Larh Thomas is called in to help a rich musician, Paul Roberts, who receives death threats when the remains of an old body are found on land he owns on the wild north coast of Cornwall. The body is from the time of the English Civil War in the seventeenth century and was buried in the middle of a stone circle which is being excavated on the nearby moor. The musician lives in an old fort built into the side of a cliff, which links to ancient mine workings which run down through the cliff to...

Larh Thomas is asked to review a project based in Bristol to return a Victorian steam boat that has been found nearly intact on a mudbank on the Volta river in Ghana. The project has been attracting adverse publicity by local radical elements, partly because its leader 'Captain' John Hastings's stubborn attitude. The council is planning to stop funding the project.However, soon after she arrives, Larh is present when a member of the project team, Jane Goodhaul, is attacked in the s...

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.Surrey Hills, 1865Scotland Yard detectives, Inspector Leslie and Sergeant Pashtine, are called in when a body is discovered in a beautiful valley in the Surrey Hills where a new railway is being built. The land between two hills is owned by two local men, an MP and a Naval gun designer, Mr Reynolds, who have houses on their respective hills. The dead body is that of Mr Reynold's son, who was believed to have gone to India, but n...

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.Chichester1894Private detective Jane Dowling is invited by the Bishop of Chichester to investigate a series of anonymous letters he has received, because a local prostitute has expired in the cathedral's Magdalene Chapel in a way predicted by the first letter. Jane arrives but is soon ruffling the feathers of the higher orders in Cathedral Close and is sent away to Pevensey Marshes with the dean's assistant to investigat...

Cape ColonyAutumn 1902Jane Dowling is hired by the matriarch of a Devon aristocratic family, Grace Smallbach, to recover the body of her husband's brother, Luke, who has been found dead in a Paris brothel. Jane travels to the family estate on the edge of Dartmoor for Luke's funeral. At a family meeting it becomes clear the financial situation is desperate, and they need to recover the investments Luke's older brother John, had supposedly been making in Cape Town. The family ...

Larh is called to the desert west of Cairo to examine a World War II truck which has been discovered by an archeological dig, covered in sand deep in a wadi. Inside there are the bodies of two army deserters and the kit bags of two more, together with some antiquities stolen from the Cairo museum. Larh has been hired by the grandchildren of one of the missing men, Major Ruskin, to find out what happened to him.It becomes clear that Major Ruskin had a companion, an American journali...

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.Larh Thomas is asked to review a project based in Bristol to return a Victorian steam boat that has been found nearly intact on a mudbank on the Volta river in Ghana. The project has been attracting adverse publicity by local radical elements, partly because its leader ‘Captain’ John Hastings’s stubborn attitude. The council is planning to stop funding the project.However, soon after she arrives, Larh is present when a member of...

Portsmouth, 1905Private detective Jane Dowling is invited down to Southsea to look into the death of Commander Granger, one of three men who are questioning the Royal Navy's strategy for building ever bigger battleships, at the start of the dreadnought arms race with Germany. The dockyard at Portsmouth is the biggest industrial complex in the world at the time, capable of building one battleship a year, yet it relies on workers who live in conditions as poor as any London slum. The...

Nightingale LaneLondon, 1901Private Detective Jane Dowling is asked to look for the daughter of a well known leader of the women's emancipation movement. She gets drawn into a wider investigation of a White Slavery gang who are taking young women to a camp in Holland for indoctrination into this foul trade.At the same time, it becomes clear that one of the leading newspaper magnates, Lord Hardcourt, is taking rather too much interest in the criminal life of London's...

An international media company, Mandleson, hires Larh Thomas to investigate embarrassing assets in their archive, as it is about to go public. An embittered ex-employee has stolen a number of paintings by an obscure Victorian painter which went missing in the second world war. He has escaped to Zanzibar, and he is threatening to tell company secrets which go back to the time of slavery on the East African coast. At first it appears Mandleson are trying to enhance the value of these paintin...

A Debt of SilenceLondon, 1899Private detective Jane Dowling is employed to help catch a blackmailer, but the case becomes complicated because it is clear the blackmailer has collected some state secrets in his fishing net as well as personal details. The blackmailer is forced to leave his house and stores his collection in trunks held in depots around London, with a clever card indexing system which fascinates Scotland Yard. Then the bodies of two twins are discovered in tr...

South coast of Cornwall,2018A rock singer invites Larh down to the Sawmills studio on the Fowey river to help with bad publicity. He is trying to make an album about local wise-women and witches from previous centuries, and how they became victims of persecution. This becomes complicated by both outside and inside forces, and the band is forced to relocate to a medieval mansion, Fowey Place, preceded over by a very unlady-like Lady of the manor.Cornwall in winter is ...