Linford Mystery

Tragedy dogs the footsteps of three ex-soldiers - Clifford, Ronnie and Keith - when they start to produce a show planned in their Army days. The theatre they lease is reputed to be haunted since an actor, Castleton Mayne, was murdered on the stage thirty years before ... On their first visit, the son of the owner, Alexandra Mayne, is mysteriously murdered. Then a rival producer, in league with the displaced leading lady, tries his utmost to ruin the show ...

Whispering Beeches stands vacant, well back from the roadway, almost hidden by the thickly growing trees that give it its name - though since its owner, Doctor Shard, was murdered by an unknown hand three years ago, it has locally been known as Sinister House. One night, noticing a light in one room, newspaper reporter Anthony Gale enters through the open front door - only to stumble over a man's body lying stark and rigid, with a gaping throat wound! Four tales of mystery and the macabre from veteran writer Gerald Verner.

It's like Bogie said: When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. Actually, Cletus Berry was just Lindsey's roommate for a couple of training seminars, but all the same, they were good friends, and when Cletus is found shot in a Manhattan alley, Lindsey's going to do something. There aren't many clues in the ice and grime of Hell's Kitchen, but Lindsey doesn't give up easily. He follows a lead to an antique toy chariot that once was Julius Caesar's plaything, and now that toy is taking him for a marvelously readable ride through New York's dirty streets and Rome's underground, into the worlds of high art and politics.

'I saw a chauffeur hit a girl and knock her unconscious. Then he threw her into a limousine and sped away ... ' Alice Whelan finds horror on Falcon Island: home of her retired movie star mother, Diana Hamilton, and her sixth husband, Leland Braddock. Who is the mysterious girl locked away in the mansion's tower? What is the truth behind the elaborate greenhouse that Leland and his brother maintain in the nearby woods? And what strange experiments are the two conducting with their Fatal Flowers?

On vacation at her aunt's villa in Portugal, Jennifer is attracted to both Neil and Philip Alenquer, two brothers who live in an old castle overlooking the sea. But Jennifer soon senses that something is wrong, though it is not clear where the intangible clues are leading. Words left unsaid; the burnt-out shell of a cottage; terror in response to the recitation of a poem; gunshots on the beach. It is a mystery with potentially deadly consequences, as Jennifer and her aunt learn when an arsonist sets the villa alight ...