Superintendent Perry Trethowan was enjoying a peaceful motoring holiday in North Yorkshire when he and his wife, Jan, had a strange encounter in a country pub. The seemingly unremarkable elderly spinster...

Norway in cherry blossom time seemed exactly the right place to hold a conference of the World Association of Romantic Novelists (WARN for short). Superintendent Perry Trethowan wondered at times how...

Police superintendent Percy Trethowan found London’s Soho as colourful and full of life as every—except for the four corpses in a seedy photography studio. Shot doing a layout for Bodies, a soft-porn...

Superintendent Perry Trethowan was used to cases that involved people in high places, and in this one he finds himself at the top of the tree – among the British royals. A Princess, albeit only a minuscule...

In the late winter of 1979, Leeds housewife Ellen Heenan dies in childbirth – abandoning a guilt-stricken husband to insanity’s grasp and leaving four young children to find for themselves. Thirteen-year-old...

The news that Radio Broadwich is to make a documentary on Twytching for broadcast in America spreads through the small village like wildfire. Mrs Deborah Withens, Twytching's resident doyenne and arbiter...

With the Nazis bombing London on a nightly basis, many working-class families sent their children to the comparative safety of the countryside. When the Blitz ended, the families came for their kids ....

There were two Mrs Machins, relicts of the talented working-class writer Walter Machin, who was just about to be immortalised by the literary establishment. Viola was large, overbearing and, even in her...

Lydia Perceval was – apparently – a charming and gifted woman. As a successful biographer, she led a privileged and comfortable life in her well-ordered, luxurious country-cottage. She felt terribly sorry...

The MP for Bootham East was something of a fish out of water – a Tory with a conscience. When he was actually fished out of water, the Thames to be precise, it looked like a clear case of suicide or accident....

A classic British whodunit.Chetton Hall was one of the glories of Jacobean domestic architecture, and the Spenders had lived in Chetton ever since their founder had peculated the money to build it while...

The body of a young man, almost naked, in the car park behind one of Haworth’s many eating establishments marks the beginning of the case, and it is his identity that is the first puzzle for DC Charlie...

Upstairs, in the room looking out to sea, the old man dictates wills, leaving things he no longer has to friends who are long dead. His children, who look after him, can cope with his senility, and thought...

Professor Belville-Smith had bored university audiences in England with the same lecture for fifty years. Now he was crossing the Australian continent, doing precisely the same. Never before had the reaction...

Superintendent Perry Trethowan is returning to London with his wife Jan after visiting his difficult family in Northumberland. Driving through the Yorkshire Dales their car breaks down, and they find...

Lill Hodsden was a monster. She rode roughshod over her daughter, wiped her feet on her husband, blackmailed her lovers and smothered her sons with a mother love that left them screaming out for freedom....

The Burleigh school was dying. It would be called a mercy killing were it not for the little band of inept, eccentric, or otherwise unemployable teachers who depended on this absolutely awful English...

First published in 1979, Unruly Son received an Edgar Award nomination for “Best Novel” of the year. Sir Oliver Fairleigh-Stubbs, overweight and overbearing, collapses and dies at his birthday party while...

Susannah Sneddon had never received a great deal of fame or fortune from her novel-writing in the twenties and thirties. In the remote Yorkshire village of Micklewike, where she had lived on a run-down...

The Ketterick Festival revolves around the Saracen’s Head, a Jacobean inn with its inn-yard and balconies miraculously preserved intact, due to the sloth of successive landlords. Here in festival time...

A witty and poignant chiller about the evil of gossip and the sin of indifference. Father Christopher Pardoe is a good priest. He cares about his parishioners. He is also a human being—and is thus saddled...

Rosemary Sheffield has a sort of "reverse epiphany" one day while walking in the park: she no longer believes in God. This sudden loss of faith is at first entirely liberating, but the situation gradually...

Old church meets new with a vengeance when a monk is brutally murdered at St. Botolph’s. Murder wasn’t on the agenda for the symposium on the role of the Anglican Church today—until a brother is found...

Opera singers are often described as being larger than life, and certainly this is true of Gaylene Ffrench. Her appetites—for men, for food, for attention—are gargantuan, and her ability to irritate is...

The Skeleton In The Grass, reminiscent of Robert Barnard’s much-acclaimed Out of the Blackout, illuminates an earlier time and place: a small English village in 1936, as Franco’s troops are conquering...

Hexton-upon-Weir was ruled by its women: they set the tone, they made the decisions, they called the tune. When they decided to band together to block the appointment of a new vicar who was not only unacceptably...

Those two days in May seem to be a highpoint in Colin Pinnock’s life: a stunning election victory, a new government, and junior office for himself. But among the many congratulations he receives is one...

The disappearance from school of two apparently unconnected teenagers worries DC Charlie Peace, until he discovers that they are both working at a hostel for homeless street kids. Peace knows the life...

With A City of Strangers, award-winning novelist Robert Barnard, acclaimed for his quick wit and astute insight into the vagaries of class distinction and human foible, achieves a new level of mastery....

A Scandal In Belgravia is a story of murder; it is also a penetrating analysis of a decaying social class and a society in transition. And it is the personal, deeply moving story of two men, Peter Proctor,...