When Bill and Norah Ashby were killed in an air crash, Aunt Bee stayed on at Latchetts, the family country house, to bring up the four children: Simon, Patrick, Ruth and Jane. Soon afterward Patrick disappeared without trace, leaving a suicide note on a lonely clifftop. None had suspected the depth of Patrick's grief but the years passed and the memory of him dimmed. On the eve of Simon's coming of age, a young man turns up at Latchetts. He calls himself Brat Farrar and his physical resemblance to Patrick is so strong that the family solicitor is convinced of his claim as Patrick to share to family inheritance. But Simon denounces him as an imposter!
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Brat Farrar: Josephine Tey
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The Director....all his life he's been looking for the big break. It's tough to come by in an industry that seldom recognises true talent. So he's going to make his own breaks, follow his own artistic vision...and give his victims starring roles. Professor Kay Quinn knows the movies inside and out - from the first close-up to the last cut, she can analyse a director's technique, his style, even his motive. But in her midst is a movie maker whose work she cannot even begin to fathom - until it is far too late. Lieutenant Fred Santomassimo has never seen a weirder serial killer case - violence tinged with a sick sense of showmanship. He knows there must be a method to the killer's madness...but even he is not prepared for the shocking truth. Originally released as Funeral March Of The Marionettes. -
Dead Bolt: Jay Brandon
$40.00Grey Stanton, lawyer, is taking a sabbatical from the hard-edge criminal law courts to write books and spend time with his wife and child on their remote and peaceful Texas homestead. The peace and quiet is disrupted by a young female student who visits to ask about an old case - an assault and robbery that Grey's all but forgotten. Then he receives a series of bizarre visits from his former client, a dangerous man whose awkward words become menacing...Simon Hockley isn't interested in justice. He's on a mission to recover the money he stashed before doing time and he's certain Stanton knows where to find it. He threatens Stanton's wife and daughter, forcing the lawyer to learn to law of survival at all costs. -
Gil Cunningham 3. The barrel should have contained books - instead it held treasure and a severed head...Gil Cunningham and his old acquaintance, Glasgow merchant Augie Morison, expecting a delivery of books from the Low Countries, report the gruesome substitute to the Provost and at the inquest the next morning Morison is accused of the murder and imprisoned. He appeals to Gil, who sets out with his friend and future father-in-law Maistre Pierre, the French master-mason, to find the treasure's owner, trace the barrel and identify the dead man. The trail they follow leads them from the court of James IV at Stirling via a cooper's yard in Linlithgow, to another death on the bare slopes of the Pentland Hills.
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This mystery thriller written at the turn of the century begins thus: "Two o’clock - two o’clock in the morning. The bells had just chimed the hour. Big Ben had boomed forth its deep and solemn note over sleeping London. The patient constable on point-duty at the foot of Westminster Bridge had stamped his feet for the last time, and had been relieved by his colleague, who gave him the usual pass-word, “All right.” The tumultuous roar of traffic, surging, beating, pulsating, had long ago ceased, but the crowd of smart broughams and private hansoms still stood in New Palace Yard, while from the summit of St. Stephen’s tower the long ray of electricity streamed westward, showing that the House of Commons was still sitting. The giant Metropolis, the throbbing heart of the greatest empire the world has known, was silent. London, the city of varying moods, as easily pleased, as easily offended as a petted child; London, the dear, smoke-blackened old city, which every Englishman loves and every foreigner admires; London, that complex centre of the universe, humdrum and prosaic, yet ever mysterious, poetic and wonderful, the city full of the heart’s secrets and of life’s tragedies, slept calmly and in peace while her legislators discussed and decided the policy of the Empire. The long rows of light on the deserted terrace and along the opposite shore in front of St. Thomas’s Hospital threw their shimmering reflection upon the black waters of the Thames; the cold wind swept roughly up the river, causing the gas-jets to flicker, so that the few shivering outcasts who had taken refuge on the steps of the closed doorway of Westminster Station, murmured as they pulled their rags more tightly round them. Only the low rumbling of a country wagon bearing vegetables to Covent Garden, or the sharp clip-clap of a cab-horse’s feet upon the asphalt, broke the quiet. Except for these occasional disturbances all else was as silent on that dark and cloudy night in late October as if the world were dead."
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Fifteen musical mysteries: Swan Song, Agatha Christie; Shabby Little Shocker, Linda Haldeman; The Sultans Of Soul, Doug Allyn; The Cry Of A Violin, Seymour Shubin; Death Between Dances, Cornell Woolrich; Elvis Lives, Lynne Barrett; The Viotti Stradivarius, Lillian de la Torre; An Ear For Murder, L.A. Taylor; Mom Sings An Aria, James Yaffe; Cut From The Same Cloth, George Baxt; Death At The Opera, Michael Underwood; The Spy Who Went To The Opera, Edward D. Hoch; The Right To Sing The Blues, John Lutz; The Family Rose, Charlotte Hinger; Concerto For Violence And Orchestra, William Bankier. -
For six years the Free Aristotle Macho Edwards (F.A.M.E) campaign has pulled a variety of exotic publicity stunts. To ITN crime reporter Kate Lewis F.A.M.E. is hot news, but to her fiance Chief Inspector Taff Roberts, it's a racket. To him, Ari Edwards is a black pimp who deserves his life sentence for the brutal murder of one of his high class prostitutes. But then a crucial new witness disappears and the detectives on the case begin pressing Taff to get at Kate - who is then grossly assaulted. Retaliating, Taff eventually gets t he murder conviction quashed and Ari Edwards released - but to fatal consequences as those behind the pimp's conviction - senior police and a top City company - close ranks to conceal their involvement. -
Tragedy At Two: Ann Purser
$35.00Lois Meade 9. Lois Meade's daughter was admittedly considering leaving her partner, Rob-but she never expected him to be found badly beaten and left for dead in a ditch by the side of the road. When Rob tragically dies from his injuries without regaining consciousness, Inspector Cowgill has a murder investigation on his hands, and once again he engages the assistance of the woman he respects above all others-Lois. Suspicion quickly falls on the traveling gypsies who are camped out on Alf Smith's property. There is strong prejudice among many in the village who consider the gypsies no better than tramps and thieves. Lois must follow a twisted path that leads to arson, local delinquents, secret assignations, and blackmail-before she can discover who's been tinkering with the truth... -
Rat King: Michael Dibdin
$35.00Industrialist Ruggiero Miletti has been kidnapped from the heart of one of Italy's most powerful families: and the family is oddly undisturbed that the kidnappers are getting panicky and impatient, that the trail is going cold and that police progress has been zero. Commissioner Aurelio Zen has been removed from his desk and thrust into this shadowy case and his arrival in Perugia is resented from the start - by the officials and the Miletti family, who would rather do business with the kidnappers without police intervention. Zen unearths sizzling secrets in this family rat nest: terrorism, drugs, takeover bids, dark past secrets, blackmail and sexual perversion - and each suspects has connections into the police department. Cover art by Tom Sciaaca.
