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 ...more

Mary Bellamy is the sweetheart of the London stage, fluffy as only an elderly lady of 50(!) can be. Her fans and friends-- and who didn't adore, positively adore darling Mary?-- are heartbroken when somehow Mary manages to spritz herself not with her favorite perfume but with the deadly insecticide meant to be sprayed on the azaleas. Inspector Alleyn begins by smelling something fishy (everything he learns about lovely, fragile Mary suggests that...

A Christmas pageant turns unholy. Holed up at Hilary Bill-Tasman's manor estate for Christmas, Troy Alleyn is to paint the man's portrait and, while she's there, view the Druid Christmas pageant. Along with a pack of eccentric guests, Troy enjoys the festivities-- until one of the pageant's players mysteriously disappears into the snowy night. Did the hired help-- each a paroled murderer from the nearby prison-- have a deadly hand in this Christmas...

One has to admit that the timing was peculiar. No one could doubt that Mr. Percival Pyke Period was genuinely distraught to hear that his neighbor, Harry Cartell, had turned up dead in a ditch. But how is it that Mr. Percival Pyke came to write the letter of condolence before the body was found? And how is it that Mr. Cartell came to inspire such violence? Yes he was boring, yes he was stuffy, but who would kill a man for the crime of being a bad...

London's chattering about a new playhouse and spreading theater gossip until a murder takes center-stage.

Horseplay turns deadly... Young Ricky Alleyn has come to the picturesque fishing village of Deep Cove to write. Through the sleepy little town offers few diversions, Ricky manages to find the most distracting one of all: murder. For in a muddy ditch, he sees a dead equestrienne whose last leap was anything but an accident. And when Ricky himself disappears, the case becomes a horse of a different color for his father, Inspector Roderick Alleyn.

A Shakespearean actor shuffles off his mortal coil in this "skillfully wrought" country-house mystery (The New York Times). Sir Henry Ancred, a celebrated Shakespearean actor, has arranged to have his portrait painted by Agatha Troy, wife of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. But when Ancred is killed at his own birthday party, leaving behind a family full of suspects, Troy's work ends and Inspector Alleyn's begins ...

The village of South Mardian likes the old ways. The very old ways. This may be 1957, but South Mardian still features a blacksmith, a village idiot, and an elaborate fertility ritual performed at the winter solstice. There's squabbling, of course, and worse-like when one of the ritual's main players is found beheaded, everything north of his neck having been neatly lopped off by a ritual sword. Inspector Alleyn does have to contain a certain incredulous...

A persistent paparazzi has hounded operatic soprano Isabella Sommita until her nerves are at the breaking point. Now her millionaire boyfriend has whisked her to a New Zealand island to recover. There she plans a performance of an aria written just for her-- by her secret young lover, who, along with a bevy of envious celebrities, is also on the island. It's the perfect set-up for grand opera-- wild passions...and bloody murder. And when the great...

A group of well-to-do tourists is visiting Italy's magnificent churches, but they've found themselves stumbling into an unholy web of blackmail and drug-smuggling-and, in the depths of a Roman basilica, murder. Fortunately Inspector Roderick Alleyn is among the group as part of an undercover assignment, and prepared to extract a confession ...