A Shakespearean actor shuffles off his mortal coil in this "skillfully wrought" country-house mystery (The New York Times). Sir Henry Ancred, a celebrated Shakespearean actor, has arranged to have his portrait painted by Agatha Troy, wife of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. But when Ancred is killed at his own birthday party, leaving behind a family full of suspects, Troy's work ends and Inspector Alleyn's begins ...

When the clues in a hit-and-run investigation lead him to two families famous for producing and selling the world's best Madeira wine, Scotland Yard's Ian Rutledge is pitted against his new supervisor who, dismissing the evidence, has his own suspect.

Following a passionate and troubled love affair with a pretty widow named Jane Holdsworth, Jury finds himself, unaccountably, a suspect in a murder investigation. Detained in London, Jury sends his friend Melrose Plant, former Earl of Caverness, to the Holdsworth family's Lake District home to pose as an eccentric librarian. Plant discovers that his catalogue cards contain less data on Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey than they do on tantalizing...

"The Sixties are going well for Edgar Stephens and his good friend the magician Max Mephisto. Edgar is happily married with children and was recently promoted to superintendent. Max has found fame and stardom in America, though he is now back in England for a funeral and a prospective movie job. But Edgar’s new wife, though—former detective Emma—is restless and frustrated at home, knowing she was the best detective on the team. When an investigation...

In the tenth murderous case for Richard Jury, the New Scotland Yard superintendent witnesses a killing in a West Yorkshire inn called the Old Silent, while his highborn, amateur colleague, Melrose Plant wishes to he could perform one as he drives his impossible Aunt Agatha to the Old Swan in Harrogate. Caught up in a triple murder, Jury would go to any lengths to help Nell Healey, the lovely widow of one of the victims. But Nell Healey remains silent...

"When DI Tom Thorne is called to conduct a routine assessment at the site of a suicide, he expects to be in and out in no time. But when he arrives at the metro station, where a woman named Philippa Goodwin threw herself in front of an underground train, Thorne inexplicably senses something awry and feels compelled to dig deeper. He soon discovers that she was the victim of a callous con-man who preys on vulnerable women, and whose deception plunged...

In 1857 India, young Lieutenant Victor Narraway, with the help of two small children and a Christmas garland, defends a British medical orderly throughout a murder investigation.

There hadn't been anything like this kind of rain in living memory. The River Brede had burst its banks, and not a single house in the valley had escaped flooding. Even where Wexford lived, higher up in Kingsmarkham, the waters had nearly reached the mulberry tree in his once immaculate garden. The Subaqua Task Force could find no trace of Giles and Sophie Dade, let alone the woman who was keeping them company, Joanna Troy. But Mrs. Dade was still...

When a man disappears, two wives search for their missing husband, and all the young women in Kingsmarkham seem to have a motive, Chief Inspector Wexford must untangle a complex web of secrets   Chief Inspector Wexford finds nothing unusual in the disappearance of Rodney Williams, a husband and father who likely has run off with another woman. But when the man's car and suitcase are discovered abandoned, can a body be far behind? Confounded by a...

From the rough but colorful pub that provides the novel's title, to the snowboard Gothic estate nearby, the chilly English landscape has never held more atmosphere-or thwarted romance. And Jury will never have a more mysterious Christmas. Five Days Before Christmas – On his way to a brief holiday (he thinks) Jury meets a woman he could fall in love with. He meets her in a snow covered graveyard-not, he thinks, the best way to begin an attachment....