Description "He is dead. It is quite impossible that he should have killed himself. He has been murdered. About half an hour ago. By a long knife passed under the left shoulder-blade into the heart."On a fog-bound London night, a soirée is taking place in the studio of artist Laurence Newtree. The guests include an eminent psychiatrist, a wealthy philanthropist and an observant young friend of Newtree's, John Christmas. Before the evening is over, Newtree's neighbour is found stabbed to de...

Murder begins with the death of a kitten…Artist Jeanie Halliday is thrilled to move into a country cottage of her own, next door to the home of her dear childhood friend Agnes. But the countryside idyll isn't quite what she might have expected: Agnes is suddenly and unaccountably unfriendly for one thing; and then the neighbours are a little peculiar - old Mr Fone, obsessed with burial mounds; the scandalous Hugh Barchard; and an estranged mother taken to brandishing pistol...

Amid the danger of World War Two's London, Kate Mayhew is returning from another hopeless round of the theatrical agents. She is about to take a job in munitions when a poster about a missing child prompts her to help the war effort in a very different way. Obsessed with finding out what has happened to young Sidney Brentwood, Kate journeys to rural Wales where the boy was last seen.Aided by land-girl Aminta and the dashing young archaeologist Colin Kemp, Kate stumbles upon clandest...

Description"the murderer was also riding a bicycle... why, if we can trace it, we shall have the murderer!"On a cycling holiday in the idyllic Wales-Herefordshire border countryside, Nora and her friends make a gruesome discovery - the body of their missing comrade at the bottom of a quarry. But an apparently accidental fall turns out to have been murder - for the man was shot in the head.Fortunately John Christmas, last seen in The Studio Crime (1929), is on hand with his redoubtable fore...

J. J. Connington’s Tragedy at Ravensthorpe is a refined example of Golden Age detective fiction, featuring the calm and analytical Sir Clinton Driffield. The novel is set at Ravensthorpe, an imposing country house surrounded by bleak moorland, where a family gathering is disrupted by a sudden and suspicious death. What first appears to be a tragic accident soon reveals signs of careful planning and hidden motives. Beneath the estate’s respectable surface lies a web of rivalries, financial ...

John Rutherford, bookseller and sometime fiction writer, discovers the bludgeoned corpse of a policeman one evening while taking a stroll in a rainstorm. The policeman's overturned bicycle is what first catches Rutherford's eye. Then he sees Officer Johnson's body sprawled on the sodden ground of Phantom Coppice. Rutherford takes Johnson's bike and pedals to rural Paulsfield police station, two miles away, to report the crime. There he finds Sgt. Martin who initiates calls to a doctor, a p...

The Piccadilly Murder by Anthony Berkeley is a classic detective novel that combines suspense, clever twists, and Berkeley’s characteristic wit. Featuring the keen and unconventional amateur sleuth Ambrose Chitterwick, the story opens with a seemingly ordinary afternoon in a tearoom in Piccadilly, London, which quickly takes a sinister turn. Chitterwick, a quiet yet astute member of the Crimes Circle club, witnesses an unusual encounter that soon leads to the sudden death of one of the pat...

Work was mounting up, Detective Inspector Charlton did not feel too well and he could have done without Mr Otto Bajornsen. Yet had not this untidy, smiling man come on his fact-finding trip to Downshire, the affair of the Busy Bees might have had a very different conclusion. Even as he sat talking in Charlton's office in Lulverton, the wheels were being set in motion and Mr Theophilus Mildwater, curator of the Monk Jewel Museum, was anxiously reporting the loss of Exhibit 115, a valuable -...

In "The Duke of York's Steps," Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher weaves a captivating narrative that intricately blends historical insight with rich character development. Set against the backdrop of early 20th-century England, the book explores the societal implications of the Duke of York's steps at Eton College. Through eloquent prose and engaging dialogue, Aubrey-Fletcher captures not only the physicality of these iconic steps but also their symbolic significance in the lives of the s...

Eighteen-year-old Max Edwards, the self-educated son of a butler, lives on a grand Irish country estate. He dreams of a better life and unexpectedly finds love with the owner's new Japanese bride, but class differences make their love impossible. World War I erupts, and Max faces the nightmarish Battle of the Somme. Wounded in combat, he meets a commander who transfers him to the Royal Flying Corps to be a pilot. In the air, he fights the famous Red Baron and befriends a German flying ace....

Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder"First published in 1930, this entry in the British Library Crime Classics series evokes a time when stouthearted chaps did their duty for king and country, and the village had only one telephone." —Publishers Weekly'They're terrible mistrustful of strangers in these parts.'Samuel Whitehead, landlord of the Rose and Crown, is a stranger in the lonely East Anglian vill...

Detective Inspector Harry Charlton finds himself invited to a reunion at Mereworth School at which a particularly unpleasant, but very famous and accomplished old boy, Colonel Bernard Garstang -VC, DSO and MC... aka 'Rhino' will be present. The Colonel is attending this event in order to persuade his daughter Diana and his ex-wife Muriel that Diana should accompany him to live in Port Douglas, Nigeria. He is both inebriated and armed... But also there is Gordon Hollander, who is much enamo...