The law's delay

Sample

(by) Anne Morice

>Why has Pelham Hargrave returned to his childhood home after twenty-five successful years in Canada and the United States, and is his beautiful and neurotic young American wife quite what she claims to be? Why has a celebrated Hollywood director chosen to retire to a remote English country house, and why does one young woman covet the house and another abhor it? Above all, what is the secret of old Nannie's power, which allows her to dominate the household like some implacable Buddha in a rocking chair? >These are some of the questions which confront Tessa Crichton, actress wife of Scotland Yard detective Robin Price, when she arrives to spend a quiet weekend with her godmother in Herefordshire. One by one the puzzles are unravelled, thanks to Tessa's spirited and irrepressible curiosity, plus a little help from her husband, but not before two people have died and Tessa herself has narrowly escaped the same fate. >This is a traditional whodunnit, written with Anne Morice's customary verve and humour with plenty of clues cunningly distributed.

Sample

Sara Woods

Antony Maitland #23 Antony Maitland, barrister and very confidential detective, reluctantly journeys to a grey town in the English midlands to defend a young boy who is, on the face of it, guilty of murder and art theft. The boy is mysteriously unwilling to say anything on his own behalf. As long as the boy refused to speak there was no possible line of defense. In order to save his client from what, Maitland finally realizes, will be a gross miscarriage of justice, he has to piece together the boy's troubled past and in the process, stumbles across a web of criminal intent in which the boy is just one victim -- and Maitland is the other.

Sample

Ngaio Marsh

A body in the back of a taxi begins an elegantly constructed mystery, perhaps the finest of Marsh's 1930s novels.The season had begun. Debutantes and chaperones were planning their luncheons, teas, dinners, balls. And the blackmailer was planning his strategies, stalking his next victim.But Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn knew that something was up. He had already planted his friend Lord Robert Gospell at the scene.But someone else got there first...

Sample

Jennifer Jordan

Dee and Barry Vaughan are having a lovely country Christmas at the Grove Inn. But when one of the guests, the fashion model Miranda Travers, is murdered, Dee and Barry must find out what secrets Miranda had that made one of the many suspects resort to murder.