Kategoria BISAC: Fiction >> Crime

She held the candle steady and, stooping, touched the smeared patch with the tip of her finger.

The stain was blood.

When Sarah Marlowe, secretary to the president of the New Psychical Society, touches the cold, strange object in her hand-bag, she thinks at first it is a snake. As things turn out, it is almost as dangerous.

Her travelling acquaintance, Emily Case, has been murdered by someone who won't hesitate to kill again to obtain the contents of Sarah's bag. Unwilling to join the spirit world herself, Sarah enlists the aid of a handsome if not...

Captain Gilmore, a baron of Cleveland industry, is appalled by the negative press his two daughters have brought on the family, so when the youngest is caught up in a blackmail scandal he does everything he can to keep it out of the local tabloids, including hiring former FBI agent Jack Francis to track down the blackmailer. With a passion for bourbon and women, Francis dives headfirst into a case that soon turns into a murder investigation with a disappearing body. Knowing that he may be in over his head Jack calls on the help of his former partner at the Bureau to give him a hand, only to...

Powerful D.C. politicians are being removed from office by something other than elections - execution-style killings for which FBI Special Agent Nick Nettles is under pressure to find answers and suspects. That's when a weapons smuggling investigation drops Nick in the middle of an international scheme to expand gun distribution, block tighter U.S. gun laws and manipulate the public conversation on Second Amendment rights. For Nick, a lawman and gun-control advocate, uncovering the truth is personal - and could destroy his career and rock the nation, from the heights of government and...

When the queen of diamonds has failed businessmen John and Ezra Girldestone, they turn to the queen of hearts for redemption, or at least renumeration. Wooing lovely heiress Kate Horston turns out to be harder than they expected, though, leaving them with one sinister option: murder.

"Give me gossip or Sherlock Holmes, and I take gossip every time. The detective's first aid and ever present help in time of doubt."

Why should anyone want to murder a man like Alfred Brown? Yet slain he was, in his own home and with a poker. The murder seems to be connected to a bout of religious fervour gripping the village of Oldfordham - in particular a battle royal between the Reverend Alexander Childs, and his nemesis Duke Dell, boxer turned revivalist preacher. But Deputy Chief Constable Bobby Owen has numerous other local suspects, and local gossips, to contend with...

Deep in bucolic Wychshire something dreadful is stirring ...

The disappearance of a club-footed and inquisitive youth leads to a tangle involving two instances of stolen jewels, a water-colour which may be the most remarkable picture ever painted ... and eventually to the discovery of a body in a forest with 'a smell of rotting, a smell of things decaying'. The scene abounds with the intense, the afflicted, and the darkly humorous in classic Punshon style. But the murderer himself is on a collision cause with fate - aided of course by Inspector Bobby Owen.

...

With a slow gesture of one lifted hand, Bobby pointed. There, in a space between the prostrate stag and posturing goddess, was a human leg, a twisted, motionless leg in a strained, unnatural position.

Bobby Owen, now Deputy Chief Constable of Wychshire, finds himself taking part in a ghost hunt at legendary haunted mansion Nonpareil. What he discovers is the very real corpse of a paranormal investigator. It seems that among the phantoms there are fakes - but will that end up including a priceless painting by Vermeer?

There's a Reason for Everything was first...

Late in the afternoon a man, unidentified, had been seen to throw a glove into the Midwych, Wychshire and Southern Canal...

Osman Ford said he would kill the lawyer Mr. Anderson. So when the latter is found dead, with a bullet in the back, the disagreeable Mr. Ford is top suspect. But the lawyer's office was also a cauldron of repressed feelings, and not all the staff are sorry to see the lawyer's demise. In particular, Inspector Bobby Owen fears the dark, brooding clerk Anne Earle. Will her quest for justice lead her to a terrible fate of her own, amid family secrets and...

"I've got to hurry," Bobby said. "Mr Weston has been found dead from a knife-wound in his study."

It's not easy for a county police Inspector to handle prominent local citizens diplomatically, while getting on with the real work of crime detection. But it's particularly hard when Bobby Owen finds himself the victim of a sinister swindle worked by a millionaire business executive. Not to mention the machinations of a radical political movement, a secretary with a puzzling alibi, and a young scientist-inventor, willing to do anything, even murder, to put his schemes into...

"I wouldn't come any nearer if I were you. It's not a thing to see unless you have to."

TThe remote Conqueror Inn, possibly the oldest licensed house in England, has an unexpectedly key role to play in World War Two. Lorry drivers, army camps, black marketeers and even the IRA become entangled in the sinister web which draws this novel's plot together. Bobby Owen, after finding a case of banknotes, has to identify a corpse mutilated in its grave, ignore the red herrings thrown in his way ... and identify a ruthless killer who uses the confusion of war to conceal his...

