Crime club

Four wealthy women, sailing from New York to Genoa aboard the Italian luxury liner Beatrice Cenci: Mrs. Abercrombie, regal, imperious, and accustomed to giving orders, but confined to a wheelchair by a heart attack. Valerie Meadows, her nurse companion, equally, if less publicly, rich; a woman with a past. Gloria Grandi Pontini, a self-made career woman, with a husband who's jealous enough to kill. Susan Emery, a young Englishwoman who soon will be fabulously wealthy, if she lives long enough to gain her inheritance. Then there's Butler, a secretive chain-smoker with a blurry newspaper photograph, and a contract for murder. As the passengers frolic in the sumptuous elegance of her staterooms and cabarets, a killer stalks the decks under a full moon.

Dan Braille who is a novelist and sick takes a walk on a stormy night, the question is why? The police are eventually called by his family when he doesn't return and it is discovered he had claimed someone was trying to poison him. But a more horrible conclusion emerges.

An opera company in Manchester is struggling not only with attempting to get recognition and support, but also with the world's most obnoxious mezzo soprano. When she is murdered, the police struggle also, because there are too many motives and too many people who despised her. A sophisticated and witty mystery story by Robert Barnard with a surprising twist or two before the denouement.

Classics. Detective and mystery stories. Latest range of classic crime novels from the 20th century, published with stylish retro cover artwork.

Professor Belville-Smith had bored university audiences in England with the same lecture for fifty years. Now he was crossing the Australian continent, doing precisely the same. Never before had the reaction been so extreme, however, for shortly after an undistinguished appearance at Drummondale University, the doddering old professor is found brutally murdered.

Jane, a widowed sculptress and an old friend of the Tibbetts, settles in Switzerland after her husband's death. Gradually she gets to know people in the village, varying from the shopkeepers and ski instructors to wealthy celebrities. Her cleaning lady is then arrested on suspicion of murdering her philandering husband. Jane's evidence is an important element of the prosecution. Naturally, Jane finds all this very distressing and discusses the case with Henry and Emmy Tibbett, who do some investigation of their own.

From Goodreads: ""It seemed an easy enough scene for Bob Meakin to play. The handsome but aging star was to jam the eyeglasses on his nose as he rushed down the subway stairs, then look around wildly for his girl. The producer of Northburn Films thought they might be able to shoot it in one take. But with the crew in position and the camera rolling, Meakin tripped on the stairs, and fell directly beneath the wheels of the incoming train. At first this appeared to be no more than an appalling accident, but subsequent events convince Inspector Henry Tibbit that murder was added to the script."

From the book: Tommy Hambledon, back in England, was a gift that the intelligence department lost no time in using. He was an espionage agent par excellence with the additional qualifications of having been a practical police officer for many years. When one ship after another sank mysteriously not long out of Portsmouth harbor, Tommy was called on to find the source of the trouble. The case of the sinking ships turned into the case of the murdered MacGregor, and Mr. Hambledon of the Intelligence functioned as a police officer as well as a government agent. His activities, accompanied by a running fire of his ironic, humorous comments on an England he had not know for twenty years, constitute a superlatively entertaining mystery story.

FOR THE TWISTED AND TALENTED, MURDER IS A GAME Scotland Yard Chief Superintendent John Coffin is properly skeptical of the evil reputation of the house at No. 22, Church Row. True, the house has seen violent death over the centuries. None of it suspicious. Until now. Malcolm Kincaid, student. Bill Egan, recidivist. Terry Place, villain. Edward, Irene and Nona Pitt, victims. Phyllis Henley, policewoman. Why have they died? Coffin suspects something more than a haunted house. He sees a human, complex web of relationships, interlocking and interacting in a way he can't yet fathom, and in which people get caught up and destroyed--as they play into the game of a very clever killer.

All of Comerford is shocked when Detective George Felse arrests Kitty Norris, the daughter of a rival beer baron, the last person to see Armiger alive, and the main beneficiary of his will. But Kitty, charming and popular, has an unexpected advocate in Felse’s young son, Dominic, who has fallen in love with her. Passionately convinced of Kitty’s innocence, Dominic sets out to find the true culprit, a hazardous undertaking that could cost him his life. Death and the Joyful Woman is the 2nd book in the Felse Investigations, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order

Twelve people sat down for dinner at Strontfield Park, William Fent’s ancestral home. Thirteen would have been most unlucky. For the host, however, the evening could not have been unluckier. By midnight he was dead—killed instantly when his motorcar smashed into another on a bad bit of road. The problem for Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan was the autopsy. The victim, it seemed, was about to die in any event. Along with the cold cucumber soup, crown of lamb, raspberry crémets, and a fine aged port, someone served the lord of the manor a dose of deadly poison. But which of the surviving eleven had the opportunity… and who had the motive to want him dead?

When a bright young heiress with a flair for romance and one too many enemies is found brutally murdered, Nero Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie, find themselves embroiled in a case that is not as black and white as it first appears. Susan Brooke has everything going for her. Men would have killed themselves to marry her, and, in fact, one did. Susan came to New York to find love and fulfillment, and ended up dead on a tenement floor. The police say her black fiance did it, but Wolfe has other ideas. Before he's done, he'll prove that good intentions and bad deeds often go hand in hand and that the highest ideals can sometimes have the deadliest consequences.

As I've often told you, you suffer from a pathological trust in the human race. ... One day I can see it getting you into serious trouble. And who knows, that time may just have come.... Martha Crayle's latest errand of mercy did seem to be having rather unpleasant repercussions. Harboring a young lady who had applied for assistance at the National Guild for Unmarried Mothers was something that Martha was more than happy to do until the girl could get settled. Which didn't take long, because within twenty-four hours a husband materialized. He should have been the answer to this maiden's prayer. Except for one thing: he had a bullet in him. For the first time she could remember, Martha Crayle doubted the motives of someone else. And in so doubting, she discovered an elaborate tissue of deceit that dramatically changed her life. In fact, it almost ended it....

Nigel Strangeways had always admired Robert Seaton as the greatest poet of his age. It was shocking to think that he might be a murderer.... Scandal erupts when a headless corpse is found floating in the Thames close to the house of England's most famous poet. Whose body is it? And where is the head? On the surface the Seatons seem a civilised and charming family, yet Nigel detects undercurrents of anxiety and strain. He is perplexed by the bizarre family servant Finny, a mute dwarf, and by the Seatons' relationship with their tenants, artist Rennell Torrance and his tempestuous daughter Mara. One by one, under his shrewd probing, the suspects yield up their secrets until Nigel can see to the heart of this tragic case of thwarted talent, ruthless greed and exceptionally bloody murder.