(Gollancz vintage detection)

Murder Against the Grain won the Crime Writers Association's Gold Dagger Award in 1967. When a million-dollar bank robbery tips the new Soviet-American wheat treaty off-balance, Wall Street banker-detective John Putnam Thatcher steps in to even accounts with a thief dead set on Murder Against the Grain** John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice-president of the august Sloan Guaranty Trust, loathes crime, but crime has an ingenious way of seeking him out. This time he cannot by any means ignore it, for someone has had the effrontery to steal a million dollars from the Sloan itself. And to make matters worse, the missing million was a Russian down payment for American wheat. According to far too many public officials, it is John Thatcher's patriotic duty to avert an international crisis, even if it means that the Sloan is rooked. In a matter of days he is dutifully embroiled with the Secretary of State, the Soviet Embassy, eccentric wheat farmers, striking longshoremen, and a team of pugnacious Russian astronauts, as he gamely attempts to recover the money and rescue the faltering Soviet-American wheat treaty. Before Thatcher can get with the grain of the mystery, he has to answer some rather peculiar questions: What was the Cuban Navy doing in New York harbor? How did the American Potato Chip Institute become involved? Why was the Leningrad Symphony practicing on a basketball court? How on earth did a performing troupe of Russian otters that drink only vodka, dance the mazurka, and merrily assemble a three-stage rocket get into the picture? And above all, who, from the dizzying cast of characters, has assigned himself the role of grim reaper?

> It all began when Sir John Appleby, retired Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, was visiting Allington Park, a partially restored estate dating back to Charles First. While exploring a specially built gazebo with the owner, Sir John noticed a bundle of stuff in a corner of the room. Stooping to examine it, he said grimly: "It's a man and I think he's dead." So begins this amusing if tragic divertissement of repeated death by misadventure or perhaps otherwise. An old castle, a gay village charity fete, a unique assembly of human oddments among the characters - these and a legendary lost treasure add up to what, in Sir John's words, "that chap in Baker Street called a two-pipe mystery."

When John Appleby's wife, Judith, sets eyes on Scroop House, she insists that they introduce themselves to the owners - a suggestion that makes her sometimes reserved husband turn very pale. When Judith hears the village gossip about the grand house, she is even more intrigued, but when a former employee is found dead in the lock of the disused canal, and the immense wealth of Scroop's contents is revealed, Appleby has a gripping investigation on his hands.

> The forbears of Sir John Jory, of New Hall, would seem to have committed several foul acts, including tomb-robbery and murder. Old Hall, the family's former residence, is now a University. Biographer Colin Clout, engaged to write an account of one of Jory's ancestors, gets caught up in a frenzied treasure hunt as rival interests and rival claimants probe the past and naked greed comes to the fore.