Mystery, fast-paced Books

Brings back several characters from an earlier novel, *The Secret of Chimneys*, in a story that can best be described as a John Buchan thriller told by P.G. Wodehouse. (https://agathachristie.fandom.com/wiki/The_Seven_Dials_Mystery) Consummate young silly ass Gerry Wade is the despair of hosts and hostesses across the land, with his inability to make it to breakfast before the eggs are congealed, the toast has wilted and the coffee has grown chill and distinctly unwelcoming. And so, a small group of sundry other young silly-asses and interchangeable girls decide that a good, stiff dose of eight fine alarum clocks would be just the thing to spring him, yelling, from his bed in the early hours. This plan, however, fails signally to work, for the very good reason that Gerry is far too dead to be roused by anything quieter than the Last Trump. This discovery both puts a dampener on the house party and raises some questions. Why would a notoriously heavy sleeper die of an overdose of a sleeping draught? And why are there only seven of the eight clocks found in the bedroom, neatly and sinisterly arranged on the mantelpiece as though to convey some message? Lady Eileen ‘Bundle’ Brent and friends are shortly to find out… (https://alackofconsensus.wordpress.com/2018/03/07/review-the-seven-dials-mystery-by-agatha-christie/)

Newly-orphaned Anne Beddingfeld is a nice English girl looking for a bit of adventure in London. But she stumbles upon more than she bargained for! Anne is on the platform at Hyde Park Corner tube station when a man falls onto the live track, dying instantly. A doctor examines the man, pronounces him dead, and leaves, dropping a note on his way. Anne picks up the note, which reads "17.1 22 Kilmorden Castle". The next day the newspapers report that a beautiful ballet dancer has been found dead there-- brutally strangled. A fabulous fortune in diamonds has vanished. And now, aboard the luxury liner Kilmorden Castle, mysterious strangers pillage her cabin and try to strangle her. What are they looking for? Why should they want her dead? Lovely Anne is the last person on earth suited to solve this mystery... and the only one who can! Anne's journey to unravel the mystery takes her as far afield as Africa and the tension mounts with every step... and Anne finds herself struggling to unmask a faceless killer known only as 'The Colonel'....

Nancy Harmon had fled the evil of her first marriage, the macabre deaths of her two little children, the hideous charges against her. She changed her name and moved across the country. Now she was married again, had two more lovely children, and her life was filled with happiness.... until the morning when she looked for her children and found only one tattered red mitten and knew that the nightmare was beginning again...

The Mysterious Benedict Society is up against a new mission, significantly closer to home. After reuniting for a celebratory scavenger hunt, Reynie, Kate, Sticky, and Constance are forced to go on an unexpected search--a search to find Mr. Benedict. It seems that while he was preparing the kids' adventure, he stepped right into a trap orchestrated by the evil Mr. Curtain. With only one week to find Mr. Benedict, the gifted foursome faces their greatest challenge of all--a challenge that will reinforce the reasons they were brought together in the first place and will require them to fight for the very namesake that united them.

Nancy believes her friend's guardians are trying to steal her inheritance. As she investigates, she has a perilous experience near the deserted bungalow.

Tommy Beresford and Prudence 'Tuppence' Cowley are young, in love… and flat broke. Just after Great War, there are few jobs available and the couple are desperately short of money. Restless for excitement, they decide to embark on a daring business scheme: Young Adventurers Ltd.—"willing to do anything, go anywhere." Hiring themselves out proves to be a smart move for the couple. In their first assignment for the mysterious Mr. Whittingtont, all Tuppence has to do in their first job is take an all-expense paid trip to Paris and pose as an American named Jane Finn. But with the assignment comes a bribe to keep quiet, a threat to her life, and the disappearance of her new employer. Now their newest job are playing detective. Where is the real Jane Finn? The mere mention of her name produces a very strange reaction all over London. So strange, in fact, that they decided to find this mysterious missing lady. She has been missing for five years. And neither her body nor the secret documents she was carrying have ever been found. Now post-war England's economic recovery depends on finding her and getting the papers back. But he two young working undercover for the British ministry know only that her name and the only photo of her is in the hands of her rich American cousin. It isn’t long before they find themselves plunged into more danger than they ever could have imagined—a danger that could put an abrupt end to their business… and their lives.