Bobby Owen stood for a time in silence, looking down thoughtfully at the dead man's face. A small, insignificant face, lacking even that touch of repose and dignity which death, even violent death, so often gives, and one that Bobby had never seen before. Of that at least he was sure.

Yet this same man was found dead with a detailed and accurate plan of Bobby Owen's new London flat. Why? The plot soon thickens when a man with a grievance against Bobby turns up to identify the dead man ... But Bobby will need many more beads on the thread before he understands the murderous...

"Ode to a chocolate," murmured Bobby.

Olive, Inspector Bobby Owen's wife, is on a mission to obtain the recipe for some uncommonly good chocolates. But the most innocent beginning means trouble for Bobby Owen: take one wood-dwelling hermit, a girl who talks to animals, an evil stepfather and two exceedingly valuable works of art, and you have the recipe, not for chocolate, but for one of Punshon's most satisfying and devilish mysteries.

This beguiling story of labyrinths and seemingly impossible murder is a challenge and a treat for armchair sleuths everywhere....

"I don't like it, Olive. No good, plain evidence, not so much as the smell of a fingerprint. Nothing but psychology and an atmosphere of doubt, menace, and suspicion."

Bobby Owen's latest case begins with him warily lending five shillings to an old reprobate. But this is driven from his mind when he hears of the murder of one Itter Bain, found shot in the woods. Bobby is called into the case, one already made controversial by the alleged shielding of an aristocratic suspect. The evidence certainly ought to make the aristocrat a figure of particular interest to the police....

Dale Marlowe drifted from town to town, taking odd jobs when he ran out of money until he met Rachel Armstrong and fell in love for the first time in his life. Shortly after they were married, Dale seemed to settle into a steady job and married life until his obsession raised its ugly head. He went back to heavy drinking and soon Rachel and Dale were arguing almost non-stop. Dale had had enough and went back to his drifting, but this time instead of taking odd jobs, he took people's lives. Little did he know that his first victim would seal his fate. When Erv Meyers, a retired detective and...

She had trembled. She had laughed her shaky little laugh. And she had vanished into thin air.

And the door was locked on the inside.

When young Anthony Colstone inherits Stonegate from his grandfather's cousin, he hardly expects to be haunted by death. Why had Sir Jervis wanted him to promise never to move the ancient megalithic stones and why did no one even know how many there were? Surely old Susan Bowyer knows--she is nearly one hundred and she knows everything about the village. And perhaps her great-granddaughter, Susan, knows something, at one moment...

"The door " he shouted. "The door " Every man in the room looked where Fifteen was looking. Above the water-lilies and the storks, where the top panel of the door had shown, there was a dark, empty space. The door was open.

A girl, clad only in a night dress, is found walking in her sleep. Had she heard too much? Should she be "eliminated"? Jane Smith, an impecunious and intrepid heroine, finds herself in the wrong place at the right time, swept into an adventure which will include imposture, peril, romance and... murder.

The Astonishing Adventure of Jane...

"Thou hast betrayed, and thou hast slain..."

What is the mystery shrouding the lovely but sinister Annam stone, stolen from a remote shrine? Every owner of it has suffered an unhappy fate. When Peter Waring, nephew of the original thief, inherited the jewel, it would mean great power and wealth--or so he imagined. His rude awakening leads to a maze of deceit and treachery, a bogus love affair, and a narrowly escaped death. Peter believes the gem is in the hands of the one man in the world he has every reason to hate. A game of cat and mouse is about to ensue, with each man...

Where is Anne Belinda?

Anne Belinda has disappeared--and every time John Waveney mentions her name there is an ominous silence. Lady Jenifer Marr, Anne's twin sister, says she is in Spain. Which is odd--for John is sure he has caught a glimpse of her that very day in Jenny's garden. Why is Jenny misleading him? What is the secret that has made her turn Anne's picture to the wall--that has made old Sir Anthony, on his deathbed, disinherit Anne and leave the estate to him, a distant cousin? John is determined to break through that grim wall of silence--but does Anne want to...

Thief, kleptomaniac... or innocent victim of a malevolent plot to implicate her?

That's Shirley Dale. First there had been the strange appearance of someone else's pocketbook on her person as she was getting on a crowded bus one evening. The next night when she was dining with the attractive Anthony Leigh, the flashy little purse of another woman mysteriously turned up in Shirley's own black hand-bag.

When she finds her employer's diamond brooch in the hem of her coat, Shirley flees in panic to Anthony for the help she so desperately needs. Anthony's devoted efforts...

When she had let down her case, she locked her bedroom door. And then she put out the light and climbed out of the window.

Marooned as a baby, Valentine Ryven has been on a deserted South Sea island for twenty years, before she is rescued and returned to civilization--as heiress to a great fortune.

However, since she was given up for dead, her inheritance had passed to cousin Eustace. Now that Valentine is back, Eustace stands to lose it all. Pressed by an intimidating villainess, the unworldly Valentine finds a way to let Eustace keep the money. But when she finds...