Showing titles in Traditional Detectives

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.

Lucy Angkatell invited Hercule Poirot to lunch. To tease the great detective, her guests stage a mock murder beside the swimming pool. Unfortunately, the victim plays the scene for real. As his blood drips into the water, John Christow gasps one final word: "Henrietta". In the confusion, a gun sinks to the bottom of the pool. Poirot's enquiries reveal a complex web of romantic attachments. It seems everyone in the drama is a suspect, and each a victim of love.

Among the towering red cliffs of Petra, like some monstrous swollen Buddha, sat the corpse of Mrs Boynton. A tiny puncture mark on her wrist was the only sign of the fatal injection that had killed her.

Death is Now My Neighbour is the twelfth novel in Colin Dexter's Oxford-set detective series. As he drove his chief down to Kidlington, Lewis returned the conversation to where it had begun. 'You haven't told me what you think about this fellow Owens – the dead woman's next-door neighbour.'...

An explosive love triangle, a formidable matriarch and a house party of enemies. All drawn inexorably … Towards Zero. Now Anjelica Huston and a star-studded cast feature in a brand new BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie's tense, ingenious novel. Read it before you see it! What is the connection...

It was 1921 when Lord Peter Wimsey first encountered the Attenbury emeralds. The recovery of the magnificent gem in Lord Attenbury's most dazzling heirloom made headlines - and launched a shell-shocked young aristocrat on his career as a detective. Now it is 1951. A happily married Lord Peter has just shared the secrets of that mystery with his wife, the detective novelist Harriet Vane. Then the new young Lord Attenbury - grandson of Lord Peter's first client - seeks his help again, this time to prove who owns the gigantic emerald that Wimsey last saw in 1921.

Dr Ruth Galloway, forensic archaeologist, spends a lot of time looking at death. But now death has found her, with the news that her long-time friend Dan Golding has been killed in a house fire. Ruth's grief soon turns to suspicion of arson when she receives a desperate letter from Dan, sent the...

A young American actress arrives in London hoping to learn her identity, just as Sherlock Holmes is closing in on a master criminal. Their worlds collide, and not even Holmes could have foreseen the impact!

From the bestselling and award winning 'master of the spy thriller' comes a collection of riveting short stories. When a man's wife leaves him under suspicious circumstances, he sets off in search for her, unprepared for the guilty secrets he's about to drag back into the light. A man is tempted...

A new full-length novel adapted by Charles Osborne from Agatha Christie’s acclaimed play, presented in the new Christie livery. When a stranger runs his car into a ditch in dense fog near the South Wales coast, and makes his way to an isolated house, he discovers a woman standing over the dead...

Charity Buntington's husband describes his wife as the most lovely and inoffensive person, whom nobody would want to hurt. But someone enters their home in broad daylight, strangles her, then cuts off and takes away her right forefinger. Inspector Hopkins asks Sherlock Holmes to help him investigate the case, but Charity's friend Aurora Jones is also a private detective, and wishes to help bring her friend's murderer to justice. Holmes is impressed with Jones' skills, and although Hopkins is reluctant, he agrees to let Miss Jones assist in the case under Holmes' guidance.

The DS Tomek Bowen Series are fast-paced crime fiction stories featuring DS Tomek Bowen. The first three full-length books in this gripping series are brought together for the first time in this great value boxset.

A therapist had moved into the village of Carsely and Agatha Raisin hates her. Not only was this therapist, Jill Davent, romancing Agatha's ex-husband, but she had dug up details of Agatha's slum background. Added to that, Jill was counselling a woman called Gwen Simple from Winter Parva and...

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. In his tenth appearance, he takes a job as an advertising copywriter to expose a ruthless killer. Victor Dean fell to his death on the stairs of Pym's Advertising Agency, but no one seems to be sorry. Until an inquisitive new copywriter joins the firm and asks some awkward questions....

When the Duke of Purbeck throws a house party to celebrate his daughter's 21st birthday and present her with a family heirloom, nobody expects that the weekend will end in murder. The fabled Belsingham pearls have a history steeped in blood and slaughter dating back more than a century - and now it seems they've claimed another life, when the interfering and opinionated Professor Coddington is found dead in the library with the pearls clutched in his hand.

London, 1899: When a mysterious packet is stolen from a diplomatic courier, Sherlock and Lucy are called upon to recover it before its ominous contents fall into the wrong hands. The Baker Street gang uncovers a dark, tangled web of intrigue and an evil plot that could very well bring all of England to its knees. When a notorious criminal is found dead in the bookstore basement, and the bookseller is arrested for the crime, the danger becomes very real, and very personal. Can Holmes and Lucy find the perilous packet, catch the murderous mastermind, and foil the fiendish plot?

Brought to you by Penguin. Second to none in her ability to make detective stories, Georgette Heyer is queen of the genre. It is a complete mystery why anyone would choose to murder the trusted old butler of Norton Manor. Barrister turned amateur detective, Frank Amberley, has reason to suspect...

Steeple Martin sleuth Libby Sarjeant and her partner Ben are hosting a writers’ weekend reunion at Ben’s family home, The Manor, when a body is discovered in the grounds. Even though Scotland Yard is on the case, Libby feels impelled to investigate a murder on her home patch. Their enquiries take Libby and her psychic investigator friend Fran Castle to historic Dorset, where they uncover a complex web of writers’ jealousies that has further tragic consequences before Libby uses all her wiles to get at the truth.

A struggling young Persian artist sends Flynn, one of Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars, out to buy provisions for a celebratory dinner. But when he brings the requested groceries to the artist’s wife, her joy quickly turns to fear. Then Flynn returns to the artist’s studio, only to find that disaster has struck. Meanwhile, the National Portrait Gallery enlists the help of Sherlock Homes to investigate the mysterious theft of The Pink Lady. As Holmes sets out to recover the precious painting, he uncovers a dark web of deceit far more complex than he imagined.

'A cracking storyteller' ANN CLEEVES There is more to solving a crime than following the clues. Welcome to Chief Inspector Gamache's world of facts and feelings. In the green depths of spring, morning breaks on a woman splayed in a bed of flowers - her eyes wide, her neck broken. Her death is a...