Showing results by author "M. J. Trow" in All Categories

When asked about when it all began, Peter Maxwell would always say that it was at breakfast one day, when his son said, 'It says in the news that bats are giving people colds'. At that point, that was all anyone thought. Nolan was worried about the Count and Bismarck but of course, as everyone would soon know, it was much more than that. What was less obvious was that the pandemic would also restart a killing spree.

Peter Maxwell is delighted when an old college friend asks him to be the historical adviser on a film being made on the coast near Leighford. Dreams of becoming the next Spielberg soon founder when he discovers that the world of film is pretty much the same as the world of education - full of incompetents and backstabbers. Unfortunately, shooting becomes all too literal when the director takes a musket ball to the head. With one of his students implicated, another off on a jealous rant, and almost everyone out to get everyone else, Maxwell finds telling the truth from fiction to be more difficult than even he could have imagined.

The school outing to the Museum of the Moving Image is not an unqualified success. For in the darkened cinema complex of MOMI, two members of the party disappear without trace....

 October, 1900. University College, London. When the spread-eagled body of one of her students is discovered in her rented room shortly after attending one of her lectures, Dr. Margaret Murray is disinclined to accept the official verdict of suicide and is determined to find out how and why the girl really died. 

While riding the Wild Water, a man is killed in the float ahead, and Max and the girls become witnesses to murder. The corpses multiply as Maxwell nears the end of his search for the truth - but will one of them be his own niece?

When Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell takes his kids from Leighford High on an archaeological dig, they uncover a grave. But the corpse was not Saxon, and it wasn’t a king - this was an altogether more recent death. Then a policeman on the case is found dead at the wheel of his car. What knowledge did he possess that led to his death? And does his colleague, Maxwell’s partner, Jacquie Carpenter, unwittingly have the same information? Maxwell locks horns with the great and not so good in a vicious world of skulduggery, academic backbiting and religious mania which can only end in murder.

As Head of Sixth Form at Leighford High and a new father, Peter "Mad Max" Maxwell is a very busy man. Despite this, he still finds time for some amateur sleuthing, even though his policewoman "Significant Other", DS Jacquie Carpenter, has decided that, this time, he's leaving any murder investigations to her. But how can he refuse when the school photographer asks for his help after accidentally photographing a murder on the beach?

The derelict house on the edge of the sleepy seaside town was a haven for courting couples, down-and-outs - and someone with altogether more sinister intentions. It was there that they found the corpse of 17-year-old Jenny Hyde. She'd been strangled.

Maxwell is anticipating a quiet summer, with perhaps some light gardening if necessary - and as long as plants don't grow over the door and trap them inside, it won't be. But, as often is the case, Mrs Troubridge happens and a day out for her and her special friend, Mrs Getty, takes Maxwell and Nolan to Haledown House and into a web of intrigue and death. Maxwell's summer is nothing like he planned.

There comes a time in every teacher's life when he must face his nemesis - the Ofsted Inspection. On the third day, with the atmosphere at Leighford High decidedly fraught, one of the Inspectors is found stabbed to death. Events move quickly, and the Head is arrested on suspicion of the murder. But Peter Maxwell, Head of Sixth Form, cannot help but notice that Sally Meninger, the Ofsted Humanities expert, is not as distraught at her colleague's death as one might expect....

With girlfriend DS Jacquie Carpenter back at work, and baby Nolan rapidly growing into a feisty toddler, Peter "Mad Max" Maxwell, Head of Sixth Form at Leightford High, hires an au pair. But one afternoon Max returns home to find that the exotic Juanita seems to have disappeared into thin air. Meanwhile, two walkers are surprised and disturbed when their Border collie digs up an arm on Dead Man's Point.

The end of civilisation, as Peter Maxwell knows it, is just around the corner. It comes in the form of Fiona Braymarr, the new superhead. She is a new broom, and she sweeps good people along the way. And the odd thing about her? She has no past. And within days of her arrival, two local women have no future; one is found dead in a car showroom, the other is stabbed at the foot of her own stairs. Two murders so closely linked in time and space must surely be connected.

The position of Assistant Headteacher has become available at Leighford High, but Peter "Mad Max" Maxwell won't be applying. He has his hands full juggling his beloved Sixth Form, fatherhood and impending marriage. When a member of staff dies after a special lunch for the prospective Assistant Headteachers, Maxwell's hopes for a quiet term, followed by a quiet wedding, are swiftly shattered, as he finds himself embroiled in yet another sinister murder case.

When Peter Maxwell attends a school reunion of the class of '65, all is not as it seems among his old chums. They are career men, family men - but the years have taken their toll, and the seething tensions of the school years surface in unlikely ways. At the end of the reunion weekend, a man is dead, hanging from the bell rope of the old school. When a second death occurs, Maxwell finds himself in the midst of a murder investigation. What is the secret that has been lurking under Maxwell's nose all these years - and could he be on the murderer's list for killing number three?

History teacher Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell, a bit of a maverick, is sent on a short-term swap with another teacher at a nearby private school, Grimonds.

Maxwell’s Millennium is not quite like other people’s - for a start, it is a year later. After much quibbling with the maths department, everyone calls it an honourable draw and he celebrates as only he can: with his cat, his model soldiers and his Southern Comfort. A knock on the door could be Jacquie Carpenter, released from night shift earlier than expected, but instead of a warm girl Maxwell opens his door to find a very cold old lady, dead and naked.

Having had his retirement snatched from him by malfunctioning technology, Peter “Mad Max” Maxwell finds himself facing yet another year at Leighford High School. His wife, Jacquie, is further annoyed when a family holiday quickly becomes an impromptu Year Seven trip to the Isle of Wight. The situation takes another turn for the worse when the wife of Tom Medlicott, the new Head of Art, goes missing.

Peter Maxwell didn't want to attend the GNVQ course. He didn't want to get mixed up in murder either - but perhaps it was all part of death's rich tapestry. And while a disparate gathering of teachers was breaking ice upstairs at the Carnforth Centre, someone else was in the basement - breaking skulls. But what the killer couldn't have foreseen was that one of the victims was an old flame of Maxwell's. So now it was personal. And when 'Mad Max' takes something personally, he doesn't get madder - he gets results.

At Leighford High, Peter “Mad Max” Maxwell is temporarily promoted to Head of History when his colleague is chosen for an American exchange. His counterpart is Hector Gold, who is accompanied by his eccentric family including his in-laws, Jeff and Alana O’Malley.

Cambridge, 1583. About to graduate from Corpus Christi, the young Christopher Marlowe spends his days studying Virgil and Aristotle, and his nights carousing with old friends. But when one of them, Ralph Whittingside, is discovered lying dead in his King’s College room, mouth open in a silent scream, Marlowe refuses to accept the official verdict of suicide.