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Beautiful, amoral and ruthless – but was she a killer?
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

Ruth Garside was framed for three killings. But was she really guilty?

As a girl, Ruth was accused of a dreadful crime; as a wife she was suspected of her husband’s death; as a widow she was accused of her employer’s murder. ­­

‘I can prove her innocence,’ cried Thomas Fogg KC. ‘I can prove my own innocence,’ said Ruth. ‘She’s my client so she can’t be guilty, and by heck, I’ll prove it if it means the skies falling,’ declared Arthur Crook. Well – does he? And­ is he justified?

A rich, curmudgeonly old husband, a beautiful young wife, a mysterious voice from the past – and murder…
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

When murder hits the sleepy town of Hinton St Luke tongues start wagging. It’s what you might call a cosy domestic murder: a beautiful young wife; her much-older husband dying at just the right moment; a jealous nurse; a mysterious voice from the past and a set of anonymous letters.

But which one will lead directly to the killer’s front door?

A man is accused of murdering his wife – and all the evidence points to his guilt.
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club

‘No author is more skilled at making a good story seem brilliant’ Sunday Express

It was a dark night, clammy with fog; an evil night when anything could happen. That was the night it all began – when the net of cruel circumstance began to close in around Jack Barton

The body of his beautiful, murdered wife had rotted away in a trunk in the dark cellar where he had hidden it. It was useless to say hiding the body was all he had done. It was pointless to insist he was innocent of her death.

Who would believe him?

An actress, a politician – and a murder by poison where no one is above suspicion.
Classic crime fiction from one of the greats of the era.

Marjorie Hyde, a gifted but unsuccessful actress, is happily married. Like many members of her profession she is temperamental, and though not that beautiful has that Titian colouring that is supposed to make men mad. Her husband, Christopher, is insanely jealous, and after learning that she is frequently in the company of Philip Clare, a barrister and Parliamentary candidate, Christopher threatens to instigate divorce proceedings that would ruin his rival’s career.

The same night, he drinks his usual glass of after-dinner port and dies from hyosin poisoning. And in the unravelling of the mystery surrounding his death, nobody is free from suspicion.

Blond Eve Dawson came to Hollywood to be a star and didn’t make the grade. But as a party girl she was much in demand – until someone shot her during a wild party given for a lot of prominent politicians.

Everyone clammed up and pressure was brought to bear – even on popular D.A. Doug Selby. But Selby and Sheriff Brandon wouldn’t hush.

The next time beautiful Eve turned up she was a corpse with a carving knife deep in her chest. And even that suave old fox A.B. Carr couldn’t stop the D.A. from finding out who killed her and why.

Money in the bank had always been a persuasive factor in Bertha Cool’s life – and Lamont Hawley represented a lot of it. He also represented an insurance company that smelled a rat about a traffic-accident claim. The trouble was the claimant had drifted away – a beautiful blonde who had been co-operative and level-headed. In fact, too level-headed … she sounded almost professional.

Donald Lam didn’t like it. Why should a large insurance company need an outside investigator? But Bertha’s eyes see $$$ so Donald gets cracking, and within no time he is the prime suspect. For what on earth is a body doing in the trunk of Donald’s car?

Mira Woodford was a beautiful girl who believed that the best things in life were expensive. She bartered her youthful charms for the rewards of being an old man’s bride, and her investment paid off in millions when she suddenly became his widow.

When Bertha Cool sent Donald Lam to find out if Mira’s kisses had turned to poison for the rich little poor girl’s late husband, one look at Mira made Donald eager to see for himself how deadly her embrace really was. But though Mira was lovely and willing, her past was ugly and threatening – and when passion and blackmail went hand in hand, murder could not be far behind.

Ellen Robb came into Perry Mason’s office with a gun in her purse. She had been framed, she said, by her gambler employer because she had refused to help fleece a customer.

The customer had dropped nearly $10,000 in the gambling establishment and then done his best to pick up Ellen. His wife, none too pleased with either shenanigan, ended up dead as a herring.

