A chance encounter with a pickpocket leads Peter Kerrigan to Marsh Manor, where the librarian is on the trail of the missing treasure, supposedly hidden by Lord Claydon a hundred years previously. And the fact that the librarian has been murdered rather suggests that he was on the right track. Soon Kerrigan finds himself in competition with Lord Claydon's descendants as a scramble ensues to locate the fabled treasure, the clue to which appears to lie in a series of Shakespearean quotations...

Under the watchful eye of Superintendent Bone, Inspector Dewar has his work cut out when he is called to investigate a mysterious spate of killings—each victim is apparently unconnected, the murders linked only by the macabre addition of a numbered badge to the victim’s corpse. As the death toll mounts, Dewar and Bone face a race against time to catch the killer. But who could be behind these terrible crimes? And what could possibly be the motivation for such apparently random acts of crue...

Review from MyreviewerThis is a book remembered for its description (Chapter 7) of the village cricket match. For anyone who has played club cricket for the 3rd eleven or lower it will help to recall some of the events that make cricket the exceptional sport it is.It is the same game with the same rules as for the pinnacle of the game, Test Cricket. It is usually played over a period of 4 hours 30 minutes, including tea.However unfit, competent or incompetent the playe...

Peter Kerrigan is a man with expensive tastes. Currently, however, he is at something of a low ebb, with only twenty-two shillings and eightpence standing between him and destitution. A chance encounter at Hampstead appears to offer a way out via a scheme to blackmail the members of a dope ring not yet known to the police. But when the plan backfires in an unexpected way, Kerrigan decides to assist his friend Inspector Fleming in apprehending a dangerous criminal gang - and possibly make a...

Kilby St. Benedict is a typical English village, whose tranquil facade conceals a nest of scandal. The vicar and a militant atheist are engaged in a petty feud. To make matters worse, both are in love with the beautiful daughter of the Armenian millionaire who lives at the manor, a passion shared by the ruthlessly ambitious son of local poet Ludovic Macaulay. So when a body is found stabbed to death near the Monk's Weir, Inspector Fleming has no problems in discovering a slew of potential ...

An amusing thriller by A.G. Macdonell, one of six mysteries he wrote under the pseudonym Neil Gordon. Macdonell is best known for the gently satirical novel „England, Their England”, which appeared the same year as „The Shakespeare Murders” and enjoyed a great success, which probably led to his abandoning the mystery genre. In „The Shakespeare Murders”, the treasure was to be found in an English country house, and it was worth one million pounds, but what was the treasure, was it jewels or...

The Autobiography of a Cad is the hilarious 'memoir' of an arch-rotter, chronicling the life of one (happily fictitious) Edward Fox-Ingleby. A. G. Macdonell had great fun in writing this book, undoubtedly his funniest. It is written as a tongue-in-cheek 'autobiography' of a man who ploughs his way through life shafting everyone around him. After inheriting an estate from his dull father while still at Eton, he then goes up to Oxford; adroitly evades service in the...

George Templeton has been looking forward to his golfing holiday in Scotland. So he is not best pleased when a dislocated thumb puts paid to his plans and he is left with no other available occupation than a daily hike. Roaming the coastline, however, his boredom is allayed when he discovers an old schoolfriend engaged in the strange activity of hunting for bombs at the side of the road. When his old acquaintance claims never to have met him, Templeton's suspicions are aroused and his inve...