A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. A locked-room mystery that will delight Agatha Christie fans. Dramatist Trevor Lowe and his friend Detective Inspector Shadgold board the Western Express to spend Christmas in the little Cornish village of St Merryan. Heavy snowfall forces their journey to an abrupt halt and, after seeking refuge in a local pub, one of their fellow passengers is found stabbed to death, clutching half a Christmas card. Is the murderer in their midst?

A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. 'It’s a very rare thing for a murder to be committed actually in the presence of a police officer.' Or so it was thought.... After the police fail to trace the writer behind a series of threatening letters to wealthy industrialist Sir Charles Leighton, he demands constant police protection. And thus it is up to Inspector Lang to accompany the man to a bridge party on New Year’s Eve - and track down his killer....

A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. Inspired by the unsolved Peasenhall murder case of 1902, 'Blind Man’s Hood' shows Carter Dickson’s penchant for true crime. When Rodney Hunter and his wife, Muriel, arrive late to a Christmas party in rural Kent, they are unsettled to find the isolated stately home open and empty of guests. While they await the party’s return, they are welcomed in by a mysterious hostess who regales them with the dark legend of Jane Waycross.

 A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. When Alfred Caithness extends his stay at Dingle House for Christmas, it is not only due to the bad weather. He is in need of a loan from his wealthy cousin Herbert, and he is in love with his wife, Barbara. But events take a dark turn after Herbert refuses to help him.... 

In a gloomy flat off Islington High Street, Chief Inspector Brett Nightingale and Sergeant Beddoes find an old woman dead. The Princess Olga Karukhin, who fled from Russia at the time of the Revolution, has lived in terror of being discovered ever since. Olga's grandson, Ivan, appears to have run from the scene but is later seen returning to the flat as though oblivious to the terrible crime. Taking place between 22nd and 24th December, Nightingale's enquiry takes him across London, culminating in the wrapping up of the mystery on Christmas Eve. 

A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. Car trouble and poor weather lead John Bradley to Lark Cottage, the home of Lucy Shaw and her young daughter, Julia. Her husband, serving a life sentence for murder, has escaped from Lanforth Prison, and she implores her unexpected visitor to stay the night. Listeners will love this rare short story from John Bingham and the unexpected twist.

A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. As Sir Leonard Huntercombe tells the elaborate story of one of his clients, listeners will love piecing together this strange locked-room mystery set on a sleeper train to Aberdeen.

A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. In this festive short story featuring Francis Durbridge’s favourite debonair amateur detective, Paul Temple journeys to Switzerland to identify an elusive criminal.

London, 1945. The capital is shrouded in the darkness of the blackout, and mystery abounds in the parks after dusk. During a stroll through Regent's Park, Bruce Mallaig witnesses two men acting suspiciously around a footbridge. In a matter of moments, one of them has been murdered; Mallaig's view of the assailant but a brief glimpse of a ghastly face in the glow of a struck match. The murderer's noiseless approach and escape seems to defy all logic, and even the victim's identity is quickly thrown into uncertainty. 

A short story from British Library Crime Classic The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories. A Christmas Eve party at Clevere Hall ends in tragedy when the host is found stabbed to death. Major Ceely certainly wasn’t short of enemies, but who hated him enough to commit the crime?

The Second World War is drawing to a close. Nicholas Vaughan, released from the army after an accident, takes refuge in Devon renting a thatched cottage in the beautiful countryside at Mallory Fitzjohn. Hard work and rural peace seem to make this a happy bachelor life. On a nearby farm lives the bored, flirtatious June St Cyres, an exile from London while her husband is a Japanese POW. June’s presence attracts fashionable visitors of dubious character and threatens to spoil Vaughan’s prized seclusion. When Little Thatch is destroyed in a blaze, all Vaughan’s work goes up in smoke, and Inspector Macdonald is drafted in to uncover a motive for murder.

The unloading of a consignment of French wine from the steamship Bullfinch is interrupted by a gruesome discovery in a broken cask leaking sawdust and gold sovereigns. But when the shipping clerk returns with the police, the cask and its macabre contents have gone. Following the clues to Paris, Inspector Burnley of Scotland Yard enlists the help of the genial French detective M. Lefarge to check motives and alibis in their hunt for evidence of a particularly fiendish murder.  

"The horror on the train, great though it may turn out to be, will not compare with the horror that exists here, in this house." On Christmas Eve, heavy snowfall brings a train to a halt near the village of Hemmersby. Several passengers take shelter in a deserted country house, where the fire has been lit and the table laid for tea - but no one is at home. Trapped together for Christmas, the passengers are seeking to unravel the secrets of the empty house when a murderer strikes in their midst.

Samuel Whitehead, landlord of the Rose and Crown, is a stranger in the lonely East Anglian village of High Eldersham. And when the newcomer is stabbed to death in his pub, it seems that the veil dividing High Eldersham from the outside world is about to be lifted. Detective Inspector Young forms a theory about the case so utterly impossible that merely entertaining the suspicion makes him doubt his own sanity. Surrounded by sinister forces beyond his understanding, he calls on a brilliant amateur and 'living encyclopedia', Desmond Merrion. 

When a signalman discovers a mutilated body inside a railway tunnel near Groote Park, it seems to be a straightforward case of a man struck by a passing train. But Inspector Vandam of the Middeldorp police isn’t satisfied that Albert Smith’s death was accidental, and he sets out to prove foul play in a baffling mystery which crosses continents from deepest South Africa to the wilds of northern Scotland, where an almost identical crime appears to have been perpetrated.