by Heron Carvic (1988)
"Miss Seeton is most embarrassed. Her every attempt at a portrait of little Effie Goffer has become a chilling picture of a corpse. Is Miss Seeton actually drawing a clue to a series of child murders in rural England? Scotland Yard thinks so, and wants Miss Seeton to turn from sketching ... to catching a killer skilled in a very deadly art. Retired art teacher Miss Seeton steps in where Scotland Yard stumbles. Armed with only her sketch pad and umbrella, she is every inch an eccentric English spinster and at every turn the most lovable and unlikely master of detection."--BOOK COVER.
John Creasey
(From the back cover) The Christmas parcel rush at River Way sorting office brought a grisly delivery of a dismembered body. Roger West cheated death to find the key to a series of crimes -- the missing master-key to all London Post Office vans... 'Roger West at his liveliest in a story packed with thrills.' **Daily Mail**
Matthew Malekos
When working a night shift at Manchester's inner-city morgue, forensic pathologist Karen Laos finds herself with the body of an unknown male, apparently murdered by a killer she had pursued six years before. Karen reunites with ageing policeman Detective Inspector James Roberts and together they must identify, locate and catch the killer taunting them both. With an appetite for ritualistic murder and an array of alarming and unusual methods, there is a real threat that this killer will elude their grasp and strike again, leaving only mutilated victims in his wake.
Nicholas Rhea
While seeking the legendary Holy Trough of Blackamoor, D I Montague Pluke comes across a corpse; the dead man, Pluke discovers, has been shot. It is soon established that the victim was a suspect in a murder investigation, and so the eccentric Pluke is pitched headlong into an investigation, which spans both sides of the Pennines, leading him from the beauty of the great outdoors to the seamy backstreets of Manchester.
Jo Bannister
The idyllic peace of a remote Scottish anchorage is shattered by an explosion aboard a luxury cruiser, which kills the woman on board and brings to an abrupt end the restful holiday which Clio Marsh prescribed for her detective husband, Harry. Was the wreck of the *Skara Sun* an accident? Was Alison MacAllister murdered by the penniless young man sailing with her? Or by the rich older one to whom she was married? The local police investigate. Harry Marsh investigates. No-one who knows Clio would expect her to mind her own business. The savage beauty of the wild west coast forms a backdrop to, and ultimately plays its own role in the developing drama as Clio discovers that even deadly Corryvreckan can be a friend in the face of human treachery.