Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

The first girl had a bite mark on her neck, but they traced the DNA to her boyfriend. But the tabloids got hold of the story and called the killer 'The Rottweiler' and the name stuck. The latest murder takes place very near Inez Ferry's antique shop in Marylebone. When the Rottweiler’s trinkets start showing up in the shop, suddenly, everyone Inez knows is a suspect, and the killer feels all too close.

An Adam Dalgliesh mystery. Cover Her Face is P. D. James' debut novel, the first Adam Dalgliesh mystery, and a thrilling work of crime fiction set in the English countryside, from the best-selling author of Death Comes to Pemberley and Children of Men. From P. D. James, one of the masters of British crime fiction, comes the debut novel that introduced Scotland Yard detective Adam Dalgliesh.

The man who had died was Ismay's stepfather, Guy. Nine years on, she and her sister, Heather, still live in the same house in Clapham. But it has been divided into two self-contained flats. Their mother lives upstairs with her sister, Pamela. And the bathroom, where Guy drowned, has disappeared. Ismay works in public relations, and Heather in catering. They get on well. They always have. They never discuss the changes to the house, still less what happened that August day.

Eve and Liza, Mother and Daughter, live a quiet life in their remote home; a rustic gatehouse of a country mansion. At first glance their lives appear quite ordinary, except that Liza has almost no knowledge of the outside world, has never played with a child her own age and has witnessed her mother commit murder, on multiple occasions.

Two damaged children: Teddy Brex, whom no-one loved, and so found it easier to relate to objects or things which never let him down; and Francine Hill, who was discovered sitting by the body of her mother, her skirt red with blood. She couldn’t tell the police or her father anything to help track down the killer.... Children grow up in different ways. Teddy became a handsome young man, Francine was beautiful - a sight for sore eyes. But it was death that brought them together.

Winter in Denton is a busy time for DI Jack Frost, whose unsolved crime figures are mounting. A serial killer is murdering local prostitutes; armed robbery; a ram raid at a jewellers and a buried skeleton is uncovered. But Frost's main concern is for the safety of a missing schoolgirl. The dead body of another little girl from the same school is found... Frost's prime suspect, strongly protesting his innocence, hangs himself in his cell, leaving a note blaming Frost for driving him to suicide.

Geoffrey Staddon turned his back on the best things in his life. He turned his back on the beautiful house Clouds Frome, his finest achievement as an architect. He turned his back on the woman he loved, Consuela Caswell, and who loved him in return. Twelve years later, amidst the tatters of his career and marriage, he is forced to contemplate the remorse and shame of his betrayal. But when he reads that Consuela has been charged with murder, he knows instinctively that she cannot be guilty....

When DI Vera Stanhope finds the body of a woman in the sauna room of her local gym, she wonders briefly if she’s uncovered a simple death from natural causes. But a closer inspection reveals ligature marks around the victim’s throat…Vera pulls her team together and sets them interviewing those connected to the victim, while she and colleague, Sergeant Joe Ashworth, work to find a motive.

Seven BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations of P. D. James' acclaimed mysteries, plus P. D. James in Her Own Words. This collection includes: Cover Her Face, A Taste for Death, Devices and Desires, A Certain Justice, The Private Patient, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and The Skull Beneath the Skin.

Detective InspectorJjack Frost knelt down beside the tiny body. Who did this to you, sonny? he asked, his face tight with compassion. The boy was eight years old, bound and gagged, and stripped naked. He had been dead for some seven or eight hours. Frost should have been on holiday, he had sneaked back into the station late at night to help himself to some of Divisional Commander Mullett's cigarettes and this case had been dumped on him as no other officers were available. And then another boy is reported missing.

In a gloomy cellar, the figure of a beautiful, pale woman makes no move when the man advances on her from the shadows, puts his hands around her neck and strangles her. Arthur Johnson is a mild-mannered, shy man who has never known how to talk to women. His resulting loneliness has twisted his yearning for love and respect into a carefully constructed predilection for violence and control.

Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn’t know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break-up of her affair with Alistair. For him, it was as though her beauty had been plundered. But the man whose life she had saved would change Mary’s life in a way she could never have imagined.

A serial killer is terrorizing the senior citizens of Denton, and the local police are succumbing to a flu epidemic. In uncertain charge of the investigations is Detective Inspector Jack Frost, crumpled, slapdash, and foul-mouthed as ever. Trying to cope despite inadequate backup, but there is never enough time; the unsolved crimes pile up and the vicious killings go on.

Detective Inspector Jack Frost, officially on duty, is nevertheless determined to sneak off to a colleague's leaving party. But first the corpse of a well-known local junkie is found blocking the drain of a Denton public lavatory and then, when Frost attempts to join the revels later on, the nubile daughter of a wealthy businessman is reported missing. Sleepy Denton has never known anything like the crime wave which now threatens to submerge it.

The death of Sylvia Kaye figured dramatically in Thursday afternoon's edition of the Oxford Mail. By Friday evening Inspector Morse had informed the nation that the police were looking for a dangerous man - facing charges of willful murder, sexual assault and rape. But as the obvious leads fade into twilight and darkness, Morse becomes more and more convinced that passion holds the key....