A bit of adventure and quick cash is all that good-natured drifter Anthony Cade is looking for when he accepts a messenger job from an old friend. It sounds so simple: deliver the provocative memoirs of a recently deceased European count to a London publisher. Little did Anthony suspect that a simple errand to deliver the manuscript on behalf of his friend would drop him right in the middle of an international conspiracy, and he begins to realize that it has placed him in serious danger. Why were Count Stylptich's memoirs so important? And what was "King Victor" really after? The parcel holds ore than scandalous royal secrets - because it contains a stash of letters that suggest blackmail. Someone would stop at nothing to prevent the monarchy being restored in faraway Herzoslovakia. Wherever ravishing Virginia Revel went, death seemed sure to follow. First her husband died. The next to perish was a foreign prince whose ruthless power was matched by his scandalous passions. Then a bungling blackmailer followed them into the grave. Murder, blackmail, stolen letters, and a fabulous missing jewel: all under the not always co-operative eyes of Scotland Yard and the Surete. All threads lead to Chimneys, one of England's historic country house estates, where a master murderer mingled with the aristocratic guests. Virginia could turn to only one person to prove her innocence and end her nightmare, and she could only pray that she had not put her life into the hands of the man who was out to take it.... This novel was published in 1925 by Bodley Head in London, and by Dodd, Mead & Co. in New York. The Times Literary Supplement described it as "a thick fog of mystery, cross purposes, and romance, which leads up to a most unexpected and highly satisfactory ending".Chimneys was adapted by Christie as a stage play but was not performed until 2003, in Canada. It was filmed with the addition of Julia McKenzie as Miss Marple by ITV in 2009.

A collection of short stories featuring the ‘heart specialist’, Parker Pyne. Mrs Packington felt alone, helpless and utterly forlorn. But her life changed when she stumbled upon an advertisement in The Times which read: ‘ARE YOU HAPPY? IF NOT, CONSULT MR PARKER PYNE’. Equally adept at putting together the pieces of a marriage or the fragments of a murder mystery, Mr Parker Pyne was possibly the world’s most unconventional private eye – and certainly its most charming.

From a cover blurb: As any herpetologist will tell you, the fer-de-lance is among the most dreaded snakes known to man. When someone makes a present of one to Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin knows he's getting dreadully close to solving the devilishly clever murders of an immigrant and a college president. As for Wolfe, he's playing snake charmer in a case with more twists than an anaconda -- whistling a seductive tune he hopes will catch a killer who's still got poison in his heart. This is the very first Nero Wolfe novel that Rex Stout published. You can see the hallmarks of Wolfe's world already, Archie Goodwin, beer, food and clever villains.

Normally, a mere outbreak of petty thefts in a youth hostel wouldn't be enough to interest the great detective Hercule Poirot. However, the warden of the hostel is sister to Poirot's secretary Miss Lemon, and concern for her sister is interfering with Miss Lemon's typing abilities. Poirot finds himself with an intriguing puzzle on his hands, and before long, murder increases the mystery.

The first of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, in which the suave and witty gentleman foregoes a rare-book auction to investigate the presence of a bespectacled nude body in an architect's bathtub near the Wimsey's Denver estate

Told in two voices, Jules, whose father is restoring an abandoned house, and a girl who lived there a century before begin to communicate and slowly, the girl's tragic story is revealed.--

in published order, the first 10 Christie mystery books featuring Poirot are: 1) The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 2) The Murder on the Links, 3) Poirot Investigates, 4) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, 5) The Big Four, 6) The Mystery of the Blue Train, 7) Black Coffee: A Mystery Play in Three Acts [Charles Osborne novelized the play in 1998 under the title, Black Coffee], 8) Peril at End House, 9) Lord Edgware Dies, and 10) Murder on the Orient Express. Each has its own entry on Goodreads.

