Showing titles in Traditional Detectives

The best of the golden age crime writers, praised by all the top modern writers in the field including P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Dorothy L. Sayers created the immortal Lord Peter Wimsey. The 11th book featuring Lord Peter, set in a country church, is often named as the best detective story ever written. When his sexton finds a corpse in the wrong grave, the rector of Fenchurch St Paul asks Lord Peter Wimsey to find out who the dead man was and how he came to be there.

As Dalgliesh probes beneath the apparently unruffled calm of the clinic, he discovers that many an intrigue lies hidden behind the Georgian terrace's unassuming façade. Professionally, he has never known the taste of failure. Now, for the first time, he feels unsure of his own mastery as he battles to unmask a cool killer who is proving to be his intellectual equal, and who is poised to strike again.

Just two weeks to go before the Cherringham Charity Christmas Concert. Choir rehearsals are in full swing. Then the worst thing happens: Kirsty Kimball, one of the singers, is found dead from a severe allergic reaction to one of the home-made rehearsal cakes. Jack is pulled in to help bolster the depleted choir - and soon he's convinced that Kirsty's death was no accident. Sarah agrees, and the two of them are soon immersed in the jealousies, rivalries, and passions of Cherringham's Rotary Club choir.

Inspector David Graham is back! Graham's a career police officer, with a tragic past. His quiet, thoughtful exterior hides a complex mind, and a fierce determination to see justice done. Like many of us, sometimes he has to look his demons in the eye, to keep fighting the good fight. This box set contains the eighth, ninth, and tenth books in the series: The Case of Sampson's Leap, The Case of the Uncommon Witness, and The Case of the Body in the Block. This murder mystery series contains no profanity or graphic descriptions of sex or violence.

Christmas 1951, Los Angeles: a city where the police are as corrupt as the criminals. Six prisoners are beaten senseless in their cells by cops crazed on alcohol. For the three LAPD detectives involved, it will expose the guilty secrets on which they have built their corrupt and violent careers. The novel takes these cops on a sprawling epic of brutal violence and the murderous seedy side of Hollywood.

Rickie Alleyn, son of the famed detective Roderick Alleyn, had taken to the peaceful Channel Island village of Deep Cove to write his book. However, soon enough the tedium of provincial life threatens to send him packing - until, that is, he finds a dead stablehand, and the sleepy community's world is upturned. His father is called to take proceedings into hand, but as a darker side to island life emerges, one of illegal drugs and smuggling, Rickie goes missing.

Dave Robicheaux has been warned that he's on somebody's hit list, and now the homicide detective is trying to discover just who that is before he ends up dead. Meanwhile he has taken on the murder investigation of a young black girl found dead in the Bayou swamp. Robicheaux uncovers a web of corruption that leads him to a terrifying confrontation with the one horror he fears most of all.

Roger Ackroyd knew too much. He knew that the woman he loved had poisoned her brutal first husband. He suspected also that someone had been blackmailing her. Now, tragically, came the news that she had taken her own life with a drug overdose.

DCI Tom Raven’s hopes for a few quiet days with his daughter, Hannah, are shattered when a shocking murder plunges him into a macabre mystery in the nearby coastal town of Whitby. In the hallowed grounds of the ruined abbey, a man lies lifeless: drained of blood and marked by the symbol of a dragon.

An Adam Dalgliesh Mystery Commander Adam Dalgliesh is recuperating from a life-threatening illness when he receives a call for advice from an elderly friend who works as a chaplain in a home for the disabled on the Dorset coast. Dalgliesh arrives to discover that Father Baddeley has recently and mysteriously died, as has one of the patients at Toynton Grange. Evidently the home is not quite the caring community it purports to be. Dalgliesh is determined to discover the truth of his friend's death.

When a number of leading scientists disappear without a trace, concern grows within the international intelligence community. Are they being kidnapped? Blackmailed? Brainwashed? One woman appears to have the key to the mystery. Unfortunately, Olive Betteron now lies in a hospital bed, dying from injuries sustained in a Moroccan plane crash.

The chin tattoo confirms the victim is Maori. The whorls of ink from her lower lip to her chin - the moko - is worn only by Maori women. So her ethnicity is a given. Finding who murdered her and dumped her body in the pool at the base of Mason's Rock waterfall is DI Nyree Bradshaw's latest case.

Mr. Jelly's Business is one of the finest of Arthur Upfield's many distinguished stories about the career of Detective Inspector Napoleon ("Bony") Bonaparte. It takes Bony to the West Australian town of Burracoppin to investigate the disappearance of George Loftus, whose car was found wrecked near the longest fence in the world, the 1,500 mile Rabbit Fence. He meets Loftus's wife, who is anything but grief-stricken at her husband's disappearance; Loftus's hired man, singularly reticent about his own past history; and many of Burracoppin's numerous gossips.

In the first of the four cases in Trouble is My Business, Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is offered a job that leaves a bad taste in the mouth: smearing a girl who's 'got her hooks into a rich man's pup'. Before too long Marlowe's up to his neck in corpses and cops and he's taken pity on the girl. There's nothing like making trouble out of your business.

Narrated by acclaimed British actor Edward Petherbridge. On the eve of war, Sherlock Holmes is asked by the Prime Minister of England to recover a new British superweapon that has fallen into the wrong hands. But Lucy James, an actress and Holmes's recently discovered grown daughter, has inherited the family sleuthing skills and strong-willed nature. Despite her father's objections, she insists on helping him, although several horrific murders have been linked to the weapon's disappearance.

Perry Stuart is a TV meteorologist who routinely works before the cameras. His life calm and ordered, his face familiar to every British household, Stuart's profound weather knowledge and accuracy have given him high status among forecasters, but no physical baptism by storm. Not, that is, until a fellow forecaster offers him a Caribbean hurricane-chasing ride in a small aeroplane.

Anthony Head, famed for his TV roles in Buffy and Little Britain, reads these stories inspired by one of the most successful BBC radio serials of the Twentieth Century.

Ursula Ottway’s beautiful cottage is wanted by her landlord, politician Marcus Grenville, so he can convert it into a holiday residence. So when Ursula discovers that the illegal use of poisoned bait on Grenville’s land has killed not only a rare bird of prey but her two beloved cats, she storms to his house and threatens revenge. Shocked and saddened to find Ursula’s body the morning after this conflict, Molly and her husband, George, decide to piece together a picture of Ursula’s last days.

Newlyweds Jim and Sarah were welcomed home from their honeymoon to the Scottish island of Kinness with a huge celebration and the whole island was present to witness the bitter end. But did Jim’s younger sister Mary fall? Or was she pushed? George Palmer-Jones, retired birdwatcher and amateur detective, suspected the latter, but proving it would be difficult—no one wanted to upset the balance of the island’s ancient relationships.

Writer Mark Endicott moves to a Dorset village, where he buys the small, almost derelict Corpse Path Cottage. It occurs to him that it would make the ideal setting for a murder. Before long, one of the village’s residents is mysteriously shot dead nearby. Mark’s life begins to unravel even as he helps the police solve the mystery. In the process he uncovers a tale of intrigue, bigamy, and blackmail.