E. C. R Lorac
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"Vivian Lestrange—celebrated author of the popular mystery novel The Charterhouse Case and total recluse—has apparently dropped off the face of the Earth. After he was reported missing by his secretary Eleanor, whom Inspector Bond suspects to be the author herself, crime and murder are afoot when Lestrange's housekeeper is also found to have disappeared. Bond and Warner of Scotland Yard set to work to investigate a murder with no body and a potentially...
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Wulfstane Manor, a rambling old country house with many unused rooms, winding staircases and a maze of cellars, had been bequeathed to Veronica Mallowood and her brother Martin. The last time the large family of Mallowoods had all foregathered under the ancestral roof was on the occasion of their father's funeral, and there had been one of those unholy rows which not infrequently follow the reading of a will. That was some years ago, and as Veronica...
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In this final detective novel to feature Superintendent Robert MacDonald, we find the police officer setting up his retirement plans on a hill farm to the south of Lunesdale. Not quite ready to retire, he buys the farm and installs a young couple to oversee his property while he's away detecting. Meanwhile, one foggy morning Rory Macshane, who has just finished his first year of a 10-year prison sentence at Dartmoor, sees his plans for escape come...
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It's not long after the end of WWII, rationing is still in force in the UK, and Chief Inspector Macdonald of Scotland Yard is hot on the heels of a coupon racketeer, Gordon Ginner. Just then he gets a letter from Lancastrian farmer Giles Hoggett about some odd goings on recently in Lunesdale. Normally he'd pass on the letter to some subordinate, but the possibility that Giles's suspicions might link to the Ginner investigation are just too tantalizing...
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When a stationary car is struck by an oncoming lorry at a very dangerous hairpin bend known as Dyke's Corner and the driver killed it seems an obvious accident. However, MacDonald's methodical investigations reveal it was in fact a cleverly contrived murder.
"We've taken the wrong fork. There's a double hairpin bend somewhere." There was! Immediately in front of them a car was drawn up on the opposite side of the road. As they swung round the...
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The story begins with the sudden death of an elderly clergyman named Anderby, who drops dead while hosing the garden ... death that is followed by another in circumstances which give rise to suspicion and to the local police calling upon Inspector MacDonald. E. C. R. Lorac's novels are always enjoyable, and Inspector MacDonald is rapidly becoming one of the most popular Crime Club sleuths.
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One was brutally attacked in the choking black fog in Paddington Station. Attempted murder became bona fide manslaughter, and examination of the intimate lives of the passengers involved Chief Inspector MacDonald in a macabre game of hide-and-seek in which one man tried to find his identity and another was ready to kill to preserve the shroud of darkness that obscured his.
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Muriel Farrington is a domineering woman who, unfortunately for them, has her entire family living with her in her stately home. She tries, often successfully, to run the lives of her children, her stepchildren, her in-laws, and her husband, and she seems to be despised by all except her husband and one son.
When she is found dead one morning in her bed, the family doctor, who is old, ill, and hasn't been very able for years, is unable to attend and...
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Accident by Design was honestly a really well done classic British mystery. I was surprised, expecting something subpar and generic. It was well-written, with interesting characters and some great descriptions of the British countryside and the work done on a tenant farm. The story is about a family estate in the early '50s. The patriarch lies in bed near death, but still quite aware. His eldest son is a feckless alcoholic with a middle-class (bad),...
10) Crossed Skis
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The investigation of a dead body in London's Bloomsbury takes Rivers to the Austrian Alps to hunt down the murderer amidst the visitors to a ski resort.
11) Murder in Vienna
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Superintendent Macdonald, C.I.D., studied his fellow-passengers on the Vienna plane simply because he couldn't help it, because he hadn't conditioned himself to being on holiday. The distinguished industrialist he recognised: the stout man he put down (quite mistakenly) as a traveler in whisky. The fair girl was going to a job (he was right there) and the aggressive young man in the camel coat might be something bookish. Macdonald turned away from...
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London, 1945. The capital is shrouded in the darkness of the blackout, and mystery abounds in the parks after dusk. During a stroll through Regent's Park, Bruce Mallaig witnesses two men acting suspiciously around a footbridge. In a matter of moments, one of them has been murdered, Mallaig's view of the assailant just a brief glimpse of a ghastly face in the glow of a struck match. The murderer's noiseless approach and escape seem to defy all logic,...
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A mysterious disappearance is at the center of Bats in the Belfry. Shortly after waving away a telephone request from a persistent caller named Debrette, Bruce Attleton leaves his home in Regent's Park for Paris. He never arrives, but his suitcase turns up in a sculptor's studio slated for renovation. After Attleton's friend Neil Rockingham takes his concerns to DCI Macdonald, Macdonald soon discovers a corpse secreted in the studio. Unfortunately,...
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"The Surrays and their five children form a prolific writing machine, with scores of treatises, reviews, and crime thrillers published under their family name. Following a rare convergence of the whole household at their Oxfordshire home, Ruth—middle sister who writes 'books which are just books' - decides to spend some weeks there recovering from the pressures of the writing life, while the rest of the brood scatter to the winds again. Their next...
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"'Should detectives go to parties? Was it consistent with the dignity of the Yard? The inspector tossed for it-and went.' Chief Inspector Macdonald has been invited to a treasure hunt party at the house of Graham Coombe, the celebrated publisher of Murder by Mesmerism. Despite a handful of misgivings, the inspector joins a guest list of novelists and thriller writers disguised on the night under literary pseudonyms. The fun comes to an abrupt end,...
16) Fell murder
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"A fascinating, 'return of the prodigal' mystery set in the remote fells of the North of England. The Garths had farmed their fertile acres for generations and fine land it was with the towering hills of the Lake Country on the far horizon. Garthmere Hall itself was old before Flodden Field, and here hot-tempered Robert Garth, still hale and hearty at eighty-two, ruled his household with a rod of iron. When he is killed, Inspector MacDonald sets to...
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"'Never make trouble in the village is an unspoken law, but it's a binding law. You may know about your neighbor's sins and shortcomings, but you must never name them aloud. It'd make trouble, and small societies want to avoid trouble.' When Dr Raymond Ferens moves to a practice at Milham in the Moor in North Devon, he and his wife are enchanted with the beautiful hilltop village lying so close to moor and sky. At first, they see only its charm, but...
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"On a dismally foggy night in Hampstead, London, a curious party has gathered in an artist's studio to weather the wartime blackout. A civil servant and a government scientist are matching wits in a game of chess, while an artist paints the portrait of his characterful sitter, bedecked in Cardinal's robes at the other end of the room. In the kitchen, the artist's sister is hosting the charlady of the miser next door. When the brutal murder of said...
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"The Second World War is drawing to a close. Nicholas Vaughan, released from the army after an accident, takes refuge in Devon - renting a thatched cottage in the beautiful countryside at Mallory Fitzjohn. Vaughan sets to work farming the land, rearing geese and renovating the cottage. Hard work and rural peace seem to make this a happy bachelor life. On a nearby farm lives the bored, flirtatious June St Cyres, an exile from London while her husband...
20) Two-way murder
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"It is a dark and misty night—isn't it always?—and bachelors Nicholas and Ian are driving to the ball at Fordings, a beautiful concert hall in the countryside. There waits the charming Dilys Maine, and a party buzzing with rumours of one Rosemary Reeve who disappeared on the eve of this event the previous year, not found to this day. With thoughts of mysterious case ringing in their ears, Dilys and Nicholas strike a stranger on the drive back...