A Penguin mystery

Devastated by the end of her relationship, our heroine swaps her catsuit for pyjamas and hides away from the world. But her friends from the nightclub refuse to let her waste away in self-pity and drag her out to make up the numbers for a party. Only full make-up will suffice, and there's serious grooming to be done before our girl's up to the challenge - her state of misery has left her so thin that even her favourite Audrey Hepburn number doesn't cling the way it should. At the soiree, she becomes entranced with a powerful married man, but it's unlikely their paths will cross again. Until a body is found in the street, stabbed to death - the victim, a gigolo, has connections to the object of her affection. And it seems that the gigolo lifestyle can leave one, ahem, exposed to hidden dangers. Our girl valiantly agrees to take on the case - any meetings with her beloved are an incidental added bonus.

When one of his wife's Paola's students comes to visit him, with a strange and vague interest in investigating the possibility of a pardon for a crime committed by her grandfather many years ago, Commissario Brunetti thinks little of it. But when the girl is found dead, clearly stabbed to death, Claudia Leonardo suddenly becomes Brunetti's case, no longer Paola's student. Claudia seems to have no discernible living family - her only familial relationship is with an elderly Austrian woman, who was the lover of her grandfather, but was not herself Claudia's grandmother. Brunetti is both intrigued and stunned by the extraordinary art collection the old woman keeps in her small, unprepossessing flat, and when she in turn is found dead, the case seems to have be about to open up long buried secrets of collaboration and the exploitation of Italian Jews during the war, secrets few in Italy are happy to explore.

M travels to the tiny town of Saint-Aubin-les-Marais, near Niort, in the Vendée, at the request of the Examining Magistrate Victor Bréjon. His brother-in-law, Étienne Naud had asked him for help, since after the death of a young man, Albert Retailleau, rumors had been flying that Naud was involved. M is surprised to see Old Cadaver, Justin Cavre, who'd been on the force with M for 20 years till forced to resign due to problems caused by his wife. But Cavre, who also goes to Saint Aubin, ignores him. M quickly learns that no one in town wants to help, except one young man, Louis Fillou, who'd been Albert's friend. M learns that Albert had been the lover of Geneviève Naud, and had gone to see her the night he was killed. But that night he'd been angry, and told Louis it was all over. M is surprised when Alban Groult-Cotelle, a friend and frequent house guest at the Naud's, appears at the Naud's house with a hotel receipt, showing his "alibi" for the night of the crime. M begins to understand, watching Geneviève's face, and accompanies Alban home, where he finds Cavre. Naud calls his brother-in-law to have him call off M, but before leaving M summons all together at Naud's. Alban, in his 40s, had been having an affair with young Geneviève. When she became pregnant, he'd had her take up with Albert, to claim he was the father. Naud had seen him leave her room by the window the night he had argued with her, and killed him in a rage. Albert had learned of the deception. After that, with Cavre's help, they'd paid off everyone to forget about it. M left it that way, and learned that two years later, after the Naud's had moved to Argentina, Alban had married Geneviève.

When a small time crook—a drunk, thug, pimp, and thief—is murdered on a small Mediterranean island just after he was heard boasting loudly about his policeman "friend" Maigret, Inspector Maigret is compelled to leave Paris to investigate the crime. But no one seems to have a motive for the killing. Not the old English lady and her male "secretary," nor the aging prostitute or the Dutch anarchist. But all of them have secrets they prefer to keep hidden.

"Being Istanbul's foremost transvestite detective, nightclub owner and computer expert is pretty time-consuming. So when our girl receives a visit from her hysterical friend Buse asking for help, she is initially reluctant to commit. Buse has, for several years, kept in flagrante photos and letters from a former relationship with a powerful man. So when her apartment is ransacked and Buse is later found dead, our girl needs to polish her Thai kick-boxing skills, slip into her slinkiest Audrey Hepburn number and use her formidable powers of charm and flirtation to trace the killer."--Back cover.

"Between 1943 and 2003 nine people have been stabbed to death with a most unusual weapon: a trident. In each case, arrests were made, suspects confessed their crimes and were sentenced to life in prison. One slightly worrying detail: the presumed murderers lost conciousness during the nights of the crimes and have no recollection of them." -- Cover.

Fiction, Ghost story, Setting - England