Roderick Alleyn

A game of Murder turns deadly when it ends in a real murder, in the country-house of Sir Hubert Handesley. Roderick Alleyn's first case.

The script of the Unicorn Theatre's new play uncannily echoes a quarrel in the star's dressing room. And the stage drama gets all too real when charming Felix Gardener shoots his blustering rival, Arthur Surbonardier, dead-with a gun Arthur himself loaded with blanks. Or did he? How the live bullets got there, and why, make for a convoluted case that pits Inspector Roderick Alleyn against someone who rates an Oscar for a murderously clever performance

It was a bizarre pose for beautiful model Sonia Gluck--and her last. For in the draperies of her couch lay a fatal dagger, and behind her murder lies all the intrigue and acid-etched temperament of an artist's colony. Called in to investigate, Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn finds his own passions unexpectedly stirred by the fiesty painter Agatha Troy--brilliant artist and suspected murderess. First published in 1938. (less)

The killingly aristocratic Lamprey family exemplifies charm, wit, and a chronic lack of funds. Their only source of hope is the wealthy but unpleasant Lord Wutherwood, and the Lampreys may perhaps be forgiven for doing a little jig when his Lordship is killed and the resulting inheritance saves their bacon. Inspector Roderick Alleyn wouldn’t dream of judging the Lampreys’ joy. But he would like to figure out whether they murdered their benefactor.

One summer evening in 1942, Flossie Rubrick, goes to her husband's wool shed to rehearse a patriotic speech - and disappears. Three weeks later she turns up at an auction, packed inside one of her own bales of wool and very, very dead

Aspiring actress Martha Virginia Brown was only twenty when she died in an apparent fall while appearing in summer stock in the North Carolina foothills. Now, fifty years later, her great niece and namesake, Ginger Cameron, arrives at the quaint tavern in Fiddler's Glen to unearth the forgotten details of her relative's death, and to escape the menacing overtures of a former boyfriend. According to those who knew her, Martha Brown was beautiful, talented, and full of life. She was also blatantly outspoken, and there are too many unanswered questions about the way she died. Some say it was an accident. Some say she was pushed. Others say she was a victim of the music played upon a fiddle by the ghost of a Confederate soldier--Lucifer's fiddle. But Martha's murderer proves much too real to be an apparition. Ginger soon learns the killer will stop at nothing to silence those who would expose the secret kept hidden for so many years, and she seems doomed to relive the fate of her late aunt. However, she doesn't count on the assistance of her aunt's sprightly spirit to lead her to the person responsible for her death, or on the love she has found in this unlikely place.

Lord Pastern invited his society friends to a swank London nightclub to watch him stage one of his bizarre jokes. But when the joke turned in the "accidental" death of a band member, the laughter stopped. For the audience, it was an open-and-shut case. Everyone had seen the eccentric lord fire the gun. For Inspector Alleyn of Scotland Yard, this case was more bizarre than his lordship's joke - for it wasn't a bullet that killed the accordian player!

British mystery novel, first published 1953. Also known as The Bride of Death. En route to a family vacation on the French Riviera, Inspector Roderick Alleyn glimpses from the train a shocking tableau. In a moonlit window a white-robed figure raises a knife to a woman's shadow. Thus begins his incognito exploration of the Chateau of the Silver Goat...where a jet-set cult's 'Way of Life' could spell death for a maiden lady of a certain age-and even for Alleyn's own young son unless he can unveil its illicit mysteries...

The brain-teasing new thriller from the 'master of the clever twist'Tristram Abberley was an English poet of the 1930s whose reputation was sealed when he died fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Nearly fifty years later his sister Beatrix is murdered during what appears to be a robbery at her home, but robbery - it transpires - is only part of the motive that underlies her death. Beatrix is the victim of a dark conspiracy, one that her loved ones are powerless to defeat.But nothing is quite as it seems in a Robert Goddard novel. In a narrative that moves between Cheltenham and New York, Paris and rural Wales, Tunbridge Wells and wartime Spain, the conspirators themselves are caught up in a chain of dramatic events that are the consequence of meddling in the dark secrets of the legendary poet.

A persistent paparazzi has hounded operatic soprano Isabella Sommita until her nerves are at the breaking point. Now her millionaire boyfriend has whisked her to a New Zealand island to recover. There she plans a performance of an aria written just for her—by her secret young lover, who, along with a bevy of envious celebriteis, is also on the island. It's the perfect set-up for grand opera—wild passions...and bloody murder. And when the great singer is found dead, a photo on her bosom, Sperintendent Roderick Alleyn must find out who did the diva in...

"Is this a dagger which I see before me..." Four murders. Three witches. A fiendish lady. A homicidal husband. A ghost. No wonder "Macbeth "is considered such bad luck by theatre people that they won't mention its name out loud. But the new London production of "the Scottish play" promises to be a smash until gruesome pranks begin plaguing rehearsals. And when the last act ends in real-life tragedy, Chief Superintendent Alleyn takes center stage-uncovering a heartbreaking secret, murderous jealousy, and a dark, desperate reason for "murder for foul..".