James Parker Pyne is a retired government employee who considers himself to be a
"detective of the heart." Advertising his services in the "Personal" column of
The Times, he works
alongside his secretary Miss Lemon, novelist Ariadne Oliver, handsome "lounge
lizard" Claude Luttrell and disguise artist Madeleine de Sara.
The first six stories deal with Pyne solving cases in England, while the second six stories detail Pyne's
vacation, where he hopes not to have to detective work only to end up helping
others anyway.Contents1 The Case of the Middle-aged Wife2 The Case of the Discontented Soldier3 The Case of the Distressed Lady4 The Case of the Discontented Husband5 The Case of the City Clerk6 The Case of the Rich Woman7 Have You Got Everything You Want?8 The Gate of Baghdad9 The House at Shiraz10 The Pearl of Price11 Death on the Nile [unrelated to Hercule Poirot novel of same name]12 The Oracle at Delphi Views: 7
A fresh start in a place you hate. Even tougher with a killer watching... Jane Osborne left Cambridge and vowed she'd never return. An unexpected twist of fortune results in DC Goodhew bringing her back to the remnants of her old life and a confrontation with the man who killed her sister. Meanwhile a burning car on the outskirts of Cambridge leads to the discovery of the body of its owner, Paul Marshall. There seems nothing to connect it to either a recent assault, or to Jane Osborne, until a shocking discovery rips Goodhew's investigation apart.ReviewPraise for Alison Bruce: "You are pulled in relentlessly as Bruce racks up the tension. Menacing and insidious, this is a great novel."—RJ Ellory "Goodhew stands alone. I'm looking forward to more of his investigations."—*Minneapolis Star-Tribune* "Bruce's superior prose elevates this above many other contemporary British police procedurals."**—Publishers Weekly"Smart, ambitious.... A pleasingly different police procedural."—Kirkus ReviewsAbout the AuthorAlison Bruce was born in Croydon and grew up in Wiltshire. She is a fan of vintage clothes and the rockabilly music scene, and for two years wrote and presented a monthly 1950's music feature on BBC Wiltshire Sound.Alison is married to singer/songwriter Jacen Bruce and they have two children, Lana and Dean, three cats and a changeable amount of goldfish.Alison is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. Views: 7
Ivan Monk chases a mystery deep into America's shameful past Half a century ago, Old Man Spears was a hero of the ballpark. In an age when baseball was segregated, he played in the Negro Leagues, providing hope for a generation of oppressed African Americans. Decades after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color line, Spears is an old man in a barbershop straining to hear the game on the radio. An offhanded comment about a former teammate, Kennesaw Riles, shocks private eye Ivan Monk, who has deeply buried memories of a ball-playing relative by that name. But before he can pick the old man's brain, Spears drops dead. A few days later, Kennesaw Riles follows suit. To understand the pair of deaths, Monk digs into the history of his family and his country. He follows the mystery to Mississippi blues country, where he's forced to confront a brand of hatred that he thought had died with Jim Crow. Views: 7
Port Mortuary, the title of Patricia Cornwell's 18th Scarpetta novel, is literally a port for the dead. In this fast-paced story, a treacherous path from Scarpetta's past merges with the high tech highway she now finds herself on. We travel back to the beginning of her professional career, when she enlisted in the Air Force to pay off her medical school debt and found herself ensnared in a gruesome case of what seemed to be vicious, racially motivated hate crimes against two Americans in South Africa. Now, more than twenty years and many career successes later, her secret military ties have drawn her to Dover Air Force Base, where she has been immersed in a training fellowship to master the art of CT-assisted virtual autopsy--a procedure the White House has mandated that she introduce in the private sector. As the chief of the new Cambridge Forensic Center in Massachusetts, a joint venture of the state and federal governments and MIT, Scarpetta is confronted with a case that could shut down her new facility and ruin her personally and professionally. A young man drops dead, apparently from a cardiac arrhythmia, eerily close to Scarpetta's new Cambridge home. But when his body is examined the next morning, there are stunning indications that he may have been alive when he was zipped inside a pouch and locked insider the Center's cooler. Various 3-D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen. These suggest the possibility of a conspiracy to cause mass casualties. She realizes that she is fighting a cunning and cruel enemy that is invisible as she races against time to discover who and why before more people die. In Port Mortuary, Patricia Cornwell brings Scarpetta together with Marino, Benton, and Lucy in an intimate way that is reminiscent of the early novels, and we welcome a voice we haven't heard in years. The point of view is Scarpetta's, and this is her story. Views: 7
The death of legendary private eye George Rowell looked like an accident – but searching for the truth behind it will put down-and-out East Village detective Payton Sherwood on the trail of a runaway investment scam artist, a drug-addicted reality TV star – and the bewitching beauty whose appearance set it all in motion… Views: 7
It's summertime in Winsome. Washington Acres is abloom, Megan is preparing for the grand opening of their wood-fired pizza farm, and things with Megan's beau, handsome Dr. Finn, are getting as hot as the August temperatures. But when Megan's ne'er-do-well father arrives in Pennsylvania with his high-maintenance Italian wife, Sylvia, and announces they're staying at the new yoga retreat center a town away, a sweet occasion sours. Eager to secure pieces for her Milan boutique, Sylvia finagles a meeting with up-and-coming artist Thana Moore, whose work is showing at the retreat center. After their explosive encounter, Thana is murdered and Sylvia becomes the prime suspect. Though Sylvia isn't the only one with ties to the artist—once upon a time, Thana Moore had been Megan's best friend. As Megan delves into Thana's past, piecing together the years since their falling out, she realizes that something sinister is afoot in Bucks County. Unless Megan... Views: 7
