Anthony Gilbert

The party has commenced, yet the host is inexplicably absent. The lifeless body of Sir Simon Chandos, the wealthy and respected owner of Freyne Abbey, is discovered in his library, ostensibly a victim of self-inflicted demise. Tensions grip the guests as they grapple with the overwhelming shock. However, amateur detective Scott Egerton, a guest himself, uncovers an unexpected connection between the Freyne household and a long-forgotten event, leading to a shocking revelation. Determined to discover the truth, Egerton embarks on a perilous quest to unveil the malevolent presence behind the murder. Anthony Gilbert, the pen name of Lucy Beatrice Malleson, kept her identity a secret for many years, publishing over sixty crime novels under four pseudonyms between 1925 and 1972. This classic golden age mystery, published in 1927, introduces the amateur sleuth Scott Egerton and is a testament to Gilbert’s mastery of intrigue, suspense, and storytelling.

The victim was certainly deserving of death. But not the hard, cruel death that he found. No-one deserved that. But the murderer made him suffer it, nevertheless. And the murderer went unsuspected. Someone else would pay the price society demanded for the crime. An innocent woman would pay, and the murderer was willing to arrange other, more 'accidental' deaths to ensure it. But then Arthur Crook took a hand. Big, fat, crafty and cocksure Arthur Crook is a solicitor — but the most unorthodox one it is possible to imagine. And he has two guiding principles only: his client is always innocent — because he says so — and come hell or high water he always gets his man. But even these two hitherto immutable principles were placed in some peril this time — in what turned out to be one of Crook's most baffling cases.

When the Bankses' Dutch au pair was stood up by the boyfriend with whom she'd arranged to go away secretly while the family were on holiday, she could have have foreseen that it would lead to her meeting Arthur Crook.

Among the visitors to the Verekers' family mansion of Four Acres was Lewis Bishop — the perfect victim, whom everyone had reason to hate and fear. When he is suddenly shot dead in the darkness of the library one night all he leaves behind him is an unpleasant memory and a pretty puzzle for the police and, of course, for Arthur Crook, that irrepressible and slightly unscrupulous detective who is in particularly fine form.

Brash lawyer-detective Arthur Crook, of the ancient Rolls Royce, ginger hair and billycock headgear, is on the scene again, this time saving the day for client, love and the British police force. Crook finds intrigue on his doorstep when his neighbor, a prim milliner, disappears under strange circumstances, leaving behind strangled bird and little else in the way of a clues. When it turns out that the milliner has been involved with a smuggling ring, an attractive young artist finds herself the unwitting target of a vicious crime gang. London police are at a loss to find either the smugglers or the vanished milliner. When murder enters the picture, Crook, alarmed for the safety of his artist friend, seeks to get her out of London. His plan backfires, and he is plunged into a desperate chase-a race with death.

When Florence Penny's body is found hanging from a beam in the bedsit she has been renting, it looks to Inspector Field like a case of suicide. Inspector Field's enquiries begin to throw an air of mystery over the case. Soon, though, he realizes murder is the motive, and the discovery of a single pink bead among the disordered bedclothes leads him to prime suspect Charles Hobart. When he makes an arrest for murder, it is the wrong man. Fortunately Scott Egerton is on hand to solve the case. It's now up to Scott Egerton, Hobart's prospective brother-in-law, and an astute private inquiry agent named Gordon to establish Hobart's innocence . . .

Lee Child's latest unputdownable thriller starring Jack Reacher features a chilling serial killer.Sergeant Amy Callan and Lieutenant Caroline Cook have a lot in common. Both were army high-flyers.Both were acquainted with Jack Reacher.Both were forced to resign from the service. Now they're both dead.Both were found in their own home, naked, in a bath full of paint.Both apparent victims of an army man.A loner, a smart guy with a score to settle, a ruthless vigilante.A man just like Jack Reacher.

> A fancy dress ball is in full swing when in the tumult of the revelry, Sir Ralph Feltham is found dead... >The British Secret Service agents, working to uncover a large-scale blackmail ring and catch its mysterious mastermind, "The Spider," find themselves at the country residence, Feltham Abbey, where the ball is in full swing. >When Sir Ralph Feltham is found dead, Tony, a bewildered young lawyer, sets out to make sense of the night's activities and the motives of the other guests. Among them is Hilary, an independently minded socialite still in her costume of vivid silk pyjamas and accompanying teddy bear...

