In the countryside of Victorian England, a recluse and a beekeeper team up to catch a murderer. Who would have the mad intelligence to train an army of killer bees?
Jake Justus sets out to investigate the murder of Holly Inglehart's great-aunt--a murder for which Holly is the prime suspect--with the assistance of socialite Helene Brand and lawyer John J. Malone.
In these classic mystery tales, literature is a matter of life or death. Of crime fiction's many sub-genres, none is so reflexive and so intriguing as the "bibliomystery": stories that involve crimes set, somehow, in the world of books. In Vincent Starrett's "A Volume of Poe," a bookseller is murdered; in Ellery Queen's "The Adventure of the Three R's," the detective tracks the disappearance of a local Missouri author; and a killer stalks the stacks...
"Fourteen impossible crimes from the American masters of the form. For devotees of the Golden Age mystery, the impossible crime story represents the period’s purest form: it presents the reader with a baffling scenario (a corpse discovered in a windowless room locked from the inside, perhaps), lays out a set of increasingly confounding clues, and swiftly delivers an ingenious and satisfying solution. During the years between the two world wars,...
"When Herbert Wynne is found dead, with a bullet in the forehead, the obvious explanation is murder. But how could it be when the only possible suspect is Herbert's frail Aunt Juliet? Posing as Juliet's private duty nurse, the Homicide Bureau's Hilda Adams develops grave suspicions. Why is the maid terrified of every dark corner? And if a mad killer is on the loose, who will be targeted as the next victim?"--FantasticFiction.com.
"When Nurse Keate arrives at the Thatcher estate to care for a man with a bullet in his shoulder, she's told that he shot himself accidentally--but when the convalescing man is murdered soon thereafter, it becomes clear that the only "accident" was his not being fully killed the first time around. A murderer stalks the manor and yet the rest of the family isn't the slightest bit alarmed; instead, they seem intent on concealing the crime and adding...
Passengers making the transatlantic trip from New York to Cherbourg, France, are looking forward to weeks of relaxation, but after an Italian baroness is found murdered in her luxury cabin the atmosphere is anything but relaxed. When the main suspect goes overboard, there are more questions than answers. Fortunately, a former intelligence officer, Walter Ghost, and a mystery novelist, Dunstan Mollock, are on board, and they set out to solve the crime....
"The smoking room on a transatlantic cruise ship is bound to be a hotbed of activity -- but it's less common for it to be the site of a murder. Yet, when the lights flicker aboard the luxury Meganaut, making its way from New York to Paris, this is precisely what happens; in the darkness, a gunshot rings out, and when the light is restored, a man is found dead. The situation becomes all the more curious when it's discovered that the deceased had apparently...
"Even in the early 1930s, Crescent Place is a neighborhood out of the past. The five Victorian mansions and the remote patch of pasture placed between them have the air of the 1890s, even as the city--once miles away from this idyllic retreat--encroaches and surrounds the enclave. But while these rarified residences may appear calm on the outside, their isolated interiors contain dark secrets, prolonged feuds, and generations of high-toned trouble....
Manhattan playboy stockbroker Alvin Benson is found dead in a locked room in his brownstone mansion, and the police are at a loss. Fortunately, brainy sleuth Philo Vance is on the case and ready to determine whodunit.
"Meet Asey Mayo, Cape Cod's answer to Sherlock Holmes. Settled down from his former life as a seafaring adventurer, Asey is a Jack-of-all-trades who uses his worldly knowledge, folksy wisdom, and plain common sense to solve the most puzzling crimes to strike the peninsula. And in this, his first case, Asey finds himself embroiled in a scandal that will push his deductive powers to their limits. A massive heatwave is scorching the Northeast, and vacationers...
The bait is half of a $10,000 bill, delivered to Perry Mason by a man who promises the second half of the note should his companion, a silent masked woman, ever require the lawyer's services. When a dead body is discovered soon after, Mason feels the hook--but how can one prove the innocence of a person whose identity is unknown?
When Perry Mason stumbles upon a classified ad for a brown-haired woman with specific physical attributes, he takes note of the seemingly suspicious request. Then the woman hired for the job reaches out, fearing that her new employer--who pays her and her chaperone to stay inside an apartment and answer to another woman's name--might be using her for nefarious purposes. But by the time Mason works out the first mystery, a second, with murder, is just...
"Helen Kendal's woes begin when she receives a phone call from her vanished uncle Franklin, long presumed dead, who urges her to make contact with criminal defense attorney Perry Mason; soon after, she finds herself the main suspect in the murder of an unfamiliar man. Her kitten has just survived a poisoning attempt, as has her aunt Matilda, the woman who always maintained that Franklin was alive in spite of his disappearance. Lucky that Helen took...
"Sleuthing attorney Perry Mason can't resist a good mystery, so when he sees an older woman being accused of shoplifting during a department store outing with his assistant, Della Street, he doesn't hesitate to intervene. Armed with an assumption of innocence and the legal acumen to silence her accuser, Mason leaps to the woman's defense--until her niece appears, acknowledging her aunt's guilt, and pays for the stolen items. Soon thereafter, Aunt...
"The offices of foreign literature publisher and renowned stamp collector Donald Kirk are often host to strange activities, but the most recent occurrence the murder of an unknown caller, found dead in an empty waiting room is unlike any that has come before. Nobody, it seems, entered or exited the room, and yet the crime scene clearly has been manipulated, leaving everything in the room turned backwards and upside down. Stuck through the back of...
