Showing results by author "Barbara Cleverly" in All Categories

Great Britain, 1923: When Detective Inspector John Redfyre is invited to attend the annual St. Barnabas College Christmas concert in his Aunt Henrietta's stead, he is expecting a quiet evening. But he arrives to witness a minor scandal: Juno Proudfoot, the trumpeter of the headlining musical duo, is a woman, and a young one at that - practically unheard of in conservative academic circles. When she suffers a near-fatal fall after the close of the show, Redfyre must consider whether someone was trying to kill her.

India, 1922. In Panikhat, 50 miles from Calcutta, the wives of officers in the Bengal Greys have been dying violently, one every year and always in March. All the deaths are bizarre and seem accidental. The only link between them is the small red roses that mysteriously appear on the women’s graves on the anniversaries of their deaths. The first victim perished in a fire, the second was bitten by a cobra, another was thrown off her horse into a ravine, while the fourth drowned.

Cambridge, 1924. Detective Inspector John Redfyre’s dog discovers a corpse in the graveyard adjoining St. Jude's College. An army greatcoat and wellworn boots suggest the dead man may have been a former soldier, though the empty bottle of brandy and a card bearing the words 'An Invitation to Dine' on the victim ring a discordant note. Even more unsettling is the autopsy, which reveals death by strangulation and unusual contents in the stomach from the man's last meal.

Cambridge, October 1933. Inside the old All Hallows Church on All Hallows' Eve, Doctor Adelaide Hartest bears witness to the final moments of a dying stranger. Despite the dagger plunged into the stranger's chest, the death is ruled a suicide, compounded by a formal confession before death. The victim, it is revealed, is known to Scotland Yard, and Assistant Commissioner Joe Sandilands is sent all the way from London to investigate.

Folies Bergère, Paris, 1927. Joe Sandilands hurries to the assistance of an old friend who has been arrested for murder. In a cell of the Quai des Orfevres he meets with Sir George Jardine, still in the evening dress stained with the blood of the dead man. The only other witness, a blonde who was sharing the victim's box, has vanished.

Simla 1922, and the summer capital of the British Raj is fizzing with the energy of the Jazz Age. Simla is where detective Joe Sandilands is heading as the guest of Sir George Jardine, the Governor of Bengal. But when Joe’s travelling companion, a Russian opera singer, is shot dead at his side in the Governor’s car, he finds himself plunged into a murder investigation. Confronted by the mystery of an identical unsolved killing a year before, Joe realizes that Sir George’s hospitality comes at a high price.

Events that took place on the Northwest Frontier of India in 1910 are resurrected for Joe Sandilands 12 years later. On a welcome break from his duties, he is spending a fortnight with his old army friend James Lindsay, commander of the British army's fort at Gor Khatri on the Afghan border. There is an uneasy peace in operation, but into the delicate situation is injected an ill-assorted group of visitors. After a skirmish that results in the death of a Pathan prince and the taking of hostages, Joe and James are given a week in which to find the killer.

One morning before dawn at her regal country estate, Lady Lavinia Truelove is crushed to death by a horse. Classified as “death by misadventure”, this appears a gruesome accident, but Scotland Yard detective Joe Sandilands suspects foul play. His suspicions are aggravated by his personal grievances toward Sir James Truelove, Lady Lavinia's widower and the influential academic patron of Dorcas Joliffe, whom Joe one day hopes to marry.

India 1922. When a tiger, turned man-eater, starts terrorising the northern villages of Ranipur, Governor Sir George Jardine dispatches Joe Sandilands, war hero and Scotland Yard detective, to join in a hunt for the beast as the guest of the maharajah. But Joe's suspicions are soon roused about the true nature of his trip. The maharajah is dying and his succession is unclear. The first heir to the throne has already died in a panther-wrestling incident and a second violent death occurs as Joe approaches the city.

Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands is caught off guard one night in 1933 by a phone call from a distressed boy named Jackie Drummond, who just might be the illegitimate son Joe never knew he had....

Scotland Yard detective Joe Sandilands is on leave, wending his way through France to the Riviera. En route, he stops off at a chateau in the Lubéron, where his niece is to join her father as one of the guests of a generous yet enigmatic host. But arriving at the chateau, they find that a troubling crime has been committed recently. Joe stays on to allay a rising sense of panic and root out the guilty.

It's 1926: Joe Sandilands is back from India enjoying the frantic pleasures of Jazz Age London. But post-war gaiety soon wears off when Scotland Yard ask Joe to conduct a swift enquiry. Dame Beatrice Joliffe, a much-respected member of the British establishment, has been bludgeoned to death in her suite at the Ritz. It seems that death dogged the footsteps of Dame Beatrice, and Joe finds himself investigating the apparent suicides of three young women who had been close to her.

1922: Commander Joe Sandilands returns from a stint in India and immediately finds himself up to his neck in a tricky political situation. London is reeling from IRA atrocities and Joe is further plagued by the machinations of a spy ring being run under his nose by a Russian émigrée princess. When a war hero is gunned down and the life of a popular Englishman is threatened, Joe knows he has only days to root out the person behind the killings.

Joe Sandilands has been dispatched to France to stay as the guest of a glamorous French war-widow who is determined that Joe should support her claim that a mysterious shell-shocked soldier is her husband. The problem is that four other claimants have identified him differently. Joe decides to investigate the four claimants and picks his way through a tangle of lies, deceit, and manipulation, uncovering a cleverly concealed murder committed during the war years.

Four short murder mysteries, three featuring Detective Sergeant Christina Kenton, set in the Cambridgeshire countryside... In "Kill Me Tomorrow", a serial murderer is killing according to the position of the numbers on a clock face. The police think they can mark on the map the place where the fifth murder will occur: In Christina Kenton's own village of Foxfield.

Cambridge, 1924 in early summertime. May Balls, punting, flirting and dancing the tango are the preoccupations of bright young people, but bright young Detective Inspector John Redfyre finds himself mired in multiple murders. One morning, his dog discovers a corpse neatly laid on a tombstone in the graveyard adjoining St. Bede's College. An army greatcoat and well-worn boots suggest the dead man may have been a former soldier, though the empty bottle of brandy and a card bearing the words "An Invitation to Dine" on the victim ring a discordant note.

Ellie Hardwick is a young architect, specialising in ancient buildings. Working for a Suffolk practice, she spends her days amongst the architectural gems of East Anglia - great houses, cathedrals, medieval churche,s and castles. In her work, she trips over the occasional corpse, ghost or wrong-doer. Architecture has much in common with detective work and Ellie uses her investigative skills to unravel ancient mysteries.