Showing results by author "Peter Lovesey" in All Categories

London, 1889: After Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat became a Victorian best seller, rowing on the Thames was the great craze of 1889. When an elementary school teacher in training takes a midnight swim in the Thames and witnesses a body being dumped, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackerey are called to investigate. They uncover strange parallels with the enormously popular Victorian novel, but nobody will take them seriously. Following their instincts, they stick doggedly to the trail, which leads upstream to Oxford.

London, 1889: After Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat became a Victorian best seller, rowing on the Thames was the great craze of 1889. When an elementary school teacher in training takes a midnight swim in the Thames and witnesses a body being dumped, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackerey are called to investigate. The duo uncover strange parallels with the enormously popular Victorian novel, but nobody will take them seriously. Following their instincts, they stick doggedly to the trail, which leads upstream to Oxford.

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Does your wife give you grief? Mr Cronk’s does. But how far would you go for a peaceful life? Mr Cronk has heard about the 'Fixer' - he can make people disappear, for a price.

The eighth book in the Sergeant Cribb series by Peter Lovesey. London, 1888. Though Miriam Cromer has confessed to the murder of her husband's assistant, she is still confident of her acquittal. However, the jury sentence her to hang. Miriam then says her husband was the killer, but he has an alibi. Can Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray discover what really happened at Park Lodge on that fateful day in March before it's too late?

The spiritualist movement has captivated a segment of society: manifestations, the occult, and “sensitives” are in vogue. But the séance sites seem to be targeted for burglaries. Then, while Cribb is on the case, someone murders the medium. There was a great vogue for table-turning and getting in touch with the dead in Victorian times, and this lent itself to fraud, at the very least. It seemed inevitable that Cribb and Thackeray should take part in a séance at some stage. They come to it indirectly, following an art theft.

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Bertie, Prince of Wales, must combine his detective skills with those of a firefighter when he tends to a fire in Villiers Street. With no apparent cause, Bertie soon finds himself on the tail of an arsonist.

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Some might think that Bertie, Prince of Wales’ first case was the suspicious death of jockey Fred Archer in 1886, but here the self-important amateur sleuth recalls how his talent for deduction started much earlier in his youth, when he solved a mystery surrounding an Oxford boat race.

Five thrilling tales of mystery, mayhem, and murder from an exceptional quintet of Edgar, CWA Dagger, and National Book Award winners.

London, 1888. Though the beautiful Miriam Cromer has confessed to the murder of her husband’s assistant, she is still confident of her acquittal. But then, she is sentenced to hang. She blames her husband, but he has an alibi. Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray must discover what really happened at Park Lodge on 12th March, 1888, and quickly.

When Gloria’s mother seemingly has a new fancy-man, she decides to humiliate them both by planting evidence of the affair in his car for his wife to find. But has she got the wrong end of the stick?

Esteemed mystery writer Anne Perry, author of more than twenty-five novels and two acclaimed detective series, heads up a delectable cast of writers, the very best from both sides of the Atlantic. In the tradition of honored crime writers Agatha Christie, Malice Domestic, Volume 6 jumps the pond between Britain and America to deliver 100 percent pure suspense in all its spine-tingling glory. The ten mysteries included here are read by Stephanie Beacham, Christopher Cazenove, Reed Diamond, Judy Geeson, Patrick Macnee, and Emmy winners Juliet Mills and William Windom.

Brighton, 1882: Albert Moscrop spends his holiday peering at beachgoers through a telescope, piecing together disarmingly trivial observations into a compelling drama for his own amusement. A keen student of human nature, Moscrop concentrates his interest on one particular family - the Protheros, especially the beautiful Zena Prothero, whose husband appears to take her for granted. Moscrop gradually moves into the circle of the Prothero family, only to become involved in a sensational murder.

Trish Noble, a nurse and devotee of her local church, walks into a Bath police station and confesses to killing her husband. She found him drunk again, saw red and hit him in the side of the head with a teapot. Detective Peter Diamond struggles to see the woman as a cold, callous killer, but when the post-mortem reveals stab wounds to Glenn Noble’s back as the cause of death, it becomes clear there’s more to this case than meets the eye.

Six months after the funeral of Danny Fox, his friend of more than 30 years, the narrator of this story takes a holiday in Florida, and is shocked to bump into Danny’s widow, who has seemingly remarried already. Uneasy with the cause of his friend’s death, he must follow the widow to get to the bottom of it.

Detective Peter Diamond, chief of the Avon and Somerset Murder Squad, is taking a short holiday in the country. His former colleague Julie Hargreaves has invited Diamond and his partner, Paloma, to visit the idyllic village of Baskerville (no relation to the Sherlock Holmes story, so he's told). It turns out Julie's invitation was not without ulterior motives. The woman who owns the village's largest dairy farm has been convicted of manslaughter following a terrible accident in her grain silo.

Since the start of the hit TV show Swift in 2013, its cast and crew have been plagued by misfortune. First, a star actress pulls out of the show before it begins—and by 2019, there have been multiple injuries by fall, fire, or drowning; two deaths; and two missing persons cases. The popular media around Bath, England, quickly decides it's a curse, but is it as simple as that? Is someone behind these fishy incidents?

It’s 1946, and tensions are running high in the Morris household. It’s no secret that Frank is handy with his fists, but what will finally tip him over the edge as they all sit round the table for Christmas dinner?

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. When widower George Blackitt falls in love with Edith Plumley, there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her - including murder.... Edith keeps pedigree mice, and with just one more win, she’ll be a lifetime member of the National Fancy Mice Society. But suddenly there’s new competition in the village, in the form of George’s neighbours.

If there’s one thing detective Bath Peter Diamond has no patience for, it’s a dumb git trying to get involved in one of his investigations - for example, a Philip Marlowe-wannabe private investigator like the self-styled Johnny Getz. But fate has saddled Diamond with this trial. A Bath antiques dealer, “Seppy” Hubbard, has disappeared without a trace, and his daughter has hired Getz to find him. When a body is discovered in Seppy’s locked-up store, the missing persons case becomes a murder investigation, and now Diamond has to collaborate with the insufferable private eye.

Albert and Karen don’t have much. They live in a bedsit in Reading, and Karen spends her evenings mending clothes. So when a chance to win £10,000 from a video clip submitted to a TV programme arises, the couple can’t resist. They borrow a caravan, park it precariously close to a clifftop in Wales - what could possible go wrong?