her father as the embodiment of all that was wise and good. But now her father lay in a hospital hovering between life and death, and the evil that struck him down reached out to claim his daughter.
What terrifying secret did her father's past conceal? What horrifying act could he have committed? And what nameless danger threatened his daughter as she followed the lure of a fabulous jewel into a labyrinth of deceit, on the trail of a mysterious man who could save her faith in her father - or destroy both it and her.
Gisela von Hohenems joins the teaching staff of an exclusive girls' school in upstate New York, where she befriends fellow newcomer Faustina Coyle. But a climate of fear surrounds Faustina, and after several strange incidents that defy rational explanation, she is forced to resign.
Gisela asks her fiance, detective-psychologist Dr Basil Willing, to investigate in this highly acclaimed horror-mystery with shades of M. R. James.
Lydia Grey, an American returning to London after many years, is woken by footsteps in the night. There is someone in her room - of that she is sure. But that is also impossible. There is only one door and it is bolted shut. The windows are eight floors up, and are locked against the winter night.
As the noise recedes she switches on her bedside lamp. No one is there. Was it a dream? An illusion of a half-awakened state? Or is someone out to get her?
To wake the devil, Lucinda summoned the arch fiend with the ancient invocation, and from the secret room where her friend Vanya had agreed to hide came the eerie response. The rapping called up all the terror of the old tales, and the joke was going marvellously.
Until Lucinda realised that Vanya had never arrived at the old house ...
It's 1943, and down-on-his-luck American expat Philip Stark is on the Caribbean island of Santa Teresa. The prewar destination playground is deserted now except for diplomats and oil refinery workers.
When a local correspondent dies, Stark sees a chance to make some money. Having worked for the same company in the past, he is hired to replace the dead man. But Stark doesn't think his predecessor died by accident. As he looks into the mystery, he encounters a rival correspondent, an enigmatic police officer and the mistress of the dead man - all of whom had a stake in seeing him dead.
A castle, a deserted village, and murder in the Scottish Highlands
When child psychologist and US Naval Intelligence officer Lieutenant Peter Dunbar takes on a secret mission in the Scottish Highlands at the end of World War II, he finds himself drawn into the lives of a troubled boy and his beautiful young cousin.
But why does Johnny Stockton refuse to explain why he keeps running away from his comfortable home? And how might the answer be entangled with the mystery of an escaped German prisoner and a dying man's message?
The engagement of Archie, a young doctor, to night club artiste Frieda evokes ghostly phenomena when Archie takes Frieda to visit his mother near Washington.
Untraceable phone calls, vandalism - and a murder - all happen before Dr Basil Willing, psychologist-sleuth, takes over and solves the mystery.
From one of the best-loved authors of the Golden Age of detective fiction, this collection of short stories by Helen McCloy features psychiatrist-sleuth Dr Basil Willing.
Beginning with her classic, Through a Glass, Darkly, which she later expanded into a full-length novel, McCloy experimented with daringly imaginative concepts within the framework of the formal, fairplay detective story. From doppelgangers to flying saucers each story demonstrates the author's masterful combination of style, content and technique to produce some of crime fiction's finest work.
Kyra Novacs: Who was she? Where did she come from? Bob knew almost nothing about her, just enough to fall hopelessly in love with her. They were thrown together for business reasons and, believing her to be single, he threw caution to the wind.
But Kyra isn't single. And when her husband is killed in the midst of an argument over divorce, it falls to Bob's loyal wife of seventeen years, Susan, to prove his innocence ...
'Miss McCloy compels you to read every word' Observer
A woman dies by violence aboard the Santa Cristina. A radio flash from the West Indies brings word of an apparently related death. A man's body turns up, and in his hand is a suicide note written in one woman's handwriting but signed with another woman's name.
But what part does the jar of blood play - and why is everyone so interested in the contents of a certain package wrapped in cherub-bedecked paper? That's the puzzle Captain Urizar has to solve in a case with a startling showdown.
Psychiatrist-sleuth Dr Basil Willing is in a tobacconist's in Manhattan when another customer follows him into the shop, buys cigarettes, and leaves in a hurry. The man hails a taxi to take him to 51st street with the instruction: 'Come back and call for me; I am Dr Basil Willing.'
Intrigued, the real Basil Willing hails a second taxi and finds himself at a formal dinner party given by a psychiatrist for his patients, who do not really seem at ease there - and later he discovers the horrifying reason why ...
When a prominent New York socialite is murdered by means of an overdose of medication, it takes Dr Basil Willing, a psychiatrist attached to the police department, to solve the case.
But mysterious accidents start occurring during his investigation, and Willing must look deeper to uncover the motive and prevent the murderer from striking again ...
They told Lisa she was the daughter of an American aristocrat and an Italian princess both of whom died shortly after Lisa's birth. They told Lisa she was heiress to a vast Boston fortune, and that her American family cherished her and wanted her to stay with them.
At first Lisa tried to believe it all. Then she tried to separate the truth from the lies. Finally, she would know one thing for sure. Somebody or something was out to destroy her ...
Boston landlady Harriet Sutton discovers a note about a conspiracy to murder someone - a note that must have come from one of her tenants.
When a tenant is murdered, she asks psychiatrist-sleuth Dr Basil Willing to investigate. Her son, a Vietnam veteran whom the police consider a victim of combat fatigue who may be capable of anything, is under suspicion. And as the mystery unfolds, Harriet Sutton tries desperately to prove them wrong.
When Uncle Felix dies of a suspected overdose of digitalis, his niece Alison accepts the offer of a remote mountain lodge for the summer to get away from the tragedy.
But there are strange noises in the night and sinister visitors - and she discovers that the previous tenant was driven insane. What also transpires is that Uncle Felix had devised what he claimed to be an unbreakable cypher. The Pentagon is interested in this claim, and Alison has a fragment of a clue found beside her uncle's bed. In the mountains she wrestles with the puzzle. But solving it will put her life in grave danger ...
Harry Vaughan's uncle has just passed away, providing the young man with a colossal fortune. Giving up his job, Harry goes back to his roots - and to Celia, the woman he loves.
But Harry Vaughan has lost part of his memory. He feels himself ten years older, suffers from headaches, meets people who know him but whom he doesn't remember. When Celia's husband is killed it becomes clear that someone is following Vaughan's life. But who is this shadow and what do they want?
'A real psychiatric shocker' The Tablet
Maria Skinner recovers consciousness after a car crash to find herself in a psychiatric clinic. She remembers the crash quite clearly but she is told that she is suffering from delusions - and must not leave hospital.
She tries to contact her husband but is informed that he is unavailable. Finally, in a desperate attempt to escape, she reluctantly agrees to accompany a man who insists he is her husband - but whom she knows is an impostor. Moving from one captivity to another, she becomes a pawn in someone else's sinister game ...