The Anthony Bathurst Mysteries Series

"Did you hear, during these last few days, any mention from your brother of an animal?" Amazingly, she nodded! "Yes . . . I heard him refer once-to a spiked lion." John Pender Blundell, a codebreaker in the Great War, is found dead in Bushey Park. He met his end, despite the savaged appearance of his body, from cyan

Within the next six months from to-day, I shall have removed from your midst one of the most prominent citizens of your most atrocious town. I have not yet made up my mind which one I shall honour in this way, or the exact day upon which the removal will take place. A random serial killer? Hardly-the police discover that the first

"The murderer must have crept stealthily behind Pearson and taken him all unawares-unsuspecting." Leonard Pearson was not a pleasant individual - a likely blackmailer - so it came as no surprise when he met a sticky end. Attacked from behind, his head smashed with a blunt instrument, the only tangible clue lay in the identity of h

"The gentleman in Number Fifty-four-Mr. Griggs-'e's been murdered!" Albert Griggs, the Secretary of State for Home Affairs, is considering an important case. Two brothers have killed a servant-girl in the course of a robbery. Griggs looks at the facts carefully and comes to his final decision - he will not overturn the death penal

The wedges are fixed for the Sussex Cuckoo. Hurry if you would be in time. Even then I fear that you may be too late. Terms as arranged. NEHEMIAH. Thus reads an announcement in the Times Agony Column, catching the eye of Anthony Lotherington Bathurst on the morning he visits botanist James Frith. Frith is the owner of val

"Murder as a fine art, as a pure expression of sadism is almost unknown." Thus spoke Anthony Bathurst to his friend, Chief Inspector MacMorran, but he will soon come to regret the statement. Julian Skene arrives to ask his assistance in the case of the disappearance of Mark Kenriston. Kenriston walked away after a dinner party on

The doctors who performed the post-mortem on his body came to the opinion that his veins had been opened by jagged glass. There was little doubt that this opinion was sound. Lance Maturin has been travelling across Europe for a few months and finds himself in an Antwerp nightclub. He is mesmerised by one of the dancers and when sh

"Tell me, Doctor, could the wound have been made by the antlers of an angry stag?" With Scotland Yard overstretched, Anthony Bathurst is recruited to investigate the death of seventy-three year old Robert Forsyth in the village of Upchalke. Forsyth had been brutally attacked in his home and stabbed through the chest with an unknown weapon.

"This Great Kirby motor-car case. A particularly horrible and soul-shattering murder. And the fact that the Commissioner of Police himself calls it a clear case of suicide won't alter the facts." Three women have died, each apparently the victim of a car accident. When Bathurst discovers the same travelling funfair had been operat

"I believe those men were murdered just as clearly as if they had been stabbed to the heart with a knife. The only sign that they bore was a dull red mark . . . behind the ears." Six men meet at the vicarage of St Crayle one evening to tell each other ghost stories. In particular, it is Martin Burke's tale, one of a homicidal chim

"Before she could finish what she wanted to say, she just gasped once or twice and died there in my arms." Nothing seems amiss at the Hillier family dinner party but the very next morning Jacqueline Hillier is found dying in her car. Her clothes are dirty and torn, her face bruised, but it was an overdose of chloral hydrate which

"This man Merivale admits that he killed his wife. Makes no bones about it whatever. Confesses that he strangled her. But he says that he was fast asleep at the time that he was doing it. That all he did, he did in a dream." Chief Inspector MacMorran is up against the most extraordinary case of his career - a self-confessed killer

"As long as there is no more stupid talk of murder, or threats of any kind, you will find me ready and willing to be reasonable." David Somerset, an industrial chemist, meets a mysterious syndicate in a Gloucestershire village. What exactly does David Somerset have to sell? Somerset fails to return to London and his son Geoffrey disa

The moment they entered, Anthony pointed to the floor and to a hand that protruded from beneath the bed. Dr. Traquair is determined that either he or his wife should die. He decides to allow her to cut a deck of cards to see who will shoot whom - highest card wins. As the winner of this deadly duel, Traquair takes flight, de

"What I smelt and what you smelt, Constable Wragg, was burning flesh!" William Norman dies of shock after being burnt by hot coals. The Mallett constabulary first look for a motive amongst his fellow farmers. But when a second murder occurs by poisoning, and a third by drowning, it appears this is no farming dispute but the work o

"Murder? Is that how you see it? Well-I don't! Justifiable homicide more like it!" Hubert Grant is a fairly unpleasant man. He also thinks he is happily married. Dorothy Grant despises her husband but finds consolation in the handsome Laurence Weston. In order for the lovers to be happy, however, the intolerable Hubert needs

"It has been evident to me for some time that this country, the Empire and all that you and I hold dear are in deadly peril." Mrs. Warren Clinton, the American millionaire, summons nine talented individuals to the Royal Sceptre Hotel. Her stated purpose-to save the British Empire. Through a series of fiendish intellectual tests, s

"I cannot tell you of your future - because there is no future for you." Three remarkable things happen to Aubrey Coventry in one day. First, he is contacted by Wall Street financier Silas Montgomery with a lucrative business proposition - although Montgomery insists on meeting him at two a.m. the following day. Second, at a villa

Less than an hour later, the nude body of the dead man lay in the outhouse which did duty at St. Mead as the official mortuary. Anthony Bathurst is taking the sea-air at the village of St Mead, when the local constabulary drag him into the investigation of a local murder. The mystery is grotesque: someone has stripped the bo

"I don't like any of it. He's either being prevented from going home by force . . . or else he'll never go home again." 'Lefty' Donovan, a boxer, leaves home after receiving a mysterious offer that seems too good to be true-and is never seen again. His wife, Flora, approaches Anthony Bathurst to look for her husband, but he fears

Elisabeth slept! It is perhaps a matter for wonderment that her sleep was untroubled. For-had she but known it-she was so close to Terror and Tragedy! So close to Death and deaths-so close to the menace of `Mr Levi'! Mr Medlicott, a solicitor, heads to the country home of his old friend and client Sir John Wynward, to spend Christ

"She came to me for help, Andrew, and I failed her. I failed her living, but I promise to God I won't fail her dead!" Richard Arbuthnot is convinced that a crime will be committed. The odd behaviour of a man who shares his train to work in Kingsley raises suspicions-suspicions which soon drive Artbuthnot to contact detective Antho

The nude body swung-right-left-as its weight played on the rope which the hook held. Dr. Julian Field had a straightforward day ahead of him-a short train journey to visit his patient, the wife of Philip Stanhope of Stoke Pelly, and then a journey home. So what caused him to leave the station at an earlier station, Fullaford? What

"There's little doubt, as I see it, that Flagon was killed by a dart thrown with amazing skill and dexterity." The Bar Point-to-Point meeting at Quiddington St Philip is always an auspicious occasion. This year, Justice Nicholas Flagon is the favourite to win-there's big money on him, and a fair bit against him as well. But who wi

"A dead man in my car? But how can that be? Do you mean somebody-er-that was taken ill or something?" "No, sir. The dead man in your car was murdered." When Richard Langley entered the town of Angel, he encountered the unexpected. He never expected to meet Priscilla Schofield. He never expected to be asked to delive