Mastercrime

359 pages (large print)

1 online resource Wenham & Geraldine are a long-established and very well respected publishing firm, so when a printer's proof is sabotaged and libellous passages are mysteriously reinstated, they call in private detective Nigel Strangeways. But the situation takes a turn for the worse when one of the publishers' best-selling authors - glamorous novelist Millicent Miles - is found dead in the offices.

The new lawyer Henry Bohun had joined the firm to work on insurance cases, not murders, but... "At eleven o'clock this morning a partner in this firm of solicitors — what's their name? — Horniman, Birley and Craine, opened one of their deed boxes. The box was supposed to contain papers relating to a trust. What they found was one of the trustees. Name of Smallbone — Marcus Smallbone — very dead."

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.