Malice Aforethought is one of the finest and most influential crime novels of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Written by Anthony Berkeley Cox, a master of psychological suspense and one of the founders of the classic British mystery tradition, this remarkable novel overturns the conventions of the detective story from its very first pages. Instead of asking who committed the crime, Berkeley invites readers to explore a far more unsettling question: Will the murderer succeed? Set in th...

Description "He is dead. It is quite impossible that he should have killed himself. He has been murdered. About half an hour ago. By a long knife passed under the left shoulder-blade into the heart."On a fog-bound London night, a soirée is taking place in the studio of artist Laurence Newtree. The guests include an eminent psychiatrist, a wealthy philanthropist and an observant young friend of Newtree's, John Christmas. Before the evening is over, Newtree's neighbour is found stabbed to de...

This new edition, which is reproduced from a first printing of the book, is introduced by the author Martin Edwards, archivist of the Detection Club, and includes a never-before-published Preface by Agatha Christie, ‘Detective Writers in England’, in which she discusses her fellow writers in the Detection Club.Lord Comstock is a barbarous newspaper tycoon with enemies in high places. His murder in the study of his country houseposes a dilemma for the Home Secretary. In the hours be...

In The Deadly Joker, Nicholas Blake delivers a finely constructed mystery in which wit and menace walk hand in hand. What begins as a curious and seemingly harmless situation soon takes on a darker edge when a cruel practical joke spirals into tragedy. Beneath the surface of civilized society, tensions simmer, and the line between amusement and malice proves dangerously thin. As suspicion spreads, old rivalries and hidden grievances come to light. The investigation reveals that what appear...

In the West of Ireland in 1939 a young novelist rents a lonely cottage to write his new book in peace.Almost at once, and without great resistance, he is seduced by the wife of the local squire. Harriet's husband is an older man - hot-tempered, impoverished, gone to seed - who once fought famously against the Black and Tans. Soon this eternal triangle becomes a local scandal, and the atmosphere of threat and violence, intensified by the approaching war in Europe, leads to a horrifi...

Hugo Chesterman is on trial for murdering a policeman. Why did he do it? Or could he be innocent?Daisy Bland is young, beautiful and naive, and her testimony threatens to send her husband to the gallows.For Daisy, it all started when she literally bumped into Hugo and fell madly in love. She gave up everything for him: her job, her friends, her independence. Blinded by love, she asks no questions about his vague profession as a 'commission agent', his suspicious associates ...

Murder begins with the death of a kitten…Artist Jeanie Halliday is thrilled to move into a country cottage of her own, next door to the home of her dear childhood friend Agnes. But the countryside idyll isn't quite what she might have expected: Agnes is suddenly and unaccountably unfriendly for one thing; and then the neighbours are a little peculiar - old Mr Fone, obsessed with burial mounds; the scandalous Hugh Barchard; and an estranged mother taken to brandishing pistol...

Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton and nine other writers from the legendary Detection Club collaborate in this fiendishly clever but forgotten crime novel first published 80 years ago.Inspector Rudge does not encounter many cases of murder in the sleepy seaside town of Whynmouth. But when an old sailor lands a rowing boat containing a fresh corpse with a stab wound to the chest, the Inspector's investigation immediately comes up against several obstacles. The vica...

First published in 1958, A Penknife in My Heart tells the story of how two men - total strangers - establish the perfect alibis by arranging to switch victims. Ned Stowe will kill Stuart Hammer's wealthy uncle for which service Hammer is to eliminate Stowe's neurotic wife, Helena. The men plot and the plan - with its horrifyingly simple premise - is solidified...'More convincing, more detailedly thought-through than Highsmith's [Strangers on a Train].' - The N...

"I think," said Palk slowly, "there's a homicidal maniac loose in the Hydro, but who it is, God knows."Presteignton Hydro is a drably genteel spa resort, populated by the aged and crippled who relish every drop of scandal they observe or imagine concerning the younger guests. No one however expects to see gossip turn to murder as their juniors die one by one - no one, that is, except the killer. The crusty cast of characters make solving the case all the harder for Inspector Palk - until t...

When Meg Jeacock let out the furnished cottage next to her house she did not care that her new tenant had certain rather sinister characteristics - he'd paid three months' rent in advance. But Meg's husband Marcus sensed he was a crook.And when the stranger shows an inexplicable interest in Shandon Priory, the big house nearby, whose elderly owner has recently died, it becomes clear that there is trouble brewing - which, when it comes, takes the form of double murder . . .

The prospect of a weekend on the French Riviera was an attractive one. Yet most of the nine people whom Major Mark Auty invited to join him hesitated before accepting his invitation. Each of them knew something about Auty's past - and because of their knowledge, had good reason to suspect some sinister intention.Their doubts were not unwarranted. Before the flight took off for Nice murder had been committed - and one of the nine guests had to be guilty. But it was Major Auty himsel...