Search results for ""felony mayhem""

In 1968 Ngaio Marsh took her own Roman holiday (in part to research Italian police procedures) and the change seems to have done her good: Both her British and U.S. agents believed When in Rome to be the finest novel in her "Inspector Alleyn" series. As is so often (and so satisfyingly) the case, the tale concerns a murder within a closed group-in this case, a group of tourists visiting what Marsh calls the "Basilica di San Tommaso," who find themselves fumbling into a complex web of blackmail and drug-smuggling. Adding some irresistible color are depictions of both La Dolce Vita (of which Marsh took a jaundiced view) and the student radicals of the day, whom she seems to have found somewhat more persuasive. All in all, a brilliant example of classic Golden Age plotting melded with a decidedly Space Age cast.

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Sarah Deane is an English teacher by profession, but with these first two adventures she discovers that sleuthing—of the strictly amateur variety—may be where her truest passions lie.The first book takes Sarah, still a grad student at this point, out of her natural New England habitat and into the wilds of Texas, where her maybe-boyfriend is keen on a spot of birdwatching. But birds are not all that she spies through her binoculars, and so the adventures begin. In Down East, Sarah is glad to be back on home ground, but somebody, it appears, is not happy in any way at all, and Sarah is forced (and secretly thrilled) to put her newfound detecting skills to use again.

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It’s tough to be a preacher’s kid, and for Leo Stanhope it may be harder than for most. He was born Charlotte, and in the Reverend Pritchard’s home—as in all of Victoria’s England—there is little room for persons unwilling to know their place and stick to it. And things are about to get harder: There’s a gentleman who knows the secret that could get Leo locked up for life, and this so-called gentleman is not above a spot of blackmail. There is a bright spot, though, in the form of two little kids who are teaching Leo’s heart to open again, after a wretched year. In warming to them, he realizes how much more he has to learn. Leo knows how to be a man. Now he must learn to be a father.

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Andrew Basnett may be retired from academia, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped his former colleagues from dumping problems in his lap. This time around it’s the peppery Constance Camm, whose neighbors keep disappearing. Miss Camm and her sister, Mollie, might be tempted to shrug things off, were it not for a frightening letter. “I know where you buried the body,” says the letter, but…to which disappeared neighbor does the letter refer? And why was it sent to Mollie, who hasn’t been burying anything? Spurred by a desire to help a friend (and—admit it!—by his own curiosity), Professor Basnett starts poking around. But his efforts uncover more than one village skeleton, and they may call up more than anyone has bargained for.

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