Calleshire Chronicles

There's been a murder at the Manor! At this stately home, now open for public tours, visitors revel in the lush atmosphere created by its three hundred rooms, its exceptional display of fine china, its chilling dungeon with historic suits of armor on display, evoking the spirits of knights from a forgotten age. Young Michael's sister, a visitor to the mansion with their mum, presses her for an explanation of "what's a chastity belt?" while Michael fools around with one of the suits of armor. He lifts the visor and stares inside, only to find a face staring back at him! A dead human body has been stashed inside the armor after having been done in by a savage blow to the back of the head. Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan and his wisecracking sidekick Crosby are called in to figure out whodunit and why. Mystery fans will relish this delightful entry in Catherine Aird's highly esteemed classic series starring Sloan, of the Berebury Criminal Investigations Dept. in Calleshire, England, and his amiable but not very able assistant, Crosby. The two are introduced in The Religious Body, the first of 18 C. D. Sloan mysteries. Aird's work is among the very best of the British police procedural genre, particularly noteworthy for the delightful sense of humor woven throughout. The Stately Home Murder was originally published as The Complete Steel.

Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan puzzles over an industrialist crushed under the rubble of a church tower in this crime novel by a CWA Diamond Dagger winner. On the hottest day in living memory, Richard Mallory Tindall, the owner of a patent firm, does not return home to Cleete village. When a man is found crushed to death, Tindall's case goes from missing person to homicide. In the course of solving murder cases, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan has seen all manner of ugly death. But there's something particularly gruesome about this one, the body crushed beneath the marble and iron of an old Saxon church tower. With rubble blocking off access to the crime scene, no one can get close enough to inspect the body. What little evidence is available-a burned match, a black thread, an earring-doesn't bode well for a quick and easy solution. Even the legendarily cool-headed great detective might begin to crack when a second body turns up. And then an important file goes missing from Sloan's office. How does it all connect?

In this classic parlor mystery from CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan investigates a dinner party that ended in murder. Twelve friends sit down for supper at Strontfield Park, but only eleven survive the evening. After dinner, the host, William Fent, offers to drive one of his guests home, only to die behind the wheel in a violent accident. The autopsy shows that Fent ingested enough barbiturates to kill a horse. So begins a fresh tale of murder and deceit for Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, whose list of suspects begins and ends with the surviving dinner guests. Among them are a theologian at the local university; Dr. and Mrs. Washby, whose wedding was the cause for celebration; Ursula Renville, tall, graceful, and utterly aloof; the fat and extravagant Mr. and Mrs. Marchmont; the spinster Miss Paterson; the rector's daughter, Cynthia Paterson; Quentin Fent, heir to the Fent fortune; and Mr. Fent's wife, the now-widowed Helen. Each of the guests had the opportunity to kill William Fent. But which one wanted him dead?

A deadly mystery by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird: where there's a will, there's a way-for murder. That Miss Beatrice Wansdyke had died is not particularly surprising. A chemistry mistress at the Girls' Grammar School in Berebury, she was a longtime sufferer of diabetes who managed to live her modest life to a ripe old age. But one thing is odd-Beatrice Wansdyke died a very wealthy woman. What was an old schoolteacher doing with a small fortune? Meanwhile, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, Calleshire's finest investigator, learns he is about to become a father. But with ominous players hell-bent on pursuing Miss Wansdyke's money, will Sloan live to see his child's first birthday?

In this C. D. Sloan Mystery by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird, a body is found in the river-but the victim didn't drown. When local fisherman Horace Boller decided to row his boat out on the tidal backwash of the river one morning, he couldn't have meant to land a catch like this. What he ended up with was a body floating on the river's surface. And judging by the state of the corpse, the death was not a recent one. The strange thing is, the coroner report indicates that drowning was not the cause of death. It's up to the intrepid C. D. Sloan-and his markedly less intrepid assistant, Constable Crosby-to investigate. Along the way, Calleshire's most successful pair of puzzle-solving policemen will contend with a handful of additional strange deaths, befuddling municipal building codes, an antiquarian with interesting views on local history, and a fisherman who has his own motivation for helping (or perhaps hindering) the investigation. Can C. D. Sloan get to the bottom of this waterlogged killing?

