Francis Wheatley Winn, Senior Tutor at St Thomas' s College, is ready for a cosy night of dining, port, and pleasant company. Ernst Brendel, Viennese lawyer and crime specialist, has come to Oxford to lecture in Law, and the regular residents of St Thomas's are pleased to have such an interesting guest to liven up their after dinner chat. Talk soon turns to murder, and Winn finds the subject altogether unpalatable, even if his colleagues seem to relish the details of past cases Brendel has...

Anthony Newton has fallen hopelessly in love with the beautiful Cynthia, and feels desperate to secure her hand, putting an end to his carefree bachelor days. But there is one small problem. Cynthia is only nineteen, and Anthony, at thirty-six, is thought rather too old for her. Tearing himself from her side, Anthony goes on a great Arctic adventure, purely for the purpose of giving Cynthia time to be young, and test his own feelings towards her. For the three years he is away battling the...

Late at night in the Senior Common Room of St Thomas's College, Ernst Brendel is persuaded by his companions to relate a tale of murder, blackmail, and corruption. A wager is made, half a crown to the first person to guess the murderer correctly. But the game is not so simple. The crime involves four friends, each with the potential to be the murderer – or the victim.Brendel employs the art of 'pre-detection', uncovering motive and cause before the crime has even been committed. Bu...

An island republic goes to insane lengths to canonize its most famous residentJuanita di Perli was a young woman when she decided to live the rest of her life on a table-top. She called it God's will, but for the order of nuns that sprang up around her, Juanita's devotion was a curse. For decades they did the bidding of the holy grouch, and the entire island of San Juan el Pirata sighed with relief when she died.Twenty years later, the islanders fight for Ju...

An unidentified body is found in a blazing car. A man in the locality is missing. But the corpse in the car is not that of the missing man, though someone has made an uncommonly thorough job of faking it to seem so.And just because his unknown opponent had gone to such lengths to prevent an investigation going further, Detective Mark Brand aka The Counsellor's 'satiable curiosity' is up ...'As a maker of watertight puzzles Mr Connington has no superior'

First published in 1948, Death on the Last Train is a Chief Inspector Littlejohn mystery full of false leads, dead ends and old-fashioned charm.Detective Inspector Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is travelling to an assignment, exhausted after an arduous journey of delayed connections, when he catches the last train. A murder occurs in his carriage, putting on hold any other plans he may have had. The local police, out of their depth, commande...

First published in 1973, Devious Murder is a Chief Inspector Littlejohn mystery full of intrigue, tantalising clues and colourful characters.Whilst taking the dog out for the last walk of a rainy day, Inspector Littlejohn of Scotland Yard stumbles across a dead body. Recognising it as Charles Blunt, a thief he crossed paths with and admired many years before, Littlejohn is determined to solve the case. But where did the body come from? Wha...

No one would have guessed that death lurked nearby, and that only a little distance from the glitter and glamour of a house party, two victims lay silent on the floor. On a fine autumn weekend, Lord Aveling hosts a party at his country house. Among the guests are an actress, a journalist, an artist, and a mystery novelist. The unlucky thirteenth is John Foss, injured at the local train station and brought to the house to recuperate - but John is nursing a secret of his own. Soon events tak...

Inspector Cockrill's dull vacation is jolted by a Mediterranean murderFrom the moment he steps on the plane, Inspector Cockrill loathes his fellow travelers. They are typical tour group bores: the dullards of England whom he had hoped to escape by going to Italy. He gives up on the trip immediately, burying his nose in a mystery novel to ensure that no one tries to become his friend. But not long after the group makes landfall at the craggy isle of San Juan el Pirat...

Inspector Charlesworth investigates a strange murder in a dress shopThe sales room at Christophe et Cie is staffed by five young women. Each is beautiful in her own way—and each could be a murderer. One morning, two of the women purchase some oxalic acid to clean a stain off a Panama hat. No one knows how the poison gets into Miss Doon's system, but it doesn't take long to kill her. When Inspector Charlesworth steps into the little shop, he finds a dozen motives and...

The Golden Age author of Green for Danger delivers "a mystery in the classic Christie-Carr-Queen manner . . . An outstanding tour de force" ( The New York Times).Few were disappointed when Raoul Vernet was found with his head bashed in, dead in a pool of his own blood. On vacation in England, the Belgian seducer comes to visit Matilda, an old flame from a few years before. She agrees despite suspicions that Vernet has been deployi...

The staff of Style magazine in London are in the feverishly exciting period just before the latest Paris fashion news is to break. They have debated late into the night about which photographs to feature, but only one of them knows that the stakes are so high that an employee will be dead by morning …Inspector Henry Tibbett must act quickly to save the life of his niece, a beautiful Style model, who is in danger of becoming the next victim of a crime as ingenious ...