Bookseller Theodore Terhune becomes involved in a series of adventures that indicate a crime about to happen, with each event providing an additional clue to a historical crime involving two local families.

Stretched across the road was the body of a policeman. On the way home one evening in the Romney Marsh, Bookseller Theodore Terhune and friend Julia are caught in heavy coastal fog.  A passing lorry provides some guidance on the narrow country roads, but the night ends with intentional mishap and a dead body.  It becomes clear that the constable’s death was not accidental, but what possessed Tom Kitchen to try to stop a lorry singlehandedly at 1am?  His widow is frightened; local farms vandalized; his home ransacked.  Suspicion centres around the Load of Hay, an ancient Dickensian...

In the beginning was the Word— When Theodore Terhune’s wealthy client Arthur Harrison is found stabbed and his library ransacked, the police suspect the murderer was looking for a book. Harrison collected rare early printed books called incunabula, but as the provenance of such titles is well documented in the book world it would make little sense to steal one. Terhune is hired by the estate to sell off Harrison’s library, but another armed break-in and a very strange book auction suggest the killer is still searching for something. Soon Terhune himself becomes a target, but what...