The Case of the Abominable Snowman

In the first book in the Nigel Strangeways classic crime series, an obnoxious schoolboy is found dead at his school Sports Day. Can amateur detective Nigel Strangeways help find the killer?

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 government's security department have asked private detective Nigel Strangeways to keep a discreet eye on Professor Alfred Wagley, a research scientist who is spending the Christmas holidays in the South-West of England. But someone else is also very interested in the professor and his work, and when his young daughter is kidnapped, Nigel finds himself in a race to avert a tragedy.

Marryatt (the clergyman), Carmichael (the retired don), Reeves (the former member of the military intelligence), and Gordon (the vacationing golfer) are playing golf in Paston Oatvile when Reeves slices his drive from the third tee. In searching for the ball, they come upon the dead body of Mr. Brotherhood below the railroad viaduct. When they find Brotherhood’s hat 15 yards away from the body, they suspect dirty work is afoot, and so the foursome sets out to solve his murder.

Mrs. Bentley has been arrested for murder. The evidence is overwhelming: arsenic she extracted from fly papers was in her husband's medicine, his food and his lemonade, and her crimes are being plastered across the newspapers. Even her lawyers believe she is guilty. But Roger Sheringham, the brilliant but outspoken young novelist, is convinced that there is too much evidence against Mrs. Bentley and sets out to prove her innocence.

When Sir Charles Airdrie, owner of Dreams Castle in the Scottish Highlands, gives young Vernon Lathaby - a flamboyant young exhibitionist - permission to search the Isle of Erran for buried treasure, Lathaby takes along his tough hanger-on, ‘Digger Henderson’. However, cautious of being swindled by his partner, Lathaby takes out insurance to protect him, so Miles Bredon is dispatched by the suspicious Incredible Insurance Company to keep a watchful eye on proceedings.

Understandably, Lord Burford had some misgivings about hosting another house party at Alderley, his beautiful country mansion. After all, the previous two could at best be described as disastrous, since a couple of their guests were bumped off during their stay on each occasion. But with family members travelling down for the funeral of an elderly relative, the Earl really had no choice but to offer them accommodation.

1957. Lord James Harrington and his wife, Beth, run a country hotel in the village of Cavendish, deep in the heart of West Sussex. James and Beth are discussing the latest Cavendish Players production, The Devil Incarnate, when their cleaner informs them that farmer Alec Grimes is missing.

Max Tudor has adapted well to his post as vicar of St. Edwold's in the idyllic village of Nether Monkslip. The quiet village seems the perfect home for Max, who has fled a harrowing past as an MI5 agent. But this new-found serenity is quickly shattered when the highly vocal and unpopular president of the Women's Institute turns up dead at the Harvest Fayre. The death looks like an accident, but Max's training as a former agent kicks in, and before long he suspects foul play.

When an opera company gathers in Oxford for the first post-war production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger its happiness is soon soured by the discovery that the unpleasant Edwin Shorthouse will be singing a leading role. Nearly everyone involved has reason to loathe Shorthouse, but who amongst them has the fiendish ingenuity to kill him in his own locked dressing room?

Death and decapitation seem to go hand in hand in the Devon village of Aller. When the first victim's head is sent floating down the river, the village's rural calm is shattered. Soon the corpses are multiplying and the entire community is involved in the murder hunt. While the rector, the major, the police and a journalist, desperate for the scoop of the century, chase false trails, it is left to Gervase Fen, Oxford don and amateur criminologist, to uncover the sordid truth.

In Full Dark House, Christopher Fowler tells the story of both the first and last case of an unlikely pair of crime fighters - and how along the way they changed the face of detection. A present-day bombing rips through London and claims the life of 80-year-old detective Arthur Bryant. For his partner John May, it means the end of a partnership that lasted over half a century and an eerie echo back to the Blitz of World War II when they first met. Desperately searching for clues, May finds his friend’s notes of their first case....

Wealthy Sir Hubert Handesley's original and lively weekend house parties are deservedly famous. To amuse his guests, he has devised a new form of the fashionable Murder Game, in which a guest is secretly selected to commit a 'murder' in the dark, and everyone assembles to solve the crime. But when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse....

Roderick Alleyn is back in this unique crime novel begun by Ngaio Marsh during the Second World War and now completed by Stella Duffy. It's business as usual for Mr Glossop as he does his regular round delivering wages to government buildings scattered across New Zealand's lonely Canterbury plains. But when his car breaks down, he is stranded for the night at the isolated Mount Seager Hospital, with the telephone lines down, a storm on its way and the nearby river about to burst its banks....

James Randolph is murdered early one evening and his body found a few hours later. When the police arrive, they discover that Randolph's safe has been ransacked, and discarded wrapping paper litters his bedroom floor. Perhaps by chance or perhaps by design, Trent seems to have been the last person, other than the murderer, to see Randolph alive. But this is only one aspect amongst many which connect Trent with the murder and stimulate his interest.