Sporting his familiar mustard-colored suit, his bowler hat and his bright yellow Rolls Royce, Arthur Crook is on the scene again. This time the imperturbable little Cockney criminal lawyer is drawn into a tangled case of suave murder than only he can unravel—a case that features as fine a collection of poisonously polite, potential murderers as he has ever been called upon to face.

> To Sarah Hollis and her flat-mates a ramshackle villa in the French Pyrenees seemed to offer the perfect holiday; 'romantic, restful, remote' was how the advertisement described the Villa Abercrombie. >Sarah went ahead of the others in her own little car. On the way she had met by chance a man called Arthur Crook, though she could scarcely believe his assertion, made with hearty and cosy vulgarity, that he was by profession a lawyer. A time would come when Sarah would have need of Crook's services . . .

A false alarm at Everard Hope's home leads to a fatal tumble down the staircase by the miserly owner. The assembled relations are flabberghasted when Hope's lawyer informs them that he had remade his will, and none of them stand to inherit. The entire estate goes to a quiet, dowdy, sheltered spinster named Dorothea Capper - however, there's a condition. Miss Capper won't receive her inheritance until 30 days have passed, giving somebody time to ensure she doesn't live to inherit.

On the day that Emily Tate vanished, Inspector Marston met her husband, Stephen Tate, on the tow-path of the River Pyle. The unassuming Stephen was on the brink of a nightmare episode that was to make his unhappy marriage, his clandestine love affair and his disappointed hopes seem positively joyous by comparison. The determination of the girl he loved was the only thing that could save him from the web of circumstances in which he was enmeshed. She sent for Detective Arthur Crook.

It was lovely Margaret Reeve who told Arthur Crook about the strange happenings in the Poulden household. Edwin Poulden, druggist in a small English village, lost his wife very suddenly following a bilious attack after a meal of mushrooms. Six months after that dreadful occurrence, Blanche Bannerman, an elderly paying guest in the Poulden home, took sick and, in Poulden's words, was unconscious. But young Patsy, Poulden's ward, overheard him talking to Miss Bannerman about terms he could not meet. That same night, when Margaret stopped in Miss Bannerman's room to see how she was feeling, Patsy's pet cat came tearing out of the room. A little while later Miss Bannerman was found lying dead on the floor. The inquest established Miss Bannerman's death as the combined effect of a terrible scare from the cat that she detested and a concussion caused by a fall. But two sudden deaths in the Poulden household in the space of six months seemed too coincidental to the sleuthing genius of Arthur Crook. Things got far beyond what he thought was in store for him when, in his little red sports car, he decided to find out if this might be a question of murder.

On a fast train to London, lawyer Arthur Crook meets trouble with a capital T. During the journey one passenger disappears and is subsequently found dead beside the line; and it is thanks to Crook's turn of speed that a second corpse isn't found there too. These events are part of a series of crimes planned by a man who has killed before and is preparing to kill again. This is the gripping story of a girl in desperately dangerous circumstances flitting stealthily from one inconspicuous boarding-house to another and seeking safety in obscurity. Yet, ironically, it is Crook, the eccentric red-headed solicitor to whom obscurity is as unknown as it is undesired, who achieves her salvation after a life-and-death chase.

A cliff-top house, a body on the beach, a man who suspects his best friend.... When Doctor Terence Ambrose visits Gervase Blount at Four Corners he notices the body of a man low down on a cliff near the house. His enquiries into the man's death point suspicion at several people, particularly his old friend from Balliol, Gervase Blount himself. As he delves into the past a complicated web of intrigue is slowly exposed . . .

A murder mystery featuring Anthony Gilbert's Liberal politician-detective Scott Egerton. It began with the theatre - and ended with drugs, blackmail and a decades old crime... Major John Hillier, a well-known clubman, is found dead in his flat in Upper Paulton Terrace early one morning in rather peculiar circumstances. The discovery is made by a servant, upon whom a certain amount of suspicion falls. Inspector Field traces the dead man’s movements on the previous night and learns that, after breaking up a dinner-party in a somewhat unconventional fashion, he travelled some distance to a remote suburban theatre to see a leading lady whom he cannot even identify by sight. Following up certain clues and deductions of his own, Field discovers the reason for this strange course of action, and tracing back the dead man’s history over a number of years, finds himself entangled in a nest of underworld intrigue in England and on the Continent. Drugs, blackmail and a crime many years old all play their part in an affair that, starting without sensation, attains universal attention. The congruent parts of the mystery are finally put together by Field and Scott Egerton, who, entering the case late in its development, is able to supply the final link.