Carolus Deane Mystery

Carolus Deene is summoned to a small Kentish village where the presence of a possible coven of witches lends an eerie aura to the presumed "accidental" death of a young local boy a year ago on Hallowe'en. Before his work is completed, Carolus Deene has the answers to this and two other deaths.

Gentleman Detective Carolus Deene, the schoolmaster created by Bruce and featured in so many of his other books, has his work cut out for him this time. A respectable solicitor has vanished into thin air in the remote village of Hallows End. Deene senses foul play, and when he goes on the hunt for the missing lawyer, the wealthy client himself suffers a heart attack in what proves to be too much of a coincidence for Deene. Deene ferrets out the culprits in his own inimitable style. Julian Symons of the Sunday Times has said of this series, "Mr. Leo Bruce is one of the few criminal practitioners who keep the tattered old flag of pure detection flying high."

Walking on the sand before breakfast, Carolus Deene's cousin Fay, who was staying on the Suffolk coast, had come upon the head of Lilliane Bomberger, the celebrated and universally detested novelist. The body was buried in the sand with only the head protruding; at least one tide had washed over it. Before this frustrating case ends, three murders are committed. This is vintage Bruce, mixing thrills and chills with unique humor.

There are strange goings-on at St. Asprey's, an expensive boys' preparatory school: footsteps in passages at night . . . strange lights . . . rabbits with battered skulls. Carolus Deene has some spine-tingling experiences before he solves the mystery.

Someone very, very clever planned this murder: the place, a remote shelter on the promenade at Selby-on-Sea; the occasion, a blustery evening in late November; the victim, somebody ready-made for a crack-of-doom from a coal hammer. Diary notes indicate someone had been planning the "ideal" murder, one which no police, no detective could solve. The murderer's gratification would be wholly cerebral, a triumph of mind over matter. However, the murderer had not counted on the clever, tenacious, unpredictable mind of that unique schoolmaster, Carolus Deene.

Another Carolus Deene novel, this mystery in particular is considered one of Bruce's cleverest and best plotted.

Billed as "the ugliest case that Carolus Deene ever chose to investigate," Leo Bruce's Death of a Bovver Boy finds the redoubtable schoolmaster-turned-detective involved in yet another mystery murder-this time among teenage outcasts and skinheads in rural 1970s England. When Carolus's housekeeper, stoic Mrs. Stick, announces one evening that her husband has seen the naked body of a youth lying in "a peculiar hunched-up position" in a ditch beside the road, his hair shorn and his wrists slashed, Carolus knows that he has, at last, met the supreme challenge to test his powers of deduction. And this is just the beginning: from this point on, the detective is involved in a lively series of adventures infiltrating England's provincial underworld and gaining insight into the dead boy's unhappy background and surroundings. A rude collection of thugs and punks become involved in the search for the murderer; all are equally dangerous and each might be to blame. Only through his ingenuity and determination to persevere-despite all the forces urging him to the contrary-does Carolus finally solve the mystery. This is one of Leo Bruce's grittiest novels, giving the reader an insight into the milieu of rebellious 1970s England, a world where prejudice was the order of the day and hostility and violence were the only means of survival.

His old friend Helena Gort calls on Carolus Deene to come to Cat's Cradle, a seaside guest house and find out about two deaths judged respectively "natural causes" and "suicide." There is no doubt in Helena's mind that something sinister has happened and something very unpleasant is brewing. She is right.

Carolus Deene is enjoying himself on a holiday cruise. On the first night aboard the Summer Queen, he hears a shout of "Man Overboard!" From that point on to the moment of Deene's unexpected revelations, the reader will find that unique mixture of artless fun and grim terror Leo Bruce devotees savor.

"Five men occupied their usual places in a first-class carriage, but the sixth place was empty..." It is most unusual for the sixth man, Mr. Parador, to be late. The five commuters are wondering what happened to him, when a strange-looking man enters the compartment, dressed in black and wearing dark glasses. When he is told that the sixth seat is taken, he replies, in a deep sepulchral voice, "He won't be coming." He was right. Parador does not come, and his companions never see him alive again. And if Carolus Deena had not taken an interest in the case, the coroner's verdict of suicide would not have been questioned.

The dead bodies of two elderly ladies are discovered; both had been strangled. Each is found lying full-length, clasping in her hand the stem of a Madonna lily.

In a gloomy London suburb, a modern Jack the Ripper stalks at night, killing at random with brutal knife thrusts from behind. Three women fall victim, and the terrorized residents wait to see who will be next.

Everyone knew there'd been a murder, everyone knew who the murderer was, and when this murderer committed suicide by jumping overboard from the cargo boat Saragossa, they thought "Good riddance." Everyone, that is, except Carolus Deene.

Carolus Deene becomes involved in his latest adventure when a famous restaurateur is threatened by a protection racketeer and a well-known writer of cookbooks is murdered under extraordinary circumstances.

Richard Hoysden's body is discovered in his country flat, a revolver beside him, and a bullet through the head, apparently a suicide. Missing from the room is a tape of Hoysden's last moments on which he confesses ti the murder of a young woman. Lady Drombone, a member of Parliament and the dead man's aunt, hires Carolus Deene to help suppress the evidence. He must reconstruct the confusing circumstances in order to solve this baffling crime.