When the Berebury Footpaths Society created their locally infamous motto, "Every walk a challenge," they couldn't have known just how apt it would be. Avid hikers Wendy Lamport and Gordon Briggs suffer from a good walk spoiled when, while reclaiming a public footpath from the greedy barbed-wire fences of encroaching farmers, a crow drops a severed human finger at their feet. And where there's a finger, thinks Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, a body can't be far behind. It would seem that there are a handful of bodies to whom the finger might belong. A suspiciously long list of people have gone missing from Great Rooden's farming country: the tippling son of a local pillar of society, a financier who may have angered the wrong man, and even an old tramp or two who may have thieved one apple too many. Can the old tag team of DI Sloan and Constable Crosby solve the case?

A crime of passion, a jealous admirer, a woman who would kill before she would be spurned-it might all fit if only the primary suspect would talk in CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird's A Dead Liberty. Lucy Durmast waits patiently in front of the judge at her own murder trial, refusing to utter a single word. Kenneth Carline, an employee of her father's, was found poisoned to death after eating a meal that Lucy herself had prepared. Kenneth was set to marry another, and Lucy, it seems, was jealous. But what should have been an open-and-shut case of envy-driven murder becomes complicated when primary detective Trevor Porritt suffers permanent brain damage. C. D. Sloan inherits the file-and immediately begins poking holes in what looked like an airtight case. Why has the primary suspect gone mute? What was the victim doing with antinuclear pamphlets in his car? Was Detective Porritt's run-in with the burglar an unhappy coincidence? And what part does the king of the African nation of Dlasa, a client of Lucy's father, play in all this? When someone connected to the case dies and the son of the king of Dlasa goes missing, panic begins to spread. Can Inspector Sloan and his hapless assistant, Constable Crosby, untangle this knotted web?

From CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird: Caught between an angry government and his employer's profits, an engineer conveniently dies … Can Calleshire's greatest detective bring the guilty to justice? What's the value of one British engineer when stacked against the exclusive mining rights to a rare, strategically important, and extremely valuable mineral? The British-based Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company finds itself in hot water when one of its engineers, Alan Ottershaw, hits and kills a pedestrian while driving in a foreign country-a nation that happens to be "on the sunny side of the Iron Curtain," with thick veins of the strategically important mineral querremitte. This particular country has draconian laws about killings, so Ottershaw is relieved when he's whisked back to Calleshire before the foreign police can throw him in jail. But now that the Lassertan government is threatening to strip the mining company of its most valuable contract, poor Mr. Ottershaw begins to worry about his safety-and when he dies suddenly in a war reenactment, it looks like a very convenient solution to everyone's problem. A little too convenient, if you ask Calleshire detective C. D. Sloan, who, along with his bumbling sidekick, Constable Crosby, must investigate the death. It seems that nearly everyone in town would prefer to forget that the Lassertan debacle ever happened-but why has a man been following around the Calleshire MP dressed as the Grim Reaper? Who has been sending death threats and live scorpions via post? Detective Sloan is on the case. DEDICATIONNOTECHAPTER 01CHAPTER 02CHAPTER 03CHAPTER 04CHAPTER 05CHAPTER 06CHAPTER 07CHAPTER 08CHAPTER 09CHAPTER 10CHAPTER 11CHAPTER 12CHAPTER 13CHAPTER 14CHAPTER 15CHAPTER 16CHAPTER 17CHAPTER 18CHAPTER 19

It was an odd request, but when Octavia Garamond passed away, she left explicit instructions in her will: The police must be present at her funeral, and the coroner should be exceptionally thorough when examining her body. Amelia Kennerley is perplexed to find herself the sole executor of her great-aunt's will, as she barely knew her. Further questions arise when the local parson, Mr. Fournier, is anything but happy to conduct Octavia's service. Then someone breaks into Octavia's home and tears the house apart.

Sixteen short puzzlers from the inimitable Catherine Aird, author of the acclaimed C. D. Sloan Mysteries A professional pickpocket and accomplished thief ignores his wife's warnings and embarks on an adventure that will change his life-perhaps for the better. A technological marvel of a sports car kills a pedestrian, but no one was at the wheel. A local lunatic admits to murder, but is he crazy-or crazy smart? The life of a researcher with ties to a British spy agency is thrown into chaos when his research goes missing, but the only people who could have stolen the valuable data seem to have airtight alibis. Injury Time delivers captivating tales of intrigue wrapped in Catherine Aird's tightly woven logic, sealed with the bow of enigma. These quick-fire mysteries run the gamut, with fresh twists on old classics and delightfully unique stories involving old friends from the C. D. Sloan Mysteries.

