by David Roberts (2008)
Verity Browne returns from Prague, where she is reporting for the "New Gazette", with suspected tuberculosis. Lord Edward Corinth to whom she is engaged is naturally desperately anxious about her. The only cure for TB in 1938 is rest and a healthy diet so he suggests she go to a private clinic in Henley-on-Thames run by a Cambridge friend of his, Dr Leonard Bladon. It is convenient for Edward as he can keep an eye on her while he investigates the sadistic murder of his dentist, Eric Silver whose death has a Henley connection. Edward had been his dentist's last appointment during which Silver had told him that he believed three elderly patients of his had been murdered. What was more, Silver had identified an entomological connection between the killings. General Lowther had had a heart attack drinking a wine called Clos des Mouches, Hermione Totteridge, a well-known gardener, had been poisoned by the new insecticide with which she had been experimenting, and James Herold had been stung to death by his bees. All three had lived in or near Henley. Edward goes to stay with his old friend Harry Makin who had recently come back to England from Africa as he had inherited a title and a property in Henley. Edward's investigation comes to a thrilling climax during what many believe will be the last Henley Royal Regatta before a new European war. Both Edward and Verity face death from someone or something wicked.
Sir ArthurConan Doyle
Even Sherlock Holmes, well-accustomed to the bizarre, finds the elements of this case unusual; the scene of the crime, a moated English country house; the wapon, a very American sawed-off shotgun; the bereaved, strangely dry-eyed; and the solution, backward in time and deep in a VALLEY OF FEAR...
M. C. Beaton
Bossy, impulsive, yet hopelessly romantic, Agatha is dreading the upcoming marriage of her ex-husband, James Lacey. Her best intentions to move on with her life are put on hold when James's young bride is shot to death just minutes before saying I do, and Agatha is named the prime suspect.
James Patterson and Mark Pearson
For Hannah Shapiro, a beautiful young American student, this particular nightmare began eight years ago in Los Angeles, when Jack Morgan, owner of Private - the world's most exclusive detective agency - saved her from a horrific death. She has fled her country, but can't flee her past. The terror has followed her to London, and now it is down to former Royal Military Police Sergeant Dan Carter, head of Private London, to save her all over again. In central London, young women are being abducted off the street. When the bodies are found, some days later, they have been mutilated in a particularly mysterious way. Dan Carter's ex-wife, DI Kirsty Webb, is involved in the investigation and it looks likely that the two cases are gruesomely linked. Dan Carter draws on the whole resources of Private International in a desperate race against the odds. But the clock is ticking... Private may be the largest and most technologically advanced detection agency in the world, but the only thing they don't have is the one thing they need - time.
presented by G. J. A. O'Toole
In 1868, Pinkerton Detective Nicholas Cosgrove is tasked with tracking down John Wilkes Booth, a man who should be three years in his grave. Booth, President Lincoln’s assassin, was also a skilled actor and master of disguise, and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton suspects he may still be at large. But Cosgrove unearths more than just the corpse of a man who is decidedly not Booth. The conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln was much larger, and far more dangerous than anyone suspects. Now, more than a century later, Cosgrove’s report on his harrowing investigation has fallen into the hands of private eye Michael Croft. Charged with verifying Cosgrove’s hair-raising tale—as well as its explosive implications—Croft presents the manuscript here with his own annotations. With meticulous research into official records as well as the forgotten memoirs of eyewitnesses, former CIA agent G. J. A. O’Toole has crafted a highly original novel—both a gripping historical thriller and a shockingly plausible solution to some of the most enthralling mysteries surrounding Lincoln’s assassination