Classic crime

> In the dimly lit bars of New York and Santa Fé, the refugees from the war in Europe whisper his name. >The Blackbirder is a sinister figure, but he offers refuge, smuggling bodies through the skies: a thousand dollars will buy a passage across the border into the sunlit peace of New Mexico. >Julie Guille is desperate. Entangled in two murders, she is on the run from the Gestapo, from the FBI and most of all from her uncle, Paul, Duc de Guille. Now she seeks the Blackbirder - and a flight to safety. >But for Julie the price of freedom is to be unbearably high.

Named by P.D. James as one of the best five mysteries of all time. Richard Cadogan is at loose ends in Oxford, very late at night. Charmed by the window display of an old-fashioned toyshop, he is worried to find the door unlocked; surely the owner should be alerted. And so Cadogan slips into the darkened store and up the narrow stairway to the apartment above. But rather than a snoring toyman, he finds a very dead old lady, the marks of murder still livid on her neck. But when Cadogan returns with the coppers, the toyshop...has disappeared. This, it seems, is a matter for Gervase Fen.

In the sleepy English village of Sanford Angelorum, Oxford professor and amateur detective Gervase Fen is taking a break from his books to run for Parliament. At first glance, the village he's come to canvass appears perfectly peaceful, but Fen soon discovers that appearances can be deceiving: someone in the village has discovered a dark secret and is using it for blackmail. Anyone who comes close to uncovering the blackmailer's identity is swiftly dispatched. As the joys of politics wear off, Fen sets his mind to the mystery—but finds himself caught up in a tangled tale of eccentric psychiatrists, escaped lunatics, beautiful women, and lost heirs . . . [amazon.com] First published in 1948.

Appleby's End was the name of the station where Detective Inspector John Appleby got off the train from Scotland Yard. But that was not the only coincidence. Everything that happened from then on related back to stories by Ranulph Raven, Victorian novelist - animals were replaced by marble effigies, someone received a tombstone telling him when he would die, and a servant was found buried up to his neck in snow, dead. Why did Ranulph Raven's mysterious descendants make such a point of inviting Appleby to spend the night at their house?

The seemingly simple investigation of the death of a cathedral organist leads Professor Gervase Fen, idiosyncratic Oxford don and amateur detective, into a complicated case involving butterfly collecting, international espionage, witchcraft and a Nazi plot.

Dr. John Thorndyke is a professor of medicine, but he is also a pathological sleuth with a taste for mysteries that would stop other detectives cold. The disappearance of a successful archaeologist. poses a disturbing riddle to Thorndyke: "When is a murder not a murder?' The answer hinges on the question of whether or not it is possible to fabricate a corpse out of whole cloth. And why would anyone want to, except to disguise a murder?