A Hamlyn whodunnit

Analyse : Roman policier (énigme).

The windows of French’s department store are one of New York’s great attractions. Year-round, their displays show off the finest in fashion, art, and home décor, and tourists and locals alike make a point of stopping to see what’s on offer. One afternoon, as the board debates a merger upstairs, a salesgirl begins a demonstration in one of the windows, showing off French’s new Murphy bed. A crowd gathers to watch the bed lower from the wall after a single touch of a button. But as the bed opens, people run screaming. Out tumbles a woman—crumpled, bloody, and dead. The victim was Mrs. French, wife of the company president, and finding her killer will turn this esteemed store upside down. Only one detective has the soft touch necessary—debonair intellectual Ellery Queen. As Queen and his police inspector father dig into French’s secrets, they find their killer is more serious than any window shopper.

Mark Treasure mysteries #2 University College, Itchendever, is short of funds - and up for grabs. The rival parties in the proposed takeover seem to be the American Funny Farms Foundation, run by the widow of a board-games mogul, and a calculating Arab prince. Banker sleuth Mark Treasure tries his hardest to adjudicate, but instead finds a baffling murder on his hands. And this isn't a mere case of finding the culprit - there are other knotty problems with a bearing on the case. Who sent the gory sheep's head to the eccentric American millionairess? Was the celebrated Dr Goldstein, senior tutor and TV personality, behind the bomb scare? And why have the Arabs kidnapped an English Literature lecturer?

Fred Wallach was not so much a missing person as a disappeared one. It held all the elements of an illusionist's trick. There he'd been, shut away in a bare shed with no way out by window or door and yet he had gone. To David Mallin it was not an ideal case for their first as a partnership. But George Coe was enthusiastic. A locked room mystery, he claimed. Well... not quite, perhaps, because there was no corpse. Impatient to get home, David quickly solved the mystery, revealing the missing corpse. Unfortunately he also uncovered another locked room problem, and this time it was one without such an easy solution. The reaching of the end was a harrowing experience for David, who had to face himself before he faced the murderer.

In the princely state of Bhopore, India, 1930, a handful of Western visitors comes to the opulent Summer Palace to meet the outrageous Maharajah and his entourage. There they meet the Maharajah's heir, the sensual Porgy, and his English chorus-girl mistress. They meet the enigmatic chief minister, and the aloof British Resident, with his dignified little nine-year-old son. And before long, they also meet sudden death... Various people in the Palace become suspects, and an imperturbable District Superintendent of Police is called in. But who will he find guilty of the murder of the Maharajah?

On a dark and rainy night, amorous antiques dealer Lovejoy and his lady of the moment witness a car being forced off the road and over an embankment; the mortally injured driver turns out to be Leckie, a fellow antiques dealer and old army chum. Lovejoy's search for the villains is spiced with the promise of a valuable cache of antiques hidden somewhere at the end of the line. Spirited, vivid writing and a marvelously varied cast of characters from the shadier side of the antiques world make this Jonathon Gash's best book to date.