It’s August 2015. After twenty-five years of archaeological research in a secluded cave overlooking the Rhône Valley in southern France, Ludovic Slimak uncovers the remains of a Neanderthal, frozen in time – a discovery that casts fresh light on a critical turning point in human history. Could these remains belong to one of the last Neanderthals? As scientists from around the world analyze the site, their findings disrupt everything we thought we knew about the final days of these ancient ...

“Let us know when you’re dead!”Ludovic Travers had known it was a publicity stunt, all that business about the anonymous threatening letters. He expected a hoax but what he found was two men lying dead on the floor of Crewe’s bedroom. To be confronted with murder at eight in the morning was no joke. Norris, the quiet, steady Inspector of Scotland Yard, certainly didn’t think so, although during the weeks he and Travers sought to puzzle it all out, he many times remarked, “...

“And that’s not all. Somers is dead too … He poisoned himself … in the lounge!”When the wealthy Cosmo Revere is killed by a falling tree, ex-CID officer John Franklin and Ludovic Travers chance to be staying in the vicinity. After examining the scene Franklin determines it was no accident. At the family lawyer’s request Franklin and Travers go undercover at Fenwold Hall, where the dramatis personae, among others, include a bewitching niece, a blustering colonel, a...

I liked him. When I heard of his death I was quite upset.Henry Baldlow is a nervous man. An apparent invalