Money can buy you many things but immortality isn’t one of them.Business titan, Henry Graball, has it all. Money, power, status. None dare challenge him, whatever the justification. At least, that is how he sees the world and why not?When his dead body is found at the venue of the extravagant party he has thrown to celebrate his success, it is clear there is someone out there who sees things very differently indeed.When so many people have good reason to wish ill of...

When murder strikes at a village fete, even the crows are asking, who wanted the scarecrow dead?The sun is shining, the bunting is fluttering, and the village of Staunton is alive with the excitement of its annual fete and scarecrow festival. But amid the laughter and merriment, darkness lurks. Before the first morning is done, a woman, dressed as a scarecrow, is found dead in an isolated spot on the edge of the village.Inspector Leslie Dykeman and the iras...

For one young woman, a sizeable and unexpected legacy comes with the ultimate price-tag; her life.A rural idyll in the depths of the Oxfordshire countryside is shaken to its foundations when the body of a beautiful woman is found at the bottom of a field-side ditch. Still smarting from the loss of his one-true love, Inspector Leslie Dykeman, accompanied by his irascible side-kick, Sergeant Stanley Shapes, is sent to investigate. What they uncover is a web of secrets, lies, jealousy...

Where gentle humour and a little romance meet classic murder-mysteries.Join the curmudgeonly Inspector Leslie Dykeman and the irascible Sergeant Stanley Shapes as they set about solving three murder cases, each set in and around the small Oxfordshire market town of Banbury in the early 1960s.Each story brings you an array of colourful characters. From the elusive and calculating killers, to the unsuspecting and promptly dispatched victims. From the untrustw...

Who would have thought golf could be such a deadly game?When two players stumble upon a dead body in a bunker on the thirteenth hole of their favourite golf club, their discovery is about to set in motion a series of events that will lay bare some of the less savoury aspects of the human condition.Inspector Leslie Dykeman and the irascible Sergeant Stanley Shapes find themselves engaged on a case that will drive them to distraction as they begin to investig...

Hide and seek may be child’s play, but murder most certainly is not.Summer 1959. When murder comes to the garden party of the Reverend George Sixpence, the curmudgeonly Inspector Leslie Dykeman and the irascible Sergeant Stanley Shapes are despatched from Banbury police station to apprehend the killer.Arriving at the splendid Victorian vicarage, Dykeman and Shapes find a group of suspects riddled with envy, bitterness and contempt for one another. As the two policemen strug...

An old-fashioned festival where someone’s idea of fun proves nothing short of deadly.As their cosy little weekend of fun and frivolity is blown out of the water by a violent murder, Inspector Leslie Dykeman and Sergeant Stanley Shapes find themselves faced with a plethora of possibilities and few obvious suspects amongst a group of friends staying at the upmarket Marlborough Hotel. Except, that is, they’re about to discover that even the best of friends have secrets they prefer to ...

When you’re dressed for living and full of beans, a run-in with death might not be all that is seems.London based PI, David Good, only went out to get his hair cut and to pick up a few bits and bobs at the local shops but, somehow or other, he’s finished up with a murder case on his hands. A man he’d spoken to only briefly that very morning has turned up dead, seemingly the victim of a hit-and-run incident. But it doesn’t take Good long to find out there is a lot m...

Before the Great War, Britain fought its first secret battle.In the spring of 1912, the nation appears calm and confident — yet beneath the surface a dangerous contest of secrets is already under way.Alexander Templeman, a young and respectable London solicitor, has no interest in intrigue or espionage. But when a chance encounter places him in possession of information others are prepared to kill for, his world is abruptly and violently transformed.

Sun, sea, sand. The perfect setting for a little romance, just so long as you can ignore the blackmail, the kidnapping and the corpses.Looking forward to a few days in the old seaside town of Brighton, private investigator David Good is expecting to do nothing more than hand-hold a young woman needing to keep a low profile. When the manageress of the hotel they are staying at takes a shine to him it looks like all is rosy in his garden.Honestly, though, what did he expect? ...

London based private investigator David Good has been asked by a new client to track down his wife, who has walked out on him with fifty thousand pounds in her handbag and not been seen since. Easy enough, thinks Good, but he’s about to find himself part of a magic show, where more than his sense of humour may be about to disappear.When a member of Her Majesty’s tax inspectorate with ambitions of her own makes him an unwelcome offer he can’t refuse, things become a whole lot more c...

A classic tale of espionage on the eve of the first world war.A murdered British civil servant. Stolen Government documents. A fleeing German agent. Events that presage a desperate new assignment for secret service agent Alexander Templeman.Tasked with helping to keep an escaping German scientist out of the hands of ruthless enemy agents, Templeman will soon find himself isolated and fighting for his very life. If the uncertain and inexperienced agent fails...