Rosa Epton – serie

A very complex mystery develops in London's clubland and among the legal grandees who frequent the Old Bailey and the Inns of Court. For the Blackstone Club, with its fine collection of snuff boxes, is a legal preserve. And when the entire valuable collection is stolen, one young club servant knows exactly how it was done. But when a vicious murder follows, and suspicion falls upon him, he is unable to extricate himself from his predicament by telling the truth ...

Not much was known about Arthur Kedby in the West End Club that he frequented. 'He doesn't look much like a secret agent,' remarked one member, but in general that was what he was believed to be. But Kedby is a blackmailer, and not even a very successful one; his great success lies in the fact that he has never been caught.Then he recognises the face of a club guest - a face he has seen before. And all at once Kedby has an opportunity to practise his skills at a level that might just furnish him with a pension ...

On New Year's Eve, solicitor Rosa Epton spends a pleasant evening talking to a man who seems to be finding the date he has brought with him less than satisfactory company. The next morning she receives a call from the police. Toby Nash has been charged with raping the woman with whom he attended the party, and has asked for Rosa.Unfortunately for Nash and Rosa, the detective inspector in charge of the case is determined to get a conviction by any means.

In the fourth Rosa Epton mystery, Underwood's protagonist, whom Mystery Magazine declared 'one of mystery fiction's most talented attorneys', is called upon to defend the scapegrace younger brother of an acquaintance.Then the acquaintance himself is murdered, his skull crushed with a statuette of the Indian goddess Lakshmi, and Rosa must divide her time between manipulating a magistrate smitten with her charms and divining the culprit's identity.

Vernon Gray is the oldest and richest of the residents of the four flats on the sixth floor of a block in his small seaside town. After seeing her on TV, he has instructed Rosa Epton to draft his last will and testament, when another of her clients demands her attention on an urgent matter: he has been accused of stealing five pounds from the collection plate at the end of the Sunday morning service.And then Vernon Gray disappears, along with his housekeeper, leaving a welter of puzzling clues to confuse the police, and the learned Rosa.

When schoolboy Jason Cutler is killed late one night in a hit-and-run, the police are puzzled by the presence of a letter in his locker, to which is attached a five-pound note. They are unable to identify its author, nor can they ascertain why the boy was out so late at night.Solicitor Rosa Epton has followed the case with interest, but when a client she has recently defended on a drugs charge turns up dead in the grounds of the school, her involvement becomes professional. It seems unlikely that the two cases are connected, but why does Jason's brother deny having seen him in the days leading up to his death? And who was the girl seated opposite Rosa on the train and behaving erratically on the day news of the accident came out?

A chance sighting in a café in Amsterdam gives solicitor Rosa Epton an unwelcome shock. At a nearby table sits an ex-client who should be behind bars, having recently been sentenced to five years in prison. So what is Eddie Ruding doing in Amsterdam a few weeks later?On her return to England, Rosa makes a few discreet enquiries, only to draw a blank. But just as she has decided to try to put the matter out of her mind, a newspaper report shocks her into action. Eddie Ruding has been found dead, his crumpled body lying at the foot of the walls of Wandsworth Prison.