Della said Ellen was too beautiful to be trusted; Perry thought he could find out by switching guns on her – thus starting a series of explosions that nearly blast him out of court …

Frances Celane has good reason to pout. Thanks to a provision in her late father’s will administered by her uncle, she’s caught in the middle of a family feud between matrimony and money. If she chooses marriage, she loses a million. But beautiful young Frances has a strong will of her own she’s not afraid to use. One way or another, she means to hear wedding bells and cash registers making beautiful music together. Her first move: hire Perry Mason to orchestrate things.

Unfortunately, stubbornness runs in Frances Celane’s family, as Mason discovers when he confronts her Uncle Edward. After Perry’s powers of persuasion fail to penetrate Norton’s hard head, someone decides the only way of cashing in is by bashing in the uncooperative uncle’s skull. But when the blood spills, so do the secrets. Then it’s Mason’s turn to brood, as he tries to figure out if a girl as pretty as his client could have a hand in something so ugly …

Held captive in a dark room in New York State, a young woman is at the mercy of a killer. As guide-dog trainer Joanna finds herself fighting her attraction to blind sculptor Jack Donovan she also begins to feel dangerously unwelcome. Meanwhile, another object of beauty is being stalked …

‘Hilary Norman specialises in creepy thrillers and this one is just as gripping as her previous work’ Woman’s Own

There’s something chillingly familiar about what’s happening to Nick Miller. He was so sure he’d left the past – and Holly Bourne – behind. Holly, pure delight to everyone else, but Nick’s girlfriend-from-hell. Except that all that was over years ago. Holly’s happily married now and thousands of miles away, and Nick’s wife, Nina, is expecting their first child. This can’t have anything to do with Holly.

Yet the shocks have only just begun for Nick and Nina, in a terrifying novel of obsessive love, and a young couple’s fight to escape its deadly stranglehold …

‘A beautifully crafted tale that builds to a dramatic climax’ Bookseller

One of the very last authors of detective fiction from the genre’s “Golden Age” INDEPENDENT

Suicide or murder? Despite all indications to the contrary, Alec Methven had not eaten his last meal in solitude, and somebody was very anxious to conceal that fact.

As if one death on the beautiful island of Madeira was not enough, there was another. Peter Corey, who had found Methven’s body, had a cast-iron alibi: he was on a plane to the island at the time of the death, en route to visit his old friend. But what of the second killing that so inexplicably occurred?

Defrauding an insurance company is not an unusual crime, but the way Stephen Venner planned to do it was not only unusual but macabre. But then Stephen Venner was a totally selfish and amoral man, and with the push of blackmail behind him, and the strength of his wife to support him, there was little he would stop at.

Ross MacLaren didn’t know that, and allowed himself to be lured to Portugal where he, Stephen and the beautiful but repressed Emma play out the last tense act of at least one of their three lives.

When Martin Mallory falls in love with a beautiful student, he has no idea the trouble it will cause. Suddenly Li Cho disappears from the secretive Wycherly Foundation for Religious Studies. The principal, Ludovic Lambert, says she has been transferred, but won’t say where.

In desperation, Mallory arranges for an ex-con friend to break into Lambert’s safe where he has heard the transfer list is kept. But the piece of paper they find is far more sinister than a simple list of student transfers.

Young Roderick Kinsmere was a country bumpkin when he strolled into the Great Court of Charles II’s Whitehall Palace. Three days later he had lost his fortune, gained a wife, fought for – and been outwitted by – his king, and no one would ever call Rowdy Kinsmere a bumpkin again.

It was 1670 and London was a teeming, filthy, dangerous and splendiferous place. The king was in trouble and Roderick was surrounded by plots and counterplots. And somehow everything centred on the beautiful sapphire ring he had inherited from his father …

‘Mr Carr has contrived a fine, adventurous entertainment of politics and piracy, espionage and murder’ The Times

One October night in the middle of the twentieth century Detective Inspector John Cheviot got into a taxi, bound for New Scotland Yard. When he stepped out it was from a horse-drawn cab, the year was 1829, and a beautiful woman was beckoning him in front of Old Scotland Yard.

