Showing results by publisher "Soundings" in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Suffolk, 1955. Rosy Gilchrist is asked by her friend Lady Fawcett to join her on a trip to Southwold to visit Delia Dovedale, an old school chum she hasn’t seen in years. Rosy reluctantly agrees to be her companion on the reunion jaunt, but on arrival they discover that their hostess is dead - recently murdered at the local flower festival. Faced with incompetent village police officers and a stern manservant with an eyepatch, Rosy and her friends face the impossible task of finding the murderer in a town of suspicious characters - before the body count rises.

When a man is found dead, and his carer, a good-time girl, is suspected of his murder, Detective Inspector Angel is drawn into an intricate web of family lies and deceit. The dead man’s daughter is hiding something, and his granddaughter seems incapable of telling anyone the truth. The pressure is on for Angel to unravel the mystery and identify the killer before another body is found.

Karen Slocombe isn’t sure why she visited SuperFare that day - as a committed member of the Food Chain group and a regular stallholder at local farmers’ markets, it’s a place she would normally avoid. Luckily for Karen, she leaves moments before a bomb explodes. Only a few days later, Karen finds herself in the midst of another horrific crime. When friends from the Food Chain group start warning Karen not to tell the police certain details, her suspicions are instantly aroused. Could the two events be linked?

Inspector Alvarez is just considering whether he can surreptitiously leave work early when a colleague calls to tell him that an Englishman has been found dead in his car in his garage, the engine on and the tank empty. Alvarez, chafing over the prospect of an evening on the job, proceeds to the scene, but his hopes of a quick and easy case are dashed – for while the man was found in a car full of fumes, it appears the cause of death was not carbon-monoxide poisoning….

It is 1920, and DI Albert Lincoln is still reeling from the disturbing events of the previous year. Before the war, he'd investigated the murder of a child in a Cheshire village, and now a woman has been murdered there and another child is missing. With the help of the village schoolmistress, Albert closes in on the original prewar killer. He soon realises the only witness is in grave danger, possibly from somebody he calls 'the Shadow Man'. And as he discovers more about the victims he finds information that might bring him a step closer to solving a mystery of his own.

England in 1920 is a land fit for heroes. So why is one of those heroes found dead in a dingy London hotel? And why does his war record show that he has been missing for three years? The deceased is the fiancé of Inspector Lestrade's daughter, and she sets out to find his murderer. As always with Lestrade, one murder has a habit of leading to another. How can a woman killed in an air raid in 1917 be found with a bullet through her head three years later?

Charlie Rutland specialized in scandal hunting. As a journalist at a smart magazine, his job was to search out anything that could be turned into a good smear story. Then, while carrying out some 'investigations' in Yorkshire, his career came to an abrupt and violent end. Inspector Crow, skeletal as ever, arrives from Scotland Yard to find a formidable task awaiting him.

“The end of the old world”, people said about the long, hot summer of 1914. That summer Aunt Tilly comes to stay with her brother, the Rector, and his four lively daughters in the sleepy Sussex village of Ashden. Aunt Tilly’s visit sparks off a chain of events which threatens to split Ashden apart. Agnes Pilbeam, the Rectory palourmaid, and her sweetheart, Jamie, find themselves bewilderingly caught up. Then, in August, the lamps go out all over Europe, and war bursts open the straitjacket of rural village life.

‘The White Line’ appeared in a 1929 anthology, The World’s 100 Best Detective Stories, and features John Ferguson’s Scottish series detective, criminologist Francis McNab. Returning to England from Washington, McNab becomes embroiled in a mystery aboard the ship and must get to the bottom of who stole eligible socialite Sally Silver’s diamond necklace before they reach the port.

1949. An unsigned letter arrives on the desk of Chief Inspector Derry of the Canterbury police. Enclosed is a jade pendant, identical to the one that went missing from the body of an actress murdered a decade previously. The case had been shut quickly at the time - the accused vagrant gave a written confession and was sentenced to the gallows - but the necklace was never recovered. Until now. Inspector Madden is asked to investigate the letter's worrying claims by his old friend....

