As head of the Criminal Studies department at the University of Wessex, Doctor Tudor Cornwall has murder on his mind. One violent death that has always bothered him is the killing of Alec D'Urberville in the Thomas Hardy novel Tess of The D'Urbervilles. He therefore decides to rewrite Hardy's account in the style of his contemporary, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This task is complicated by a real-life contemporary murder that bears some uncanny resemblances to the nineteenth century fiction. Wi...

Bognor braves the frost to discover who has murdered Canada's richest man. In his lavish private train car, Sir Roderick Farquhar draws a bath. When it has been filled to his satisfaction, the portly captain of industry tips in three drops of bath oil and lowers himself into the steam. Within seconds, the poison in the oil has stopped his heart and ruined Simon Bognor's winter. A special investigator for Britain's Board of Trade, Bognor makes the mistake of believing a Canadian friend's as...

After a boozy Oxford reunion, Bognor is distressed to learn one of his classmates is a killer. Nothing depresses Simon Bognor like a university reunion. Every pimply-faced boy he knew two decades prior has made something of himself, while Bognor languishes at the Board of Trade, muddling along in an investigatory position for which he is hideously unqualified. Although more often than not his job requires catching murderers, he lacks even the observational powers to notice when the head of...

An ancient country custom goes awry, killing a man and spoiling Bognor's holiday. At the annual Clout, the men of Herring do as they have done for centuries, firing arrows blindly into the woods and allowing their women to retrieve what they have shot. Nobody ever kills anything, but it's a jolly time nonetheless - until the day when a few of the arrows find their mark, pinning a wayward customs inspector to a tree in a bloody parody of Saint Sebastian. It's rotten luck for the dead man, a...

Bognor tries to understand how a publishing magnate could have been crushed by smut. Before retiring for the night, Vernon Hemlock pours a brandy, lights a cigar, and takes a look at his cache of pornography. Far more than a wad of dirty magazines stashed under a mattress, this is a collection of some of the world's finest erotica, dating back as far as a dirty doodle drawn by da Vinci. The millionaire publisher is perusing the Swedish section when the shelves begin to move. By the time he...

When a restaurateur dies suspiciously, Bognor is forced to eat his way to the truthDinner service is over, the staff has left, and Escoffier Savarin Smith is about to tuck into a couple of bottles of champagne. He seals the windows with electrical tape, fiddles with a canister of gas, and begins to drink. When his staff arrives the next morning to open the restaurant, the champagne is drunk, the air has been poisoned, and the greatest chef in England is dead—seemin...

In the dullest town in England, Bognor becomes enmeshed in a civic club murderEnglish politicians love to prattle on about the honest mettle of towns like Scarpington—mid-sized cities full of ugly buildings, ugly people, and a surfeit of wholesome values. In hopes of learning more about just what the nation's heartland is up to, the Board of Trade orders special investigator Simon Bognor to relocate to Scarpington and not to return until he knows what makes the plac...

Elegant and sophisticated biography of Princess Margaret, the controversial sister of Queen Elizabeth II, the Princess Diana of her day'A fascinating insight into the life of the party girl who became an icon in postwar Britain' DAILY EXPRESS'She was a witty, intelligent, stimulating companion - happily Tim Heald captures all these qualities in his admirably well-balanced biography' LITERARY REVIEWThe almost univers...

An ancient country custom goes awry, killing a man and spoiling Bognor's holidayAt the annual Clout, the men of Herring do as they have done for centuries, firing arrows blindly into the woods and allowing their women to retrieve what they have shot. Nobody ever kills anything, but it's a jolly time nonetheless—until the day when a few of the arrows find their mark, pinning a wayward customs inspector to a tree in a bloody parody of Saint Sebastian. It's rotten luc...

THE DUKE is the biography of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, a celebrity in his own right and yet an enigma still, even after 60 years in the public eye.What is he really like? Bombastic, autocratic, say his critics. Colourful, stimulating, say his admirers.Tim Heald was given a unique opportunity to find out for himself. Not for twenty years had a biographer been allowed such access to talk to Prince Philip and watch him at work - still ver...

For the sake of honey, Bognor investigates a cabal of treasonous monksAs the friars of the abbey gather for group prayer, Brother Luke stays in the garden. His tardiness is not due to an overenthusiasm for his potatoes, but to the fact that he is lying facedown in the dirt, strangled to death by his own crucifix. For Simon Bognor, this will prove inconvenient. A special investigator attached to the British Board of Trade, Bognor knows that Brother Luke was an under...

At a for-profit ancestral pile, Bognor seeks an earl-killing sniperAs real estate moguls slice and dice the great properties of the English countryside, the rambling grounds of Abney House are kept intact by being turned into a sort of theme park of the aristocracy for the public—complete with cafeteria, sailing museum, and safari-themed shooting gallery. But the theme isn't complete until a visiting earl is felled by a sniper's bullet, giving Abney House what ever...