Search results for ""Author Leo Bruce""

One of the rarest mysteries in the author's Sergeant Beef series, Case with Four Clowns, which has only been published once in the US - more than fifty years ago - is now available in paperback for the first time. It is regarded by critics as one of Leo Bruce's most baffling mysteries. A murder is yet to be committed - that much is certain - but who will be the victim? And who will be the murderer? It is Sgt. Beef's job to discover these facts, if he can, in time to prevent the deed from being done. But when he reaches the small traveling circus where the murder is to take place, he finds that practically everyone there is seething with hatred, each has a motive which might make him a killer; and any one of a dozen people could easily be the victim. The doughty Sgt. Beef has broken some pretty tough cases, and this one - with mystery entagled within mystery - stirs the bulldog within him. The clues are there, but unless the reader is very astute, he or she will overlook them; but Sgt. Beef misses nothing.

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Walking on the sand before breakfast, Carolus Deen's cousin Fay, who was staying on the Suffolk coast, has come upon the head of Lilliane Bomberger, the celebrated and universally detested novelist. The body was buried in the sand with only the head protruding; at least one tide had washed over it. Before this frustrating case ends, three murders are committed. This is vintage Bruce, mixing thrills and chills with unique humour.

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Carolus Deene, history master at Queen's School, Newminster, manages on the side to dabble in the art of gentlemanly detective work. In Leo Bruce's beloved A Bone and a Hank of Hair, Deene is approached by Mrs. Chalk, who is convinced her heiress cousin has been murdered. The suspect is, of course, Mr. Rathbone, the lady's wily widower. On the way to the truth, Deene encounters a host of friendly characters and oafish constabulary, leading readers in a delightful romp through the English landscape.

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It was not so much a question of ""who-done-it"" as of ""who-done-what."" Respectable solicitors do not disappear every day, but Duncan Humby had vanished into thin air while on his way to prepare a new will for James Grossiter - a will in which the crotchety millionaire intended to dispossess all his relations and his manservant in favor of numerous charities.The death from a heart attack of Old Grossiter himself was too much of a coincidence for Carolus Deene, who was called upon to find the missing solicitor, and as he made his way to the remote village of Hallows End, where Humby's car has been seen and where Grossiter was staying, he had a strong feeling of sinister evil and danger...a feeling that was soon to be translated into horrible fact.

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Carolus Deene becomes involved in his latest adventure when a famous restaurateur is threatened by a protection racketeer and a well-known writer of cookbooks is murdered under extraordinary circumstances.

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There are strange goings-on at St. Asprey's, an expensive boys' preparatory school: footsteps in passages at night...strange lights...rabbits with battered skulls...a face in the window...a puppy found in a pool of blood...and even worse to come. In a tense, chilling atmosphere Carolous Deene has some spine tingling experiences before he solves the mystery of these curious and sinister events.

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Richard Hoysden's body is discovered in his country flat, apparently a suicide. Missing from the room is a tape of Hoysden's last moments in which he confesses to the murder of a young woman. Lady Drombone, a Member of Parliament and the young man's aunt, hires Carolus to find the tape and help suppress it. He himself insists on reconstructing the confusing circumstances in order to solve the baffling crime.

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