Drury Lane

Retired Shakespearean actor Drury Lane solves a mystery from afar Born during intermission in a seedy New Orleans playhouse, Drury Lane has spent the better part of his life in the theater. A majestic old-fashioned ham, he made his name in London, where his record-breaking run as Hamlet defined the role for a generation. When hearing loss forces him to retire, he turns his attention to human drama-specifically crime. Using his powers of disguise, knowledge of human nature, and an occasional dash of theatrical combat, Lane is the most fantastic detective of all time-onstage or off.   In The Tragedy of X, a man is poisoned in the middle of a crowded New York streetcar, and not one of the dozens of witnesses can provide any useful evidence. The police are stumped until they receive a letter from Lane, claiming to have solved the crime by reading newspaper reports. He knows the killer's name-but now he has to catch him.

Drury Lane investigates a suspicious suicide and a family of mad Hatters A ramshackle trawler, the Lavinia D rumbles into New York harbor with empty nets. When its crew spies something floating in the water, they drag it in, hoping for a profitable catch. Their prize flops on the deck, limp, cold, and bloody: the corpse of a man. His name was York Hatter, and he had disappeared from his house on the fashionable Washington Square several days before. He hadn't left a note and he wasn't carrying any money. The police assume he killed himself-but they are very wrong.   The Hatter family is famously eccentric, and when a murder attempt is made on York's invalid stepdaughter, any one of them could be the culprit. Solving the case will fall to Drury Lane, the retired Shakespearean actor who has turned his genius to solving crimes. But he may find that these Hatters are so crazy and so deadly, they even put Hamlet to shame.

Inspector Thumm's daughter, Patience, investigates a political murder with the help of actor Drury Lane Patience Thumm has just traveled the world. She turned heads in London, sipped absinthe in Tunis, and debated philosophy on the Left Bank of Paris. When she returns home to New York with a smuggled copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover in her bag, her father, the NYPD's Inspector Thumm, is quite unprepared to handle her. At first, it seems they have nothing in common-but the two soon discover a shared appetite for murder.   When a corrupt senator is stabbed to death in his study, Patience can't resist hunting for the killer. With the help of her father's old friend Drury Lane, the legendary Shakespearean actor, she will find that all the exotic cities of the world can't offer anything as exciting as a New York homicide.

With the help of actor Drury Lane, Inspector Thumm chases a stolen manuscript and a man with a rainbow beard Inspector Thumm has never seen such a marvelous beard. It is massive and pointed, a rainbow composed of all the colors of Joseph's biblical coat. He's so distracted by the beard that he hardly notices the man it belongs to: a prospective client with mysterious business. This bearded fellow hands over an envelope containing a million-dollar secret-and the key to a matter of life and death. However, Thumm quickly forgets his strange visitor when a rare Shakespearean manuscript is stolen, only to be replaced by a rarer, more valuable one. With the help of the legendary Shakespearean actor Drury Lane, Thumm must locate the missing manuscript and solve an impossible murder-before the curtain comes down forever.