18 books like Opening night
Death at the Bar
A cosy game of darts in a cosy English pub is going well until one of the players dies on the spot. Chief Inspector Alleyn knows it wasn't the dart that killed him, but the prussic acid someone added to the cut.
Shares: Alleyn, Roderick Alleyn, Police, England
Death and the Dancing Footman
With the notion of bringing together the most bitter of enemies for his own amusement, a bored, mischievous millionaire throws a house party. As a brutal snowstorm strands the unhappy guests, the party receives a most unwelcome visitor: death. Now the brilliant inspector Roderick Alleyn must step in to decipher who at the party is capable of cold-blooded murder.
Inspector Alleyn receives a late…
Shares: Alleyn, Roderick Alleyn, Police, England
Death in a White Tie
A body in the back of a taxi begins an elegantly constructed mystery, perhaps the finest of Marsh's 1930s novels.The season had begun. Debutantes and chaperones were planning their luncheons, teas, dinners, balls. And the blackmailer was planning his strategies, stalking his next victim.But Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn knew that something was up. He had already planted his friend…
Shares: Alleyn, Roderick Alleyn, Police, England
Enter a Murderer (Roderick Alleyn #2)
The script of the Unicorn Theatre's new play uncannily echoes a quarrel in the star's dressing room. And the stage drama gets all too real when charming Felix Gardener shoots his blustering rival, Arthur Surbonardier, dead-with a gun Arthur himself loaded with blanks. Or did he? How the live bullets got there, and why, make for a convoluted case that pits Inspector Roderick Alleyn against someone…
Shares: Alleyn, Roderick Alleyn, London, Police
Clutch of constables
Five Days Out of Time
… that was how the ad had described the Zodiac cruise on the “weirdly misted” English river. The passengers were the usual, unusual lot: a couple of unpleasantly hygienic Americans, an aloof Ethiopian doctor, a snooping cleric with a wall-eye, an artist running away from her success…
But they were not all what they seemed.
For Inspector Alleyn knew that one of them was…
Shares: Alleyn, Roderick Alleyn, Police, England
Colour scheme
Often regarded as her most interesting book and set on New Zealand's North Island, Ngaio Marsh herself considered this to be her best-written novel. It was a horrible death -- Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die. Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that any number of people could have killed him: the…
Shares: Alleyn, Roderick Alleyn, Police, England
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman
A Cordelia Gray MysteryMeet Cordelia Gray: twenty-two, tough, intelligent and now sole inheritor of the Pryde Detective Agency. Her first assignment finds her hired by Sir Ronald Callender to investigate the death of his son Mark, a young Cambridge student found hanged in mysterious circumstances. Required to delve into the hidden secrets of the Callender family, Cordelia soon realizes it is not…
Shares: Roderick Alleyn, London, Police, England
Death at the president's lodging
Inspector Appleby is called to St Anthony's College, where the President has been murdered in his Lodging. Scandal abounds when it becomes clear that the only people with any motive to murder him are the only people who had the opportunity - because the President's Lodging opens off Orchard Ground, which is locked at night, and only the Fellows of the College have keys.
Shares: London, Police, England, Mystery
The Skull Beneath the Skin
Private detective Cordelia Gray is invited to the sunlit island of Courcy to protect the vainly beautiful actress Clarissa Lisle from veiled threats on her life. Within the rose red walls of a fairy-tale castle, she finds the stage is set for death.
From the Inside Flap
Fading star Clarissa Lisle plans a spectacular comeback, to be staged in a gothic castle. But poison-pen letters bearing death…
Shares: Actresses, London, England, Murder
Proof of Guilt
When the clues in a hit-and-run investigation lead him to two families famous for producing and selling the world's best Madeira wine, Scotland Yard's Ian Rutledge is pitted against his new supervisor, who has his own suspect.
Shares: London, Police
Watchman (Crime Club)
From #1 international bestseller Ian Rankin, an unlucky spy gets one last chance at redemption. Miles Flint is a spy who has been making some serious mistakes. His last assignment led to the death of a foreign official in London, and after getting too close to his current subject he wound up in police custody. But something is wrong at the agency that has nothing to do with Miles' errors. Why did…
Shares: London, Police, Murder, Mystery
The Yard
As Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror in London comes to an end, a new era of depravity sets the stage for the first gripping mystery featuring the detectives of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad.“If Charles Dickens isn’t somewhere clapping his hands for this one, Wilkie Collins surely is.”—The New York Times Book Review Victorian London—a violent cesspool of squalid sin. The twelve detectives of…
Shares: London, Police, Murder, Mystery
A Shilling for Candles (Inspector Alan Grant #2)
A woman's body is found on the English seacoast, and twisted in her hair is an article screaming murder. For Inspector Alan Grant, the case becomes a nightmare, as too many clues and too many motives arise. (cc. Edmonton Public Library website.)
Shares: Police, England, Mystery
All Shall Be Well
From an author who is “writing in P.D. James territory” (Associated Press) comes a compelling Scotland Yard detective novel in the entertaining Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James series.Perhaps it is a blessing when Jasmine Dent dies in her sleep. At long last an end has come to the suffering of a body horribly ravaged by disease. It may well have been suicide; she had certainly expressed her…
Shares: London, Police, England, Mystery
Leave the Grave Green
When Connor Swann, the dissolute son-in-law of renowned and influential Sir Gerald and Dame Caroline Asherton, is found floating in a Thames River lock, the circumstances eerily recall a strangely similar tragedy. Twenty years ago, the Ashertons' young son, Matthew, a musical prodigy, drowned in a swollen stream while in the company of his sister Julia -- Connor Swann's wife.Police Superintendant…
Shares: London, Police, England, Mystery
Weep No More, My Lady
Elizabeth Lange has arrived at Cypress Point Spa in Pebble Beach, California, weary of heart and soul. Still grieving for her beloved sister, a famous actress who plunged to her death from her Manhattan penthouse, Elizabeth is determined to unearth the truth about how Leila died.
Dashing multimillionaire Ted Winters stands accused of her murder, but Elizabeth has doubts. Along the windswept…
Shares: Actresses, Murder, Mystery
Lament for a maker
When mad recluse, Ranald Guthrie, the laird of Erchany, falls from the ramparts of his castle on a wild winter night, Appleby discovers the doom that shrouded his life, and the grim legends of the bleak and nameless hamlets, in a tale that emanates sheer terror and suspense.
Shares: London, Police, England, Mystery
Peril in Paris
Lady Georgiana Rannoch and her husband, Darcy, are awaiting the arrival of their baby when they receive an unexpected invitation to visit Paris. However, their trip quickly turns into a tangled web of international intrigue as they become embroiled in a mystery involving murder, espionage, and high-stakes politics.
Shares: England, Mystery