There were things Cheviot remembered but couldn’t use – like how to analyse fingerprints; and things he didn’t know that he could have used – like how advanced his romance with Lady Flora really was. And there wasn’t even time to learn, because in the midst of helping Robert Peel establish the respectability and competence of his new police force, Cheviot suddenly finds himself and his lady accused of cruel murder.

Dick Darwent brooded in a dark cell of Newgate Prison – waiting to be hanged. Lady Caroline Ross, rich, cold and beautiful, prepared a champagne breakfast to celebrate her marriage. How were the fates of these two people intertwined? And how were their lives changed by a shot through a bathroom window, a riot at the opera, a pistol duel at dawn, and a mysterious coachman whose cloak was stained with graveyard mold?

‘Donald MacKenzie is a born storyteller’ Guardian

Every thief dreams of committing the perfect crime. Cameron, Thorne and Gun are convinced that the jewel robbery they have planned cannot possibly go wrong, but jealousy mistrust and fear doom the enterprise from the start.

One of them dies a slow, hideous death; the other two find they have walked into hell. Soon, a beautiful woman and two desperate men find themselves trapped by their own actions. And when the thread of tension snaps they learn that death can indeed be a friend.

Deepwood Grange is no longer what it was in the thirties: the beautiful old house has been converted into luxury apartments, and the original family is long gone. But on a rare visit to her godmother, solicitor Rosa Epton finds herself quite entertained by the eccentric residents of the other flats. Until, that is, one of them turns up dead in the chimney of an empty apartment, and her godmother becomes a prime suspect.

Then her godmother disappears, and Rosa’s involvement becomes even more personal …

Sergeant Verity’s adversaries in the underworld are as busy as ever, this time taking advantage of the Brighton Races to dupe the populace, and, more seriously, to steal the beautiful Shah Jehan clasp. Everyone knows that the glistening jewel is priceless, but only the likes of Sealskin Kite and Old Mole know its true worth.

Down from Paddington Green with his family and his old accomplice Miss Jolly, Verity thinks he has crime at bay in Brighton. But the easy time he had anticipated soon turns into a nightmare of false alarms, public disgrace and, worst of all, personal disaster.

When Detective Tom Lepski shot down the runaway killer on his beat in Paradise City, he unleashed a chain of events that would involve two sets of criminals and a honeymoon couple in one of the most exciting nights any of them had seen for a long time.

Wilbur Warrenton and his beautiful, grasping wife Maria are on their honeymoon in the luxurious Spanish Bay Hotel when their penthouse suite is the scene of a collision between a gang of jewel thieves intent on stealing the famous Warrenton diamonds and a gang of ransom-hungry Cubans – all determined to get exactly what they want – at any cost …

Private detective Bart Anderson is hired by Russ Hamel, a millionaire author, to shadow his beautiful wife, Nancy. For Hamel has been receiving poison pen letters claiming that his wife has been having an affair.

But as Bart’s investigation progresses, he discovers that he has opened up a can of worms – for Nancy is not the faithful wife her husband assumes …

‘The thriller maestro of the generation’ Manchester Evening News

Kidnapping has become a national pastime in Italy – but is there another reason why billionaire Carlo Grandi has put his beautiful daughter behind an electric fence, guarded by killer dogs and two fast-shooting guards?

Mike Frost, always on the look-out for big money and beautiful women, gets the job as second gun – and soon realises he is guarding a hell cat. When kidnappers sold him the idea of being the inside man, Frost hadn’t known which he wanted most – that beautiful body or the $5,000,000 it could bring him.

Helga Rolfe is blonde, beautiful, and bright enough to control her own multi-million pound empire. But not to control her secret weakness: sex. Former lover, Archer, knows it. He has an old score to settle with her and he needs cash. When handsome gigolo Christopher Greenville crosses his path, he’s found the way to both.

With Archer’s coaching, Chris cons Helga into wanting him badly enough to propose marriage, and when Archer fakes Chris’s kidnapping, she is ready to pay the huge ransom. But events take a frightening twist when the local Mafia join the action …