In this mystery, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan investigates a case of medical malpractice that looks a bit too much like foul play. Muriel Ethel Galloway passed away at home, twitching and grasping at objects only she could see. Her family mourns, sad but unsurprised that an old woman suffering from heart disease should die suddenly. But when Mrs. Galloway's son receives an anonymous call alerting him that his mother's life was put in jeopardy by her doctors, he demands action from the Calles hire police. As world-weary detective C. D. Sloan learns, Mrs. Galloway's passing was just one in a string of eerily similar deaths. Dozens of elderly patients suffering from heart disease have been "gently pushed" toward taking part in the Cardigan Protocol, a double-blind drug trial from the powerful pharmaceutical company Gilroy's. Something, it seems, is very wrong. But what might have been a simple malpractice case morphs into something much more complex when the doctor in charge of the trials goes missing and the headquarters of Gilroy's is burgled by animal-rights activists. As Detective Sloan well knows, murder is never a simple matter.

In Catherine Aird's Stiff News, a letter received by an old woman's son after her death alerts Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan that one woman's death by natural causes in a local nursing home may actually be murder. But that is just the beginning of the odd goings-on in this nursing home catering to former members of a WWII regiment.

Colonel Caversham, once prominent in the British colonial service, has died and left his large collection of artifacts to the local Calleshire museum. Included in those artifacts is a three-thousand-year-old Egyptain mummy and case, now the responsibility of one Mr. Fixby-Smith, curator of the Greatorex Museum. What should be a simple moving job, however, is complicated by the fact that the local coroner, Mr. Granville Locombe-Stableford, will allow no body-no matter how ancient-to be moved without his consent. Which is how Detective Chief Inspector C. D. Sloan is dragged away from his more pressing concern with the burgeoning local drug problem and sent to the museum to sort out egos and red tape. When the lid of the mummy case is raised, however, what greets the coroner, curator, and inspector is not what they expect. Instead of the remains of the ancient Rodoheptah, they find the body of an unidentified young woman who has been dead only a matter of days ...

For decades, Catherine Aird's crime novels featuring C. D. Sloan have been beloved by fans and lauded by critics for their adroit plotting, playful wit, and literate charm. With Amendment of Life, Aird delivers the lively and engrossing novel that readers have come to rely upon. Detective Chief Inspector C. D. Sloan of the Calleshire CID is used to the occasional oddity in his relatively quiet part of the English countryside. But lately things have taken a strange turn. First, in the center of a yew maze, a body is spotted by Miss Daphne Pedlinge, the elderly chatelaine of Aumerle Court. By the time the groundskeeper actually makes it to the center, he too spies the body, and it is indeed dead. Meanwhile, a few miles away, a slaughtered rabbit is left on the Bishop's doorstep in nearby Calleford, an omen as portentous as the body in the maze. Now Inspector Sloan, with the somewhat trying personage of Constable Crosby in tow, must uncover what precisely is going on as they launch an investigation with more twists and turns than the maze itself.

Berebury golf course in the county of Calleshire is an unlikely place for a murder. Set in pleasant landscape and boasting a splendid view of the town of Berebury, the golf course is more situated to fun and games than murder and mayhem. So when flirtatious golfing beginner Helen Ewell goes in search of a wayward golf ball in the dreaded "Hell's Bells" bunker she is not prepared for the horrible surprise that lies buried beneath the soft sand.

Detectives Sloan and Crosby find themselves assigned two rather puzzling cases. First, there's the young woman's body which has been discovered in the River Alm. And then there's the mysterious break-in at the Berebury Nursing Home. To be precise, it's Josephine Short's room at the nursing home that's been entered, although nothing seems to be missing. What could the intruder have been after? It becomes apparent to Sloan and Crosby that the two cases are connected-but who can the killer be?

Four strangers arrive at the solicitors' office of Puckle, Puckle, and Nunnery. They have never met and have no idea why they have been invited. But they-along with a missing man-are descendants of the late Algernon George Culver Mayton, the inventor of "Mayton's Marvellous Mixture" and each entitled to a portion of the Mayton Fortune. But before they can split the money, the missing man must be found. They begin their search, but then Detective Sloan receives a call that one of the legatees had died following an attack of food poisoning. Now detectives Sloan and Crosby must determine whether the deceased merely ingested a noxious substance by accident or if the legatees are being picked off one-by-one. And when matters of money and family rivalry are involved, there is almost certainly foul play afoot.