by Barry Maitland (1999)
When one of three elderly sisters, great-granddaughters of Karl Marx, is found dead in her Jerusalem Lane house, Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla and Detective Chief Inspector Brock investigate. An atmospheric police procedural-the first in the acclaimed Brock and Kolla mysteries.Jerusalem Lane is a little piece of Dickensian London untouched by development, its inhabitants mainly refugees from pre-war central Europe. But could elderly Meredith Winterbottom really have been killed for the politics of another age?As Detective Sergeant Kathy Kolla and Detective Chief Inspector Brock delve into the lane's eccentric melting pot, past and present interlink in unexpected ways. What connects Mrs. Rosenfeldt and Adam Kowalski to a smooth property developer and an American academic? And what is Meredith's son Terry up to? Not to mention the dottily Marxist sisters... Is this a recipe for murder?
Freda Davies
The peaceful English village of Tolland is shaken when the body of a missing American GI is found after more than fifty years, along with the corpse of a present-day blackmailer. DI Keith Tyrell is sent to investigate.
Georges Simenon
Madame Maigret telephones to alert her husband that a frightened young man has called at their home and will wait there to see Maigret at his midday meal. When Maigret returns home, he is annoyed to discover that his mysterious guest has left, and more disturbed that one of his prized revolvers has gone with him. Monsieur Maigret is dismayed - but hardly surprised - when a corpse turns up in a railway trunk, shot by his own gun. His search for the elusive and unidentified visitor sends Maigret across the channel to London to investigate one murder... and prevent another.
Ngaio Marsh
Lord Pastern invited his society friends to a swank London nightclub to watch him stage one of his bizarre jokes. But when the joke turned in the "accidental" death of a band member, the laughter stopped. For the audience, it was an open-and-shut case. Everyone had seen the eccentric lord fire the gun. For Inspector Alleyn of Scotland Yard, this case was more bizarre than his lordship's joke - for it wasn't a bullet that killed the accordian player!
Ngaio Marsh
A cosy game of darts in a cosy English pub is going well until one of the players dies on the spot. Chief Inspector Alleyn knows it wasn't the dart that killed him, but the prussic acid someone added to the cut.