Lawyers who write books are not, as a rule, popular with their confrères, but Archibald Lenton, the most brilliant of prosecuting attorneys, was an exception. Alphonse Riebiera was a man who had a way with women, women who would fall under his spell and then regret it. But this time it seems he may have picked the wrong woman.

Balmoral Castle, 1905. For Rose McQuinn, a handsome cottage on the Royal estate promises a summer holiday of unaccustomed luxury. As Rose travels by train with her little stepdaughter, Meg, and her trusty dog, Thane, she wonders what exciting adventures await them at the Royal household. The holiday takes a darker turn when Rose is warned not to interfere in two deaths that occur soon after her arrival. When they’re dismissed as accidents, she suspects foul play.

With Beatlemania having finally reached the capital, it’s an exciting time to be in London. Especially for young photographer Kate O’Donnell, who left her native Liverpool six months previously to share a dilapidated flat with two girlfriends in trendy Notting Hill. When a prostitute is found murdered off the Portobello Road a West Indian immigrant is arrested, inflaming the district’s simmering racial tension to breaking point. The accused is Nelson Mackintosh, the father of one of Kate’s flatmate Tess’s pupils. Convinced of Nelson’s innocence, Kate determines to track down the real killer.

Julie Monday enjoys a rare moment of happiness when at the age of eight she visits the Essex seaside and meets eleven-year-old Harry Walker. Ten years later, they meet again. Fated to be together, they marry just before the outbreak of the Second World War. But it’s now 1939, Harry has enlisted, and Julie must face the blitz alone with their son. Travelling back from work one day, Julie is caught in the chaos of a direct hit.

Thea Osbourne is only too happy to have a bit of peace and quiet. The only positive thing that came out of her recent house sitting disasters is her blossoming relationship with DI Phil Hollis and she relishes the thought of their spending some quality time together. Even meeting Phil’s childhood acquaintance, the eccentric Ariadne, cannot detract from Thea’s happiness. But the bad luck that plagues the hapless Thea and her beloved spaniel Hepzipah is never far away.

Recently divorced, Jay Morton returns to her hometown and secures a job helping to set up a museum at the sinister-looking Pendle House, now derelict and overgrown. While searching for artefacts in the attics, Jay stumbles across some extraordinary original masks and is intrigued by their malevolent and threatening eyes…Those very eyes haunt Donna in her nightmares

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Bertie, Prince of Wales, must combine his detective skills with those of a firefighter when he tends to a fire in Villiers Street. With no apparent cause, Bertie soon finds himself on the tail of an arsonist.

Inspector Alvarez is in a good mood, for once. The sun is shining, he has enjoyed an uniterrupted morning nap at his desk, his irasciable boss - Superios Chief Salas - is on holiday, and the local Mallorquin government’s proposal to increase tax on alcohol has been soundly defeated. But optimism, he soon has cause to reflect, is the road to disaster. In short order, he provokes the ire of Salas’ secretary and then of Salas himself - whose holiday does not seem to exclude phoning Alvarez to complain about his work. In no time at all, Alxvarez is mired down by a seemingly impossible task....

Dennis Cooper is one of the few full-time resident National Trust curators in England and lives with his wife in the grounds of the spectacular Westbourne Gardens, which receives thousands of visitors each year. On the face of things, Dennis lives a perfect life and has a dream job, but this idyllic setting is riven with dark secrets, and it isn't long before foul play draws Lambert and Hook into this troubled Eden.

When King Edward II is informed that his wife, Queen Isabella, has defied him and remained in France with their son, he flies into a rage. It is Sir Baldwin de Furnshill and his friend Bailiff Simon Puttock who have broken the news to him and are now no longer in the king’s favour. They return to their homes in Devon, but they find that outlaws hold sway in the land. Sir Robert, a knight from the King’s household, has turned outlaw from his castle near Crediton. When a pair of clerics are found murdered, Baldwin and Simon are asked to investigate.