Welcome to Alderley, a magnificent mansion in the heart of the West Country where a grand house party is taking place. The preparations have been made, the guests have been invited, and the staff are on hand. What could possibly go wrong? Let the entertainment begin. The theft of the diamond necklace and the antique pistols might all be explained, but the body in the lake - that really was a puzzle. 'Don't expect me to solve anything,' Inspector Wilkens announced modestly when he arrived to sort out the unpleasantness.

The first three crime thrillers in the Detective Sebastian Clifford series together in a single collection for the first time. This collection includes Web of Lies, Speak No Evil, and Never Too Late.

When the body of a young woman is discovered in the cowshed of Cricket Farm, the tranquility of the British countryside is shattered. Inspector Jess Campbell is on the case, but with few leads, a grumbling partner, and the new superintendent Ian Carter piling on the pressure, she's beginning to wonder why she chose to be a detective in the first place.

Meet Sukey Reynolds: proud mother, wonderful cook...and police photographer turned amateur detective. Years ago, Sukey was hoping to become a detective, but life took a different turn. Now she’s happy to be involved with the local police force, as long as she still gets to work the occasional murder case....

August, 1940. On the streets of London, locals watch with growing concern as German fighter planes plague the city’s skyline. But inside the famous Ritz Hotel, the cream of society continues to enjoy all the glamour and comfort that money can buy during wartime - until an anonymous man is discovered with his throat slashed open. Detective Chief Inspector Coburg is called in to investigate, ably assisted by his trusty colleague, Sergeant Lampson.

Following a mysterious explosion, the offices of Excelsior Joinery Company are no more; the three directors are killed and the peace of a quiet town in Surrey lies in ruins. When the supposed cause of an ignited gas leak is dismissed and the presence of dynamite revealed, Superintendent Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is summoned to the scene. But beneath the sleepy veneer of Evingden lies a hotbed of deep-seated grievances. Confounding Littlejohn's investigation is an impressive cast of suspicious persons, each concealing their own ax to grind.

After Arthur Penfold’s wife reveals she is leaving him to care for her ailing aunt, he sets upon a path of murder and deceit to avoid the social embarrassment of a second marital breakdown. But the purchase of a poetry book triggers a sequence of events that begins to unravel both Arthur and a seemingly open-and-shut murder case.

Join chaotic 1920s reporter and accidental sleuth Freddy Pilkington-Soames on his adventures in this series of light-hearted mysteries. This omnibus edition contains the first three books in the Freddy Pilkington-Soames Adventure series.

England, 1930. An antiques dealer is found robbed and murdered in a third class train compartment on a remote Suffolk branch line. The police believe they know who the killer is, and an arrest is soon made. A passenger on the same train, the Reverend Lucian Shaw, country parson and former army chaplain, is concerned that the police have the wrong man and begins an investigation of his own. Before long, Shaw is drawn into a web of intrigue, deceit, and murder which lurks beneath the surface of a seemingly peaceful country parish.

Horniman, Birley and Craine is a highly respected legal firm with clients reaching to the highest in the land. When a deed box in the office is opened to reveal a corpse, the threat of scandal promises to wreak havoc on the firm's reputation - especially as the murder looks like an inside job. The partners and staff of the firm keep a watchful and suspicious eye on their colleagues, as Inspector Hazlerigg sets out to solve the mystery of who Mr Smallbone was - and why he had to die.

In the respectable seaside town of Flaxborough, the equally respectable councillor Harold Carobleat is laid to rest. Cause of death: pneumonia. But he is scarcely cold in his coffin before Detective Inspector Purbright, affable and annoyingly polite, must turn out again to examine the death of Carobleat's neighbour, Marcus Gwill, former prop. of the local rag, the Citizen. This time it looks like foul play, unless a surfeit of marshmallows had led the late and rather unlamented Mr Gwill to commit suicide by electrocution. ('Power without responsibility', murmurs Purbright.)

In "Murder at the Mousetrap," the first Bunburry book, fudge-making and quaffing real ale in the local pub are matched by an undercurrent of passion, jealousy, hatred and murder - laced with a welcome dose of humour. Alfie McAlister has retreated from London to the peace and quiet of the country to recover from a personal tragedy. But an accidental death - which may have been no accident - reveals that the heart of England is far from the tranquil backwater he imagined.

Plymouth, 1941. As sirens blare all around, the Shawbrook family take refuge in a packed shelter. Bombs have already begun to fall through the night sky when they realize their infant son, Freddie, has been forgotten in the rush, left to sleep in his crib. Terrified, Vera, his young mother, races to find him and bring him to safety. The next morning, air-raid warden David Shawbrook returns from his watch to find the shelter pulverized, and his family seemingly all dead. Dirty footprints inside their home betray the looters who have rifled through the house.

In February 1915, the Great War is still raging on the Western Front, but in Westminster, at the centre of Hardcastle's bailiwick, a policeman is shot dead. At first, Hardcastle believes the murderer to have been a disturbed burglar. But as enquiries continue, attention focuses on an antiquarian bookseller, a struggling artist, a reporter, officers of the Royal Flying Corps, both in England and in France, and the activities of Isabel Plowman, the wife of one of them and the lover of others.

Before Jack the Ripper terrorised London, Police Inspector Samuel Ravenscroft patrolled the streets of Whitechapel. Clever and hard-working, Ravenscroft nonetheless has the worst record in the force. He lets a murderer escape during a chase and is banished to the spa town of Malvern for a water treatment to cure his asthma. Ravenscroft accepts a dinner invitation from a new acquaintance, Jabez Pitzer. Before dinner, the maid finds Pitzer slumped over his desk - dead. Ravenscroft immediately recognises the signs - Pitzer has been poisoned.

It's a rainy, uneventful evening in the Oddfellows' Arms until a man bursts into the pub, clearly unstable, and ranting about a body in Fennings' Mill. The police investigate and stumble upon a body-the face smeared with theatrical make-up and a false mustache pasted neatly over the lip. Once the national news descends, Inspector Faddiman calls in Inspector Littlejohn to help him uncover the dark, hidden secrets in this quiet, provincial town. Soon it becomes clear that a lot of people can't, and won't tell the truth.

Chief Inspector Macdonald has been invited to a treasure hunt party at the house of the Graham Coombe, the celebrated publisher of Murder by Mesmerism. The clues of the hunt have been devised by Coombe's thriller-writer friends, disguised on the night under literary pseudonyms. The fun comes to an abrupt end, however, when 'Samuel Pepys' is found murdered in the telephone room in bizarre circumstances.

Following a mysterious explosion, the offices of Excelsior Joinery Company are no more; the three directors are killed and the peace of a quiet town in Surrey lies in ruins. When the supposed cause of an ignited gas leak is dismissed and the presence of dynamite revealed, Superintendent Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is summoned to the scene. But beneath the sleepy veneer of Evingden lies a hotbed of deep-seated grievances. Confounding Littlejohn's investigation is an impressive cast of suspicious persons, each concealing their own ax to grind.

DI Nikki Galena: A police detective with nothing left to lose, she's seen a girl die in her arms, and her daughter will never leave the hospital again. She's gotten tough on the criminals she believes did this to her. Too tough. And now she's been given one final warning: make it work with her new sergeant, DS Joseph Easter, or she's out.

Out walking near the rain-swelled river running past her small Welsh town, she comes across the body of Amber Morgan. Fabia’s police training tells her instantly that the death is the result of foul play. But no longer in the force, all she can do is call it in. Yet she has mixed feelings when she discovers it is her former colleague, Matt Lambert, newly promoted to chief inspector, who will head the investigation into the girl’s death.