E-book exclusive extras: Christie biographer Charles Osborne's essay on Murder in Mesopotamia; "The Poirots": the complete guide to all the cases of the great Belgian detective. Nurse Amy Leatheran had never felt the lure of the ‘mysterious East,’ but she nonetheless accepts an assignment at Hassanieh, an ancient site deep in the Iraqi desert, to care for the wife of a celebrated archaeologist. Mrs Leidner is suffering bizarre visions and nervous terror. ‘I’m afraid of being killed!’ she admits to her nurse. Her terror, unfortunately, is anything but unfounded, and Nurse Leatheran is soon enough without a patient. The world’s greatest detective happens to be in the vicinity, however: having concluded an assignment in Syria, and curious about the dig at Hassanieh, Hercule Poirot arrives in time to lead a murder investigation that will tax even his remarkable powers -- and in a part of the world that has seen more than its share of misadventure and foul play.

Beverly Danziger looked like an expensive, carefully wrapped package from a good but conservative shop. Only her compulsive chatter hinted at the nervousness beneath her cool surface. It was a nervousness out of all proportion to the problem she placed before Kinsey Millhone. Still business was slow, and even a private investigator has bills to pay. Millhone took the job. It looked routine. Elaine Boldt's wrappings were a good deal flashier than her sister's, but they signaled the same thing: The lady had money. According to the manager of her California building, the wealthy widow was last seen draped in her $12,000 lynx coat heading for Boca Raton. According to the manager of her Florida building, she never got there. But someone else had, and she was camping out illegally in Mrs. Boldt's apartment. The job was beginning to seem a bit less routine. It turned tricky when Beverly Danziger ordered Millhone to drop the case, and it took on an ominous quality when Aubrey Danziger surfaced, making all kinds of wild accusations about his wife. But it only became sinister when Millhone learned that just days before Elaine Boldt went missing, her next-door neighbor and bridge partner had been murdered, and the killer was still at large. As Millhone digs deeper into the case, she finds herself in a nightmarish hall of mirrors in which reality is distorted by illusion and nothing--except danger--is quite what it seems.

There's a serial killer on the loose, bent on working his way though the alphabet. There seems little chance of the murderer being caught - until her makes the crucial and vain mistake of challenging Hercule Poirot to frustrate his plans . . .

A IS FOR AVENGER. A tough-talking former cop, private investigator Kinsey Millhone has set up a modest detective agency in a quiet corner of Santa Teresa, California. She's a twice-divorced loner with few personal possessions and fewer personal attachments but with a soft spot for underdogs and lost causes. A IS FOR ACCUSED. That's why she draws desperate clients like Nikki Fife. Eight years ago, she was convicted of killing her philandering husband. Now she's out on parole and needs Kinsey's help to find the real killer. But after all this time, clearing Nikki's bad name won't be easy. A IS FOR ALIBI. If there's one thing that makes Kinsey Millhone feel alive, it's playing on the edge. When her investigation turns up a second corpse, more suspects, and a new reason to kill, Kinsey discovers that the edge is closer--and sharper--than she imagined.

The Labours of Hercules is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1947. It features Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, and gives an account of twelve cases with which he intends to close his career as a private detective. His regular sidekicks (his secretary, Miss Lemon, and valet, George/Georges) make cameo appearances, as does Chief Inspector Japp. The stories were all first published in periodicals between 1939 and 1947. In the Foreword to the volume, Poirot declares that he will carefully choose the cases to conform to the mythological sequence of the Twelve Labours of Hercules. In some cases (such as The Nemean Lion) the connection is a highly tenuous one, while in others the choice of case is more or less forced upon Poirot by circumstances. By the end, The Capture of Cerberus has events that correspond with the twelfth labour with almost self-satirical convenience. - Wikipedia.

The dentist was found with a blackened hole below his right temple. A pistol lay on the floor near his outflung right hand. Later, one of his patients was found dead from a lethal dose of local anaesthetic. A clear case of murder and suicide. But why would a dentist commit a crime in the middle of a busy day of appointments? A shoe buckle holds the key to the mystery. Now – in the words of the rhyme – can Poirot pick up the sticks and lay them straight?

