Collins Crime Club – serie

A unique anthology for crime aficionados – seven of the world’s most notorious genuine murder mysteries retold by the most accomplished classic crime writers of their generation.A manipulative murderer who stalked the streets of Paris; a young wife who poisoned her eccentric husband; a bank cashier’s mysterious suicide; a brutal double murder in New Zealand… Seven of the world’s greatest crime writers turn their hand to some of the world’s most spine-tingling mysteries – all of them astonishingly TRUE.This remarkable collection from the archives of the Detection Club follows The Floating Admiral, Ask a Policeman and Six Against the Yard back into print after more than 75 years, and shows some of the most accomplished authors of their generation retelling real-life murder mysteries with all the relish of the tastiest crime fiction.

The Floating Admiral was the first of the Detection Club’s collaborative novels, in which twelve of its members wrote a single novel. Eighty-five years later, fourteen members of the club have once again collaborated to produce The Sinking Admiral.‘The Admiral’ is a pub in the Suffolk seaside village of Crabwell, The Admiral Byng. ‘The Admiral’ is also the nickname of its landlord, Geoffrey Horatio Fitzsimmons, as well as the name of the landlord’s dinghy. None of them are as buoyant as they should be, for the pub is threatened with closure due to falling takings.Tempers are already frayed due to the arrival of a television documentary team when Fitzsimmons is found dead in his tethered boat. The villagers assume a simple case of suicide and fear that their debt-ridden pub will now sink without trace. The journalists seem determined to finish the job by raking up old skeletons, but they weren’t banking on the fact that this story has been written by 14 extremely competitive crime writers – arch bamboozlers who will stop at nothing to save a good pub.The Sinking Admiral, edited by the Detection Club’s outgoing President – author and broadcaster Simon Brett, OBE – continues a tradition established by the Detection Club’s founders in 1931 when Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Freeman Wills Crofts and eleven other esteemed authors wrote The Floating Admiral, a ‘collaborative novel’ to challenge themselves, fox their readers and help to pay for the Club’s running costs. Now, 85 years later, 14 of today’s leading crime writers have repeated this unique game of literary consequences, producing an original, ebullient and archetypal whodunit that will keep readers guessing right up to what crime lovers insist on calling the dénouement…The contributors to The Sinking Admiral are:SIMON BRETTKATE CHARLESNATASHA COOPERSTELLA DUFFYMARTIN EDWARDSRUTH DUDLEY EDWARDSTIM HEALDMICHAEL JECKSJANET LAURENCEPETER LOVESEYMICHAEL RIDPATHDAVID ROBERTSL.C. TYLERLAURA WILSONall members of The Detection Club.

Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in the islands of the Caribbean.Ferocious Hurricane Mabel is predicted to pass harmlessly amongst the islands of the Caribbean. But David Wyatt has developed a sixth sense about hurricanes. He is convinced that Mabel will change course to strike the island of San Fernandez and its capital, St Pierre. But nobody believes him, and the hurricane is only one of the problems that threaten San Fernandez…

Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in British Columbia.Bob Boyd is a geologist, as resilient as the British Columbia timber country where he works for the powerful Matterson Corporation. But his real name and his past are mysteries – wiped out by the accident that nearly killed him. Then Boyd reads a name that opens a door in his memory: Trinavant – and discovers that Bull Matterson and his son will do almost anything to keep the Trinavant family forgotten forever…

Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in South America.Jeremy Wheale’s well-ordered life is blasted apart when his brother is murdered. The killer was after a family heirloom – an antique gold tray – which sets Wheale on a trail from Devon to the tropical rainforest of Yucatan. There he joins the hunt for a lost Mayan city. But in the dense cover of the jungle a band of vicious convict mercenaries are waiting to strike…

Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in the Middle East.When film tycoon Robert Hellier loses his daughter to heroin, he declares war on the drug pedlars, the faceless overlords whose greed supplies the world with its deadly pleasures. London drug specialist Nicholas Warren is called upon to organise an expedition to the Middle East to track down and destroy them – but with a hundred million dollars’ worth of heroin at stake, Warren knows he will have to use methods as deadly as his prey…

Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in Malta.The Scarperers, a brilliantly organised gang which gets long-term inmates out of prison, spring a notorious Russian double agent. The trail leads Owen Stannard to Malta, and to the suave killer masterminding the gang. Face to face at last with his opponents, Stannard must try to outwit both men – who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by his death…

Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in Norway and Finland.When Giles Denison of Hampstead wakes up in an Oslo hotel room and finds the face looking back at him in the mirror is not his own, things could surely get no more bizarre. But it is only the beginning of a hair-raising adventure in which Denison finds himself trapped with no way to escape. One false move and the whole delicately balanced power structure between East and West will come toppling down…

Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in New Zealand.Fifty-four people died in the avalanche that ripped apart a small New Zealand mining town. But the enquiry which follows unleashes more destructive power than the snowfall. As the survivors tell their stories, they reveal a community so divided that all warnings of danger went unheeded. At the centre of the storm is Ian Ballard, whose life depends upon being able to clear his name…

Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in Sweden.Wealthy, respectable George Ashton flees for his life after an acid attack on his daughter. Who is his enemy? Only Malcolm Jaggard, his future son-in-law, can guess, after seeing Ashton’s top secret government file. In a desperate manhunt, Jaggard pits himself against the KGB and stalks Ashton to the silent, wintry forests of Sweden. But his search for the enemy has barely begun…

Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in the Pacific.When Mark Trevelyan dies on a journey to a remote Pacific atoll, the verdict that it was natural causes doesn’t convince his brother, Mike. The series of violent attacks that follows only adds to his suspicions. Just two clues – a notebook in code and a lump of rock – are enough to trigger off a hazardous expedition, and a violent confrontation far from civilization…

Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in Africa.It is no ordinary juggernaut. Longer than a football pitch, weighing 550 tons, and moving at just five miles per hour, its job – and that of troubleshooter Neil Mannix – is to move a giant transformer across an oil-rich African state. But when Nyala erupts in civil war, Mannix’s juggernaut is at the centre of the conflict – a target of ambush and threat, with no way to run and nowhere to hide…

Never before published in paperback, and back in print for the first time since 1951, this long-lost novelisation reworks the nail-biting radio serial ‘Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair’ with new and original characters.The Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard visits retired Detective Lionel Wyatt with the chilling news that an old adversary they never caught has struck again, strangling an innocent girl. Wyatt is reluctant to return to police work, but then another body is found – this time at his own home, with a personal message: ‘With the compliments of Mr Rossiter’.In Design for Murder, Francis Durbridge adapted his longest Paul Temple serial, Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair, into a full-length novel. All the obligatory elements from the thrilling radio episodes were present, but in a new twist, he renamed the principal characters: Paul and Steve Temple became Lionel and Sally Wyatt, and ‘Mr Rossiter’ replaced the villainous Gregory. Reprinted for the first time in 66 years, fans of Francis Durbridge and of Paul Temple can finally relive this ingenious adventure.Also includes an introduction by bibliographer Melvyn Barnesplus the exclusive 1946 Radio Times short story‘Paul Temple’s White Christmas’.

A classic crime novel by one of the most highly regarded exponents of the genre.The murder of old Mr Fransham while washing his hands in his niece’s cloakroom was one of the most astounding problems that ever confronted Scotland Yard. Not only was there a policeman in the house at the time, but there was an ugly wound in the victim’s forehead and nothing in the locked room that could have inflicted it.The combined efforts of Superintendent Hanslet and Inspector Waghorn brought no answer and the case was dropped. It was only after another equally baffling murder had been committed that Dr Lancelot Priestley’s orderly and imaginative deductions began to make the connections that would solve this extraordinary case.

This novelisation of the radio serial Paul Temple and the Jonathan Mystery also includes a Paul Temple short story, ‘The Ventriloquist’s Doll’.Photographer and amateur detective Philip Holt is asked to investigate the unexplained murder of an American student at an English university. With a postcard signed ‘Christopher’ and the boy’s father’s missing signet ring as his only leads, Holt’s investigation soon snowballs into forgery, blackmail, smuggling … and more murder.Dead to the World is Francis Durbridge’s novelisation of his radio serial Paul Temple and the Jonathan Mystery, rewriting the Paul and Steve Temple characters as Philip Holt and his secretary Ruth Sanders. This new edition is introduced by bibliographer Melvyn Barnes and includes the Paul Temple Christmas story THE VENTRILOQUIST’S DOLL.

This novelisation of the radio serial Paul Temple and the Gilbert Case also includes a bonus short story, ‘Paul Temple and the Nightingale’.It was an open-and-shut case: Lucy Staines was murdered by her hot-headed fiancé Harold Weldon. But something about it is troubling ex-Fleet Street crime reporter Mike Baxter – why was one of Lucy’s shoes missing from the crime scene? When an identical murder occurs while Weldon is safely behind bars, the whole case is re-opened – and everything revolves around another woman’s shoes…Another Woman’s Shoes is Francis Durbridge’s rewrite of his radio serial Paul Temple and the Gilbert Case, in which Mike and Linda Baxter take the places of Paul and Steve Temple in pursuing the killer. This new edition is introduced by bibliographer Melvyn Barnes and includes the short story PAUL TEMPLE AND THE NIGHTINGALE.

This classic crime novel by six different authors is introduced by Martin Edwards, archivist of the Detection Club, and includes a never-before-published Preface by Agatha Christie, ‘Detective Writers in England’, in which she discusses her approach to writing and her fellow writers in the Detection Club.Lord Comstock is a barbarous newspaper tycoon with enemies in high places. His murder in the study of his country house poses a dilemma for the Home Secretary. In the hours before his death, Lord Comstock’s visitors included the government Chief Whip, an Archbishop, and the Assistant Commissioner for Scotland Yard. Suspicion falls upon them all and threatens the impartiality of any police investigation. Abandoning protocol, the Home Secretary invites four famous detectives to solve the case: Mrs Adela Bradley, Sir John Saumarez, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Mr Roger Sheringham. All are different, all are plausible, all are on their own – and none of them can ask a policeman…The contributors to ASK A POLICEMAN are: John Rhode, Helen Simpson, Gladys Mitchell, Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Milward Kennedy, with Agatha Christie and Martin Edwards.