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From In Search Of The Classic Mystery: "The war has ended and for the first time in years, The Murder Club reconvenes in London. Miles Hammond is invited along by none other than Dr Gideon Fell, but when he arrives, he finds that no-one from the Club has arrived. Only he and a mysterious woman, Barbara Morrell, are there to hear the tale of Professor Rigaud. He tells of the death of Howard Brookes, stabbed with his own sword-stick, while along on top of a tower. The only suspect is Fay Seton – but the only reason that she is a suspect is because of the stories about her. For only a vampire could float on air to the top of the tower…"

Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the 1940s and 1950s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must struggle to retain his integrity amidst the corruption he encounters daily. In The High Window, Marlowe starts out on the trail of a single stolen coin and ends up knee-deep in bodies. His client, a dried-up husk of a woman, wants him to recover a rare gold coin called a Brasher Doubloon, missing from her late husband’s collection. That’s the simple part. But Marlowe finds that everyone who handles the coin suffers a run of very bad luck: they always end up dead. If Marlowe doesn’t wrap this one up fast, he’s going to end up in jail—or worse, in a box in the ground. Starring Toby Stephens, this thrilling dramatization by Robin Brooks retains all the wry humor of Chandler’s serpentine suspense novel.

Eve Duncan has turned down the job twice already. Her skill and devotion in identifying murder victims and helping bring their killers to justice may be world-renowned. But Eve works exclusively for law enforcement and the families of the innocent, and the man on the other end of the phone is many things--none of them law-abiding or innocent.One of the world's most wanted men, little is really known about Luis Montalvo except that he is extraordinarily dangerous and that he never takes no for an answer. Now he wants Eve's help in the worst way. For he believes they have something in common--and he's about to prove it with a grisly warning.Eve will leave everything and everyone behind, even the man she trusts and loves the most, Atlanta detective Joe Quinn, to travel to Montalvo's luxurious armed compound in the Colombian jungle to identify the skull he has recovered. She has agreed to this devil's bargain to save an innocent family, but also for a reason she can't admit to Joe, to the CIA, to anyone. For the man in the jungle has promised to be able to give Eve what she wants most of all--the key to unlocking the darkest and most painful mystery of her past.But Eve is in more danger than she can imagine. As she gets closer to identifying the skull, she finds herself caught between two ruthless killers with no way out. Now, with everything on the line, Eve Duncan must make the most chilling choice of all. And if she's wrong...she's dead.From the Hardcover edition.

Is it pure chance or a malignant fate which sends George Sudley to the village of Lambing, when, newly released from gaol, he seeks a place in which to start his new life? For he chooses it simply by sticking a pin in his Bradshaw. Once there, however, and once he has met the lovely Polly Edge, George has sealed his doom, and there can be no drawing back. A victim of love at first sight, George becomes all too deeply involved in a chain of grim and swift-moving events, culminating in murder. This book is written with the sureness and precision, the ingenuity and the beautiful accuracy of dialogue and character-drawing that we might well expect from the author of The Man Who Looked Back. It is an excellent piece of craftsmanship: it is also first-class entertainment.

First published in 1901, The Black Mask is the second collection of stories detailing the exploits and intrigues of gentleman thief A. J. Raffles in late Victorian London. Raffles was E. W. Hornung's most famous character.

Scotland at the outbreak of the Second World War: a series of mysterious deaths, a motley crew of characters, some heavy-handed humour concerning a particularly potent blend of Scotch whisky and a pair of squabbling academics. Not one, but two "locked room" puzzles solved by series detective Dr. Gideon Fell.

The interplay of incident and personalities in Brimberley village takes in the death of Liz Artside's husband in World War I, the current outbreak of burglaries, and Liz's fears about her son, Tim, and his unexplained activities. Explosions to do away with suspected betrayers; a dust-up in a London eating place; a disgustingly rich lieutenant of police lead to a most irregular untangling. Chatty and chipper.

> GAMBLING WITH DEATH Ten minutes after the Duc de Saligny entered the card room of the elegant Parisian gambling house, the police burst in - and found the Duc's severed head, standing upright on the stump of its neck, staring at them from the center of the room. >ENTER HENRI BENCOLIN >Both doors to the card room had been watched and guarded, yet the murderer had gone in and out without having been seen by anyone! But the flamboyant prefect of police, Henri Bencolin, was willing to bet if the Duc had lost his head over a losing hand, the killer was ready to deal another game of death. And the wily detective had an ace up his sleeve that might - with luck - provide the winning combination for bringing the headstrong killer to justice.

> Till Death Do Us Part is frequently found high up in reviewers’ top ten lists, boasting a fiendishly clever locked-room setup and payoff. >Crime author Dick Markham is in love again; his fiancée the mysterious newcomer to the village, Lesley Grant. When Grant accidentally shoots the fortune-teller through the side of his tent at the local fair –following a very strange reaction to his predictions –Markham is reluctantly brought into a scheme to expose his betrothed as a suspected serial husband-poisoner. >That night the enigmatic fortune teller – and chief accuser – is found dead in an impossible locked-room setup, casting suspicion onto Grant and striking doubt into the heart of her lover. Lured by the scent of the impossible case, Dr Gideon Fell arrives from London to examine the perplexing evidence and match wits with a meticulous killer at large.

> A Christmas party in Hampstead is rudely interrupted by violent death. Can the murderer be one of the relatives and intimate friends celebrating the festive season in the great house? The stockbroker sleuth Malcolm Warren investigates, in another brilliantly witty mystery from this hugely enjoyable master of crime.

Nearly twenty years after he was wrongly convicted of setting the fire that killed his father, Lincoln Fox returns to Rebel Ridge, Kentucky. There, deep in the Appalachians, the truth of that terrible night lies buried--and he's sworn to uncover it. His plans take an unexpected turn when, in the midst of a blizzard, he rescues Meg Walker from her wrecked car. Suddenly Linc discovers another reason to clear his name. Meg, his high school sweetheart, had always believed in his innocence, and if he wants a future with her, he has to show the world proof that she was right. As the community chooses sides, those who once let a teenage boy take the fall for their crime are forced to raise the stakes. They kidnap Meg, leaving her to the mercy of the mountain. And a second rescue may be more than even Linc can manage....[back cover].

Con man Jerry Hunt becomes determined to go straight when hemeets Charlotte and her troubleed granddaughter, Imogen.

> Malcolm Warren, stockbroker and amateur detective, can never resist a mystery. So he soon succumbs when an old Oxford friend with a rather shady reputation begs him to investigate the disappearance of a cantankerous uncle from a suburban Gothic mansion. Their search starts a hilarious trail which, thanks to careful perusal of railway timetables, leads them from seedy seaside hotels and gloomy Cornish coves to the Arts and Crafts Shop of South Mersley Garden City, until it finally lures the unsuspecting sleuth to a damp and sinister destination ... >An absorbing and gleeful puzzle, Death of His Uncle displays all the wit, atmospheric detail, and knowing observation of human nature which have won Kitchin a devoted following among lovers of classic detective fiction.

Would you marry the man you love if he were suspected of shooting his first wife? That was Helen Wayland's problem. Blanche French had died of a gunshot wound, and a jury could not decide if it was accident, suicide or murder. Helen made her choice, but two years later a second woman died in mysterious circumstances, and once again Paul French's name was involved. It was thanks to Arthur Crook, that intrepid legal champion of lost causes, that the astonishing truth about both deaths was finally established and innocence vindicated.

Throughout this story of planned, deliberate action is woven a strand of chance. The factor 'x', which might be enough to make a murderer and to hang him, was an incalculable element which Roy Unithorne was too wise to neglect but unable to control. For it was possible that if Islay Brown had not come to convalesce at Saffron-on-Sea Roy would have remained an undistinguished householder, clipping the golden privet and weeding amongst the clay gnomes in his neat little home. Nor was the careless exuberance of Lady Alice Pewsey's sudden friendliness and the impact of a more glamorous existence without its influence. And there was something of the wanton purposefulness of fate in the wanderings of Arthur, the black cat, whose devotion to his mistress did not stop short at death. In this book as much a study of character as a novel of suspense Joan Fleming traces the shadows of selfishness and conceit merging together beneath a commonplace exterior to form the pattern of a cold and competent murderer.