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...

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...

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...

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...

"Tragedy At Ravensthorpe" by J. J. Connington is a masterfully crafted anthology that transports readers into the heart of mystery and suspense. The titular story, "Tragedy at Ravensthorpe," sets the stage in the picturesque yet mysterious English countryside. The new Chief Constable, Sir Clinton Driffield, finds himself far from his South African roots, navigating the enigmatic Ravensthorpe estate. The Chacewater family's extravagant masked ball becomes the backdrop for a complex conspira...

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...

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 -...

Inspector John Poole of Scotland Yard investigates a death that, on the surface, appears completely natural. But in the worldl of high finance, nothing is ever quite what it seems...

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....

In a lonely East Anglian parish, the village pub becomes a crime scene after closing time. The victim is a newcomer with few friends and fewer allies among tight-knit locals who distrust outsiders. A Yard inspector is sent to sort fact from old stories, only to find doors closed, tales practiced, and a run of bad luck that seems to follow anyone not born there. When odd traces suggest a carefully planned entry and exit, the case turns from a simple stabbing to a problem of timing, access, ...

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...

Witting's second Inspector Charlton mystery, first published in 1937, is set in Paulsfield (clearly a fictional Petersfield in Hampshire). It is a market day and there is much noise and bustle. A bull decides it is time to liberate itself and goes on the rampage. As this is happening, a cleaner working on the statue in the middle of the square is shot dead, straight through the head. Inspector Charlton has very few leads on this case. There is no obvious motive for the cleaner's death, and...