"Krishna: The Key" by Ashwin Sanghi is an electrifying blend of mythology, history, and suspense. Follow a gripping quest as ancient secrets tied to Lord Krishna's legendary wisdom unravel through a modern thriller. Packed with fascinating facts and imaginative twists, this book seamlessly bridges the past and present. Perfect for fans of mythological thrillers and thought-provoking mysteries!

Frank and Joe solve the mystery of the secret locked room in the spooky Dalrymple Mansion.

With his career still in its formative years, we learn many things about how Poirot came to exercise those famous "grey cells" so well. Fourteen of the eighteen stories collected herein are narrated by Captain Arthur Hastings—including what would appear to be the earliest Poirot short story, The Affair at the Victory Ball, which follows soon on the events of The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Two of the stories are narrated by Poirot himself, to Hastings. One, The Chocolate Box, concerns Poirot's early days on the Belgian police force, and the case that was his greatest failure: "My grey cells, they functioned not at all," Poirot admits. But otherwise, in this most fascinating collection, they function brilliantly, Poiro's grey cells, challenging the reader to keep pace at every twist and turn.

For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch -- hero, maverick, nighthawk -- the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal.The dead man, Billy Meadows, was a fellow Vietnam "tunnel rat" who fought side by side with him in a nightmare underground war that brought them to the depths of hell. Now, Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam. From a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city to the tortuous link that must be uncovered, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit.Joining with an enigmatic and seductive female FBI agent, pitted against enemies inside his own department, Bosch must make the agonizing choice between justice and vengeance, as he tracks down a killer whose true face will shock him.

The first Perry Mason mystery.

*"My name is Kinsey Millhone. I'm a private investigator... Female, single and self-employed, with a constitutional inability to work for anyone else. I'm a purist when it comes to justice, but I'll lie at the drop of a hat. Inconsistency has never troubled me..."* It was late October, the day before Halloween. He introduced himself as Alvin Limardo. The job he hired Kinsey to do seemed easy enough... until his cheque bounced. His real name was Dagett. John Dagett. Ex-con. Inveterate liar. Chronic drunk. And dead. The cops called it an accident – death by drowning. Kinsey wasn't so sure. The man, it seemed, had a lot of enemies...

In The Lady in the Lake, hardboiled crime fiction master Raymond Chandler brings us the story of a couple of missing wives—one a rich man's and one a poor man's—who have become the objects of Philip Marlowe's investigation. One of them may have gotten a Mexican divorce and married a gigolo and the other may be dead. Marlowe's not sure he cares about either one, but he's not paid to care.

Favel Farrington meets Roc Pendorric on the idyllic Mediterranean island of Capri, where she was raised and lives with her father. Roc sweeps her off her feet, taking her from her home by an emerald sea to the ancient family home of the Pendorrics, in Cornwall. His sister and her family await them with open arms, welcoming young Favel. She is the much anticipated Bride of Pendorric, a name that amuses and flatters her. The castle is beautiful in its way, but the atmosphere is foreboding. Roc's twin nieces begin watching her carefully; even the stones in the courtyard seem to have eyes. On the walls hang portraits of two other Brides of Pendorric--one of them Roc's mother--who died both young and tragically. Favel's fear increases as Roc seems to be growing more and more distant. Has her courtship and marriage been just a deception? Soon Favel can no longer dismiss as accidents the strange things happening to her. Someone is trying to kill her and she must confront the very real dangers that surround her.

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, thelegendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

Young, beautiful, and adventurous Nicola Ferris loves her life as a secretary at the British Embassy on Greece. On leave from her job as a secretary in Athens, has been looking forward to a quiet week's holiday in the lush island of Crete, enjoying the wild flowers and the company of her cousin Frances. Then on her day off, her impulse led her on a little-used path into the foreboding White Mountains. She links up with two hiking companions who have inadvertently stumbled upon a scene of blood vengeance, that involving a young Englishman and a group of people tied together by blood and the bonds of greed. For the first time in her life Nicola meets a man and a situation she cannot deal with... A man in hiding -- for reasons he could not explain. Warned to stay away, Nicola was unable to obey. And before she realized what she had uncovered, she found herself thrust into the midst of an alarming plot in which she would become the prey... And suddenly the life Nicola adores is in danger of coming to an abrupt, brutal, and terrifying end....