Ronald Knox – författare

When private investigator Miles Bredon and his wife, Angela, arrive for a weekend at the Hallifords'' country house, they find themselves part of a singularly ill-assorted house party. Waking one morning to the news that one among their number has been found dead by the silo, Miles has no shortage of suspects.The entire party had spent the previous night haring around the country side in an ''eloping'' game instigated by their hostess, and no one can fully account for their whereabouts. The arrival of Inspector Leyland from Scotland Yard, investigating a spate of apparent suicides of important people, adds another dimension to the mystery, and Miles finds himself wondering ''whether the improbable ought to be told''.

The Hon. Vernon Lethaby is a flamboyant, headline-seeking exhibitionist with extravagant tastes and an allowance that barely covers his racing debts. In an unlikely partnership with middle-aged Canadian adventurer Joe ''Digger'' Henderson, he strikes out for the Highlands of Scotland to hunt for Prince Charlie''s treasure, which, according to legend, is interred on the isle of Erran.But Lathaby doesn''t trust his partner, and has taken out insurance to cover him against being swindled. Enter Miles Bredon, who is sent by his employer to ensure than neither of them defrauds the Indescribable Insurance Company.An unidentified body burned in a garage, maps, photographs and a missing key sustain this clever tale of financial skulduggery until the final pages.

At first sight the case looks simple enough to private investigator Miles Bredon. Two cousins on a boat trip on the River Thames: Derek with a £50,000 reason for surviving the next two months until he inherits a legacy; Nigel with a £50,000 reason for getting rid of him and inheriting the money himself.When Derek disappears, Nigel naturally falls under suspicion - not least because he has a train of alibis that is almost too perfect. But where is the body? And if this is not murder, whose is the photograph of a body slumped in a boat, and who left the wet footprints at the lock?

After Colin Reiver is acquitted of responsibility for killing a child in a car accident he sets out on a sea cruise in the hope that it might ease local feeling and the voice of his own conscience.But when a few days after his departure Colin is found dead by the roadside, Miles Bredon, investigator for the Indescribable Insurance Company, must travel to Scotland to establish precisely when the death occurred. The body has disappeared and reappeared in the space of forty-eight hours and a large insurance premium is at stake.

In a gas-lit inn in the countryside a man lies dead. The police, of course, investigate - and so do Miles Bredon and his wife, in the interests of the Indescribable Insurance Company, with which the deceased man, Mr Mottram, had been heavily insured.The culprit is the three gas taps in Mr Mottram''s room, and Miles hopes to prove that his death is suicide. Miles'' old wartime colleague, Police Inspector Leyland, is convinced it''s murder. And the conclusion is as ingenious as it is surprising.

When four friends stumble across the body of a fellow club member during a game of golf they suspect murder. The police aren''t so sure, and when it looks as though the official verdict will be suicide the men are outraged. Convinced that there had been ''dirty work'' and that ''the police aren''t very good at following up clues'', they undertake their own investigation. A classic Golden Age whodunit that involves the reader in a charming game of detection as the protagonists use Sherlockian methods to unravel the mystery.