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

March, 1941. World War Two is well underway and the Blitz is taking its toll on Central London with bombs raining down almost every night. Inspector Coburg and his trusted Sergeant Lampson are just recovering from the devastating bomb attack on the Café de Paris when they get a call asking them to go to the disused Lord's Underground station. Once there, they are taken to see the body of a man on the former platform. He's been beaten to death by blows on the back of his head, by what Dr Welbourne believes to have been a cricket bat.

Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them, and some marry them. Lina Aysgarth had lived with her husband for nearly eight years before she realized that she was married to a murderer.

Former police officer Dean Matheson has been playing it safe since the case that cost him almost everything. But working as a PI doesn’t quite cut it - that is until a British woman walks into his office with a job that Dean can’t resist. The woman’s daughter, Hannah Walker, and her friend Jodie have gone missing whilst working at a ski resort in Colorado. It’s clear there’s something sinister about the girls’ disappearance, but then why are the local police department being so unhelpful?

It’s Christmas, and things are looking good at the Slocombe house. Thea’s daughter Jessica has come to stay, much to her stepdaughter Stephanie’s delight. But then things take a turn for the worse. A local family, the Frowses, finds themselves increasingly harassed by an aggressive landlord. When Beverley Frowse goes missing, Thea and Stephanie both feel they should do their best to help her husband and son to solve the mystery.

Dr James Earle and his wife live in comfortable seclusion near the Hog's Back, a ridge in the North Downs in the beautiful Surrey countryside. When Dr Earle disappears from his cottage, Inspector French is called in to investigate. At first he suspects a simple domestic intrigue - and begins to uncover a web of romantic entanglements beneath the couple's peaceful rural life. The case soon takes a more complex turn.

At the Central Criminal Court, an eager crowd awaits the trial of Victoria Lamartine, an active participant in the Resistance during the war. She is now employed at the Family Hotel in Soho, where Major Eric Thoseby has been found murdered. Thoseby is believed to have fathered Lamartine's child, and the prosecution insist that his death is revenge for his abandonment of Lamartine and her arrest by the Gestapo. A last-minute change in Lamartine's defence counsel grants solicitor Nap Rumbold just eight days to prove her innocence.

Everyone told Cara Shelly that she was crazy to set up a café in the shadow of eccentric Kentish stately home Tanton Towers. But three years later, the Happy Huffkin café is thriving, and Cara considers the Tanton Towers staff - and its eccentric owners, Max and Alison - to be like family. But one summer evening, Alison comes hurtling down to the café to beg her for help. Daphne Hanson, queen of the Towers' costume-clad dancing troupe is lying dead in the orangery. Strangled! But by whom? And why?

It’s a busy time of the year for Lord James Harrington and his wife, Beth - there’s the Michaelmas Fair in the village to enjoy. But matters take a sinister turn when the body of the founder of the Jolly Madrigals singing group is discovered after the Fair. James’ friend DCI George Lane is in charge of the investigation, but as further murders occur, he grows increasingly baffled. James and George are convinced that a single killer is responsible for these deaths.

On a fine autumn weekend Lord Aveling hosts a hunting party at his country house, Bragley Court. Among the guests are an actress, a journalist, an artist and a mystery novelist. The unlucky 13th is John Foss, injured at the local train station and brought to the house to recuperate - but John is nursing a secret of his own. Soon events take a sinister turn when a painting is mutilated, a dog stabbed and a man strangled.

The year is 1794. Free from jail, John Pearce is not free from the smugglers whose boat he stole. While lying low, Pearce soon has other pressing concerns on his mind. Granted a commission by William Pitt, John Pearce evades his pursuers by undertaking a dangerous mission in France. As rebellious ambition turns to bloody disaster, Pearce must try to re-join Admiral Howe. Also serving with Howe is Ralph Barclay - who has somehow contrived to yet again press Pearce’s friends into his crew.

Bea Abbot's plans are disrupted by the unexpected arrival of one of her clients, bearing a brown leather briefcase full of expensive jewellery. Magda Summerleys has been working as a housekeeper for wealthy art expert Lucas Rycroft, who, she says, entrusted her with the briefcase for safekeeping - and who seems to have disappeared without trace.Drawn into the tangled affairs of the dysfunctional Rycrofts, Bea soon discovers that other members of the family are determined to get their hands on the jewels - by whatever means necessary.

Taking a break from his holiday visiting his nephew, Jim, Athelstan Digby agrees to look after the old bookshop of Keldstone so that his hosts, the Lavenders, can attend their cousin's funeral. On the first day of his tenure, three suspicious characters enquire after a copy of The Life and Times of Mr Badman by John Bunyan.

London, 1896. Madame Tussauds opens to find one of its nightwatchmen decapitated and his colleague nowhere to be found. To the police, the case seems simple: one killed the other and fled, but workers at the museum aren’t convinced. Although forbidden contact by his superior officer, Scotland Yard detective John Feather secretly enlists ‘The Museum Detectives’ Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton to aid the police investigation. When the body of the missing nightwatchman is discovered encased within a wax figure, the case suddenly becomes more complex.

Graham and Joan Bendix have apparently succeeded in making that eighth wonder of the modern world, a happy marriage. And into the middle of it there drops, like a clap of thunder, a box of chocolates. Joan Bendix is killed by a poisoned box of liqueur chocolates that cannot have been intended for her to eat. The police investigation rapidly reaches a dead end. Chief Inspector Moresby calls on Roger Sheringham and his Crimes Circle - six amateur but intrepid detectives - to consider the case.

August, 1940. On the streets of London, locals watch with growing concern as German fighter planes plague the city’s skyline. But inside the famous Ritz Hotel, the cream of society continues to enjoy all the glamour and comfort that money can buy during wartime - until an anonymous man is discovered with his throat slashed open. Detective Chief Inspector Coburg is called in to investigate, ably assisted by his trusty colleague, Sergeant Lampson.

Uncle Willie has come to stay with the Redpaths for the holidays. It is just their luck for him to be found dead the morning after Christmas day, dressed in his Santa Claus costume, seemingly poisoned by his favourite chocolates. Or was there something sinister in the mince pies? If so, was it the ones stashed in his room or those sent to him mysteriously by post? More importantly, since his will was recently redrafted, who stands to gain by this unseasonable crime?

London, 1895. Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton have been hired by the Natural History Museum to find out who deliberately smashed the fossilised skeleton of a small dinosaur. At first Daniel is reluctant to take the case, pointing out that they deal in murders, not vandalism. But then one of the attendants in the dinosaur room is murdered, his body found tied to a dinosaur skeleton and a note pinned to him saying 'The price of betrayal'. As Daniel and Abigail investigate, they must negotiate a web of legal and professional tensions.

On a foggy night in Hampstead, London, a party has gathered in an artist's studio to weather the wartime blackout. A civil servant and a government scientist match wits in a game of chess while Bruce Manaton paints the portrait. In the kitchen, Rosanne Manaton prepares tea for the charlady of Mr Folliner. When the murder of 'Old Mr. F' is discovered by his Canadian infantryman nephew, it's not long before Inspector Macdonald of Scotland Yard is called to the scene.

1895. Former Scotland Yard detective Daniel Wilson, made famous from his days working the Jack the Ripper case, and his archaeologist sidekick Abigail Fenton are summoned to investigate the murder of a young woman at the Manchester Museum. Though staff remember the woman as a recent and regular visitor, no one appears to know who she is, and she has no possessions which identify her. Seeking help from a local journalist, Daniel hopes to unravel this mystery, but the journey to the truth is fraught with obstacles.

1894. A well-respected academic is found dead in a gentlemen’s convenience cubicle at the British Museum, the stall locked from the inside. Professor Lance Pickering had been due to give a talk promoting the museum’s new 'Age of King Arthur' exhibition when he was stabbed repeatedly in the chest. Having forged a strong reputation working alongside the inimitable Inspector Abberline on the Jack the Ripper case, Daniel Wilson is called in to solve the mystery, and he brings his expertise and archaeologist Abigail Fenton with him.