This author delves into the intricate world of crime fiction, exploring complex character motivations and suspenseful plots. Her works are characterized by a keen observation of human nature and a meticulous construction of atmosphere, drawing readers into a compelling landscape of crime and mystery. Through her narratives, she often probes questions of justice and morality, lending depth and timeless relevance to her storytelling.
A young family friend requests Alex Quick's help to discover which of his friends stole a pair of valuable items following a dinner party he'd held at his uncle's grand Venetian apartment. But when one of the dinner party guests is murdered, the case spirals into something darker and deeper.
The sixth mystery featuring Cassie Swann. When Cassie becomes the victim of a hit-and-run driver, she doesn't expect him to walk later into a police station and confess. Then a young student at Oxford is murdered. Cassie's relentless suitor, Charlie Quartermaine, feels the events are somehow connected.
Alex Quick is exposed to the most brutally violent crime she's seen. A mutilated corpse is found castrated, the word 'cheat' carved into his chest. The victim was a close family friend, and his sister has asked Alex to find out who killed him. But people are reluctant to talk, keeping things back from her. Is she prepared for the shocking truth?
When one of Cassie Swann's bridge partners, Naomi Harris, dies from an overdose, she is shocked but not suspicious. But things look rather different with the appearance of a young woman claiming to be Naomi's daughter, given up for adoption twenty years earlier, and a secret lover who insists that Naomi was murdered by her husband. Guiltily aware that she was not a good friend to Naomi while she was alive, Cassie decides to try to find the truth - and soon discovers that while Naomi had little reason to kill herself, there are several reasons why someone might have wanted her dead. Complications in her own life don't make things any easier. Torn between DS Paul Walsh and the persistent attentions of Charlie Quartermain, she suddenly finds a menacing figure is stalking her. As she closes in on the mystery of Naomi's troubled life, she is about to discover some very dangerous secrets.
Spotlights focused on the Abbey buildings. The air held a piece of silver moon. An oboe blew a soft pure note. Clear young voices broke into a madrigal... ...listening, in mellow mood, Max Maunciple drank just one gin too many. And died. An egotist, a blackmailer, no-one mourned for Maunciple. But one person did not believe that alcohol was the only poison that poisonous man had imbibed. And when Penny Wanawake seeks the Truth, the Truth, however elusive, gets dragged kick- ing and screaming into the open. Penny Dreadful is the second in the series of Penny Wanawake Mysteries
Meet PENNY WANAWAKE, philanthropist, free-thinker, part-time sleuth. Very tall, very classy, very black, a beautiful tigress in tigress's clothing. And her lover and friend, BARNABY, cool, witty, high-class thief, dedicated low-life. Stand by as Penny meets KIMBELL, black American detective, and blows his mind. Thrill as between them they track down the brutal killer of Penny's wacky friend MARFA, and exact poetic justice among banks of orchids ...
Lower lngleford seems a typical rural hamlet in the sunlit uplands of northern England, complete with Village Institute, village green, and lord of the manor. But something is seriously amiss: milking equipment explodes; brakes are tampered with; bullets fly - someone is trying to kill the squire. Or so it seems. And the motives are tangled in a morass of shady property deals, art forgeries, and various dubious business practices. When Kendal Sartain, local landowner and apparent target, calls on Penny Wanawake for help, he gets it. And rather more than he'd bargained for. Six feet, 1261bs, Bovril-black, rich, beautiful and totally uninhibited - when Penny seeks a solution, there is nowhere for a solution, however timid and retiring, to hide.
The news hit the papers ... Dr Bruno Fenlinghetti, esteemed Italian archaeologist and director of Rome's Instituto Ferlinghetti, had disappeared from his home near Naples. A pair of priceless statuettes had also vanished. You didn't have to be Perry Mason to realise that the doctor and the statuettes were thought to be travelling together. Dear forgetful Bruno - disorganised, thoughtless, but never, Penny knew, never dishonest. Bruno, was incorruptible; he didn't mess with drink or drugs or boys, and if he developed a vice he had the Ferlinghetti fortune to indulge it. The exquisitely tuned reasoning of Penny Wanawake sensed it had to be kidnapping or worse. Six feet of slender, sophisticated, immoral, uninhibited sleuth took the first flight to Rome...
Times are looking lean for Cassie Swann. With the bridge supplies business in a slump and no new sources of income on the horizon, she's shocked to find herself cadging drinks off OAPs. But her own problems are forgotten when one of her bridge group, Lolly Haden White, starts seeming very distressed. Are her lapses of memory and dark moods simply a consequence of growing old, or is there something more sinister behind her sudden decline? Realizing that she knows next to nothing about Lolly's history, Cassie decides to do a little investigating, only to find that Lolly has done a remarkable job of covering up the details of her early life - in particular the time she spent in Africa as a young woman. Cassie begins to suspect that some long-suppressed secret from those days has come back to haunt Lolly - and when a brutal murder shocks the village, Cassie is convinced that the evil Lolly long ago battled against has to be confronted again.
Bridge professional Cassie Swann decides to investigate the twenty-year-old murder of her father, 'Handsome' Harry Swann. At the same time, Cassie finds herself embroiled in a case of racially motivated poison-pen letters which someone in the Cotswold village of Larton Easewood is sending to an Indian consultant, Dr Sammi Ray, and his wife. Further complications ensue when Dr Ray is found garotted outside the block of Kensington flats where his mistress resides. Menaced by phone-calls from a psychopath, experiencing problems in her love life, fighting the battle of the bulge and frightened by a midnight prowler, Cassie nonetheless wins through - to discover not only who killed her father, but who is behind the tragedy of Dr Ray.