Historical Traditional Detectives

December, 1940. Christmas is coming, but the season of goodwill is overshadowed by the death and destruction of the Blitz. In London's Covent Garden, where the glamour of theatreland rubs shoulders with the bustle of the capital's biggest fruit and vegetable market, the war has closed the theatres and ruined the market trade. When a daylight air raid hits the Prince Albert Theatre in Drury Lane, rescuers find a man dying in the wreckage. But it wasn't the bomb that's ending his life - he's been stabbed, and with his dying breath he whispers what sounds like a fragmented confession.

Jane and her family are looking forward to a peaceful holiday in the seaside village of Lyme Regis. Yet on the outskirts of town an overturned carriage forces the shaken travelers to take refuge at a nearby manor house. And it is there that Jane meets the darkly forbidding yet strangely attractive Mr. Geoffrey Sidmouth. What murky secrets does the brooding Mr. Sidmouth seek to hide? Jane suspects the worst - but her attention is swiftly diverted when a man is discovered hanged from a makeshift gibbet by the sea.

The Railway Detective faces his most dangerous adversary yet. It is 1852, and Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant Sergeant Victor Leeming are faced with their most complex and difficult case to date. As a train speeds over the Sankey Viaduct, a man is hurled from a carriage and plummets into the canal below. It later transpires that he has been stabbed to death. With no papers by which to identify the man, the detectives' investigation is hampered from the start. Suspecting that the victim may have come from continental Europe, Colbeck and Leeming take the case to France where a new railway is being built by a British contractor.

With London's streets deserted, a young flower girl is murdered. But why was she out so late on the foggiest night of the year? Inspector Witherspoon of Scotland Yard has nowhere to even begin looking for a suspect. However, Mrs. Jeffries, his housekeeper, is even more accomplished at detection than she is at household management. A policeman's widow herself, her quick wits allow her to nudge the inspector in the right direction to solve the mystery.

From the curious clauses in a miser’s will, to a plea for help on a tiny scrap of paper, these six cases, from the early years of Holmes’s career in the 1880s, present a singular collection of mysteries for the world’s first consulting detective to resolve. What is the significance of the arrival in the post one morning of a cardboard packet of children’s bricks? Who is the man found dying in a deserted warehouse in London’s East End, and what is he doing there?

Cambridge University is in dire financial straits: the town's landlords are demanding an extortionate rent rise for the students' hostels, and the plague years have left the colleges with scant resources. Tension between town and gown is at boiling point and soon explodes into violence and death. Into this maelstrom comes a charismatic physician whose healing methods owe more to magic than medicine, but his success threatens Matthew Bartholomew's professional reputation - and his life....

Magdalene la Batarde is the madam of the Old Priory Guesthouse in Southwark. She and her women are expected to engage in a number of sinful activities, but bloody murder isn't one of them until Baldassare, the messenger, dies. Though Baldassare isn't a regular client of the Old Priory Guesthouse, Magdalene and her women refuse to allow his death to go unavenged. Of course, their efforts aren't completely altruistic.

Arriving in London on leave, Bess Crawford receives an unusual summons from the War Office. She's been requested to accompany a wounded soldier to Buckingham Palace, where he's to be decorated for gallantry. Though she is certain she's never met or nursed Sergeant Jason Wilkins, she cannot refuse the honor. Heavily bandaged and confined to a wheelchair, the soldier will be in her care for barely a day. But on the morning after the ceremony when Bess goes to collect her charge for his return journey, she finds the room empty.

Meet the Bright Young Things, the rabble-rousing hedonists of the 1920s whose treasure hunts were a media obsession. One such game takes place at the 18th birthday party of Pamela Mitford, but ends in tragedy as cruel, charismatic Adrian Curtis is pushed to his death from the church neighboring the Mitford home. The police quickly identify the killer as a maid, Dulcie. But Louisa Cannon, chaperone to the Mitford girls and a former criminal herself, believes Dulcie to be innocent and sets out to clear the girl's name...all while the real killer may only be steps away.

It is St. John’s Eve in the summer of 1834 when Benjamin January - Creole physician and music teacher - is shattered by the news that his sister has been arrested for murder. The Guards have only a shadow of a case against her. But Olympe - mystical and rebellious - is a woman of color, whose chance for justice is slim. As Benjamin probes the allegation, he is targeted by a new threat: graveyard dust sprinkled at his door, whispering of a voodoo death curse. Now, to save Olympe’s life - and his own - Benjamin knows he must glean information wherever he can find it.

Jane discovers holiday cheer is fleeting. One of the Yuletide gathering dies in a tragic accident whose circumstances Jane immediately views with suspicion. If the accident was in fact murder, the killer is one of Jane's fellow snowbound guests. With clues scattered amid cleverly crafted charades, dark secrets coming to light during parlor games, and old friendships returning to haunt the Christmas parties, whom can Jane trust to help her discover the truth and stop the killer from striking again?

A seemingly innocent concern from Lestrade about his cousin leads Holmes back into a world left behind after the affair of The Five Orange Pips. Investigating the appearance of a body at the base of Tower Bridge unveils a hidden cult of Satanists performing ritual sacrifices, until Holmes and the British Secret Service intervenes. Called to Scotland Yard, Holmes is reunited with an old acquaintance and dragged into a plot to undermine the government and give its secrets to Russian spies.

Holmes and Watson discover that the missing woman—Hannah Woolfson—was herself on the trail of a missing person, her close friend Sophia. Sophia was recruited to a group known as the Elysians, a quasi-religious sect obsessed with Ancient Greek myths and rituals, run by the charismatic Sir Philip Buchanan. Hannah has joined the Elysians under an assumed name, convinced that her friend has been murdered. Holmes agrees that she should continue as his agent within the secretive yet seemingly harmless cult, yet Watson is convinced Hannah is in terrible danger.

When the Duke of Purbeck throws a house party to celebrate his daughter's 21st birthday and present her with a family heirloom, nobody expects that the weekend will end in murder. The fabled Belsingham pearls have a history steeped in blood and slaughter dating back more than a century - and now it seems they've claimed another life, when the interfering and opinionated Professor Coddington is found dead in the library with the pearls clutched in his hand.

Kitchen maid Joan Hart and lady's maid Verity Hunter intend to enjoy their trip to the theater, especially as Verity's uncle Tommy is one of the leading men in the play. Act two of the play is curtailed when the lights come up in the interval, and the girls realize a man has been stabbed to death almost under their very noses. The case reunites the servant sleuths with their old ally, Detective Inspector Marks, and while the girls do their best to solve the case while keeping their jobs, the glitter and glamor of the theater may prove to be as dangerous as any battlefield.

West End theatre impresario Septimus Gooch is a man with many enemies, but when he's found dead in the dressing-room of his leading lady, the police put it down to an accident. The cast of Septimus's latest musical production at the Jollity Theatre are having none of it, however—this is the second mysterious death in two months, and they're convinced Septimus died after being frightened out of his wits by the ghost that's haunted the theatre ever since it burned to the ground many years ago. A malevolent spirit is on the loose, striking them down one by one.

It's fair to say that Freddy Pilkington-Soames is not having a good day. His grandmother is threatening to marry a lounge lizard, his old friend has lost her lover, a racehorse has been kidnapped, a priceless diamond has gone missing, and everybody seems to think he should sort it all out.

In the West End, a renowned Italian escape artist dies spectacularly on stage during a performance - immolated in a gleaming copper cauldron of his wife’s design. In Cambridge, the runaway daughter of a famous don is found drowned, her long blonde hair tangled in the Jesus Lock on the River Cam. And in Baker Street, a mysterious locksmith exacts an unusual price to open a small silver box sent to Watson.

In 1912 Ian Rutledge watched as a man was condemned to hang for the murders of elderly women. Rutledge helped gather the evidence that sent Ben Shaw to the gallows. And when justice was done, Rutledge closed the door on the case. But Shaw was not easily forgotten. Now, seven years later, that grim trial returns in the form of Ben Shaw's widow Nell, bringing Rutledge evidence she is convinced will prove her husband's innocence. It's a belief fraught with peril, threatening both Rutledge's professional stature and his faith in his judgment. But there is a darker reason for Rutledge's reluctance.

On a spring morning in London, 1875, Charles Lenox agrees to take time away from his busy schedule as a Member of Parliament to meet an old protege's client at Charing Cross. But when their cryptic encounter seems to lead, days later, to the murder of an innocuous country squire, this fast favor draws Lenox inexorably back into his old profession. Soon he realizes that, far from concluding the murderer's business, this body is only the first step in a cruel plan, many years in the plotting. Where will he strike next?