Murder at the Manse (The Falconer Files - File 5)

A village detective series with a delightful slice of humor.

Shepford Stacey is an unassuming little village, its greatest asset being its small but excellent Church of England Primary School. This delightfully old-fashioned establishment of only two classes, one of infants, the other of juniors, has been run by the same pair of ladies for decades.

It is in the year that the headmistress, Audrey Finch-Matthews, is to retire, that the smooth running of this long-established educational establishment is interrupted by murder.

When Detective Inspector Harry Falconer and Detective Sergeant Davey Carmichael of the Market Darley Police arrive to investigate, they discover a host of motives, both past and present, and grudges that reach right back through the years.

As the Easter weekend grinds inexorably on its way, Death stalks the village again, and it suddenly becomes imperative that the murderer is caught before there are more fatalities.

Falconer soon realises that this is not the work of an opportunistic psychopath passing through, but of someone within the small community itself, taking lives at will, and there is no indication that the slaughter will stop here.

This is the fourth book in the series 'The Falconer Files', the other three being 'Death of an Old Git', 'Choked Off; and 'Inkier than the Sword'.

A village detective series with a delightful slice of humor.

In the village of Steynham St Michael, the old Strict and Particular Chapel is, at last, undergoing renovation, to the delight of the local inhabitants, who believe it will prove useful as a tourist attraction for the village.

The renovations, however, have been dogged by the sightings of mysterious hooded figures, and tributes of flowers, left here and there on the site.

The newly painted interior is then found defaced by a mysterious message in red paint, and this last prompts a call to the police.

DI Falconer and DS Carmichael of the Market Darley CID make an initial visit, and believe that the unexplained events at the Chapel may be the work of a small cult, believed to originate from the college in Market Darley.

When a new DC, on secondment, arrives, Falconer immediately sends him undercover as a student, spending his own time trying to lay his hands on a local drug dealer.

Then, a body is found on the stone altar table in the Chapel, and events begin to spiral out of control.

This is the the seventh book in the popular Falconer File series.

A village detective series with a delightful slice of humor.

The last three Musical Directors of 'The Dalziels' had left them high and dry, by moving to France. Their next one was to make the'ultimate move', by getting himself murdered!

The village band in Swinbury Abbot has jogged along quite happily for nigh on a decade, at the moment temporarily without a Musical Director.

Band practices are free and easy affairs, the actual playing not commencing until after a rather lavish meal with wine, to be followed by more wine, and then maybe running through a piece or two, just for form's sake.

Until, one evening, the vicar turns up with a new resident of Swinbury Abbot, whom he thinks is perfectly qualified and experienced enough to take charge of the preparations for a charity concert, in a couple of months' time, to mark the band's 10th anniversary, all monies being split between the Church Restoration Fund and a local charity.

However, the newcomer's ideas of what a band practice consists of are completely at odds with the current mode of practice, and he sets out to rectify this. His clashes with the various band members cause enormous resentment and dislike, and, in one of them, a hatred strong enough to provoke murder!

Into this welter of negative emotions, Detective Inspector Falconer and Detective Sergeant Carmichael of the Market Darley CID arrive, determined to get to the bottom of things and bring the killer to justice, whilst dealing with their own domestic and personal problems.

But the mayhem doesn't stop there, and is to pose them many a problem, and yet another corpse, before they are able to close the case.

The villagers of Stoney Cross were bustling about like hyperactive ants. In gardens, houses, and the village hall, figures flitted to and fro making last- minute preparations for their 'Great Event'. After four months of furious debate and power-struggling organisation, the first Stoney Cross Arts Festival was to commence on Saturday 5th September and last for two whole days.

Posters were everywhere, promoting this rare rural treat, but a last-minute suggestion to enlist the aid of a local radio broadcaster to advertise, then review their efforts, added an extra frisson of excitement.

The delight of some of those involved, however, soon turned to dismay when the broadcaster, Marcus Willoughby, actually moved into a house in Stoney Cross the day before the Festival, turning out to be someone from their past: someone whom they had hoped never to clap eyes on again, and who had greeted them with recogntion in his eyes.

To those he had never met before, he proved to be a smarmy, spiteful bigot who proceeded to take great delight in verbally shredding their artistic efforts.

When he was found dead at his desk, only a week after moving into his new home, his demise actually having been broadcast during his pre-recorded programme on Radio Carsfold, there were no crocodile tears shed. He had finally been 'choked off' in mid-flow.

His arrival in the village had obviously caused a few guilty hearts to beat faster, and precipitated a few hasty confessions of dark deeds thought buried in the past.

Into this welter of emotions was dispatched DI Harry Falconer, his trusty (?) acting detective sergeant, 'Davey' Carmichael, riding shotgun, as they entered 'bandit' country once more.

In the quiet village of Steynham St Michael there is an anonymous letter-writer at large, jabbing and stabbing at the past's Achilles' heels of many of the upright citizens living there.

After one resident is driven to extreme measures to escape exposure, another is driven to murder.

In the village cards club that meets once a week, tongues begin to wag, not only about the identities of the murderer and the anonymous letter writer, but also about who exactly has received a letter.

There are also changes afoot at Market Darley Police Headquarters, as the national economy dictates that it accepts the straitened circumstsncres planned for it, and complies with recommendations for change.

And before any of this even happens, DI Harry Falconer drifts up from unconsciousness to find himself in complete darkness and barely able to move, while the only thing he can hear is that of someone moaning in pain.

A village detective series with a delightful slice of humor.

It is winter 2010, and the UK is experiencing it's worst winter for years.

This is catastrophic for DI Harry Falconer as he has rashly promised to spend Christmas with DS Davey Carmichael and family only to find that the weather closes in and he has to become a reluctant house guest, as they find that they are snowed-in.

Without power or telephones and cut off from the outside world until further notice, Christmas Day greets them with a murder in St Cuthberts, where the locum vicar has discovered, to his horror, one of Castle Farthing's residents nailed to a gigantic cross.

Falconer and Carmichael are left to dig their way out of Carmichael's cottage to investigate with none of the technology and support normally available to them.

As if this is not enough to cope with, Carmichael has agreed to look after a huge Great Dane over the festivities, Kerry Carmichael is just about to give birth, and even death has not finished with them, still stalking the snowed-in community, intent on claiming at least one more victim!

A village detective series with a delightful slice of humor.

In the village of Castle Farthing a mean-spirited, spiteful, curmudgeonly old man is found drugged and strangled in the kitchen of his cottage, with no obvious clues to the perpetrator of the crime.

DI Falconer and Acting DS Carmichael are summoned from the police headquarters in the nearby town of Market Darley and begin to uncover a web of grudges against the old man and a sea of familial connections between those who knew him.

As the heat of July continues relentlessly, tempers flare, disturbing the usual rural calm of the village, and the normally imperterbable Harry Falconer. Faced with a crime with no obvious prime suspect and the idiosyncraces of his new parter,Carmichael, he feels that he is gradually losing his grip on the case as the body count rises.

Undecided whether he has one or two murderers to bring to justice, only a moment of serendipity will show him how events actually unfolded, and allow him to close his File on Castle Farthing, still smarting from the hideous twist with which events finally come to a head.

The residents of Shepford St Bernard are preparing for a party in the church hall in response to a request to boost congregation numbers, only their new vicar is a woman, and a young one, to boot, and this is not to everyone's liking.

The morning after the party, the brooding resentment felt in the small community is made flesh, when an elderly woman is found dead outside her house, the contents of her safe having disappeared along with her attacker.

When Detective Inspector Harry Falconer, Detective Sergeant Carmichael and Detective Constable Roberts, the latter recently returned from sick leave, arrive on the scene, they learn that the safe had held a large quantity of very valuable pieces of jewellery.

As the investigation progresses, with efforts to find out who was in dire financial straits, or who might think they would benefit from the will, the violence escalates.

An attack on the police and a further murder follow, making it urgent that the offender is quickly apprehended, but a risky hostage-taking makes it look as if the detectives are too late to halt the violence and apprehend the murderer.

A Lady Amanda Golightly Murder Mystery

From the author of The Falconer Files - a new series featuring an outrageously ill-assorted pair of amateur sleuths. An outpouring of English upper class eccentricities with the odd murder thrown in.

Lady Amanda Golightly of Belchester Towers was not a horsey sort of country-woman. Neither was she tall, slender, or young.

She was in complete contrast to the stereotypical idea of one of her breeding, being short, portly, and embarrassingly forthright. If she didn't call a spade a shovel, it was only because she was calling it 'trumps'!

On a visit to a local nursing home, where she has heard that an old business partner of her father's is residing, she discovers, not just a long-lost friend, Hugo Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump, but stumbles upon murder, as well.

After tunnelling her way through the necessary paperwork to 'spring' Hugo, she installs him in the more civilised surroundings of Belchester Towers, where he can lead a more dignified and comfortable life.

Between doctor's and hospital appointments, the pair turn to sleuthing, after Lady Amanda reports her appalling discovery to the local police inspector, and is incensed when he treats her as a silly old biddy with an over-active imagination.

Her outrage prompts her to teach this impertinent young whipper-snapper a lesson, and she and Hugo (Zimmer frame in tow) embark upon their first investigation, only for murder to become a distressingly frequent occurrence, and the person they are pursuing, eventually threatens their own lives!

Andrea Frazer is currently working on the seventh Faloner File, and the second Belchester Chronicle.

Who would believe choral singing could be such a deadly past-time!

Richard and Virginia Grainger, new members of the Standchester Choral Society, are looking forward to their first public performance with the choir in a production of Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet.

As the performance opens, however, tragedy strikes in the form of a very public death!

Whilst coping with the repercussions of this, Virginia also has to tussle with the personal problems of her next-door neighbour, Caroline.

As plans to re-schedule the concert are being made, another death occurs, and a tenuous but suspicious link between the deaths and her neighbour's husband surfaces.

Virginia begins to realise that her own life may be in danger, and starts to feel the tangled web of deceit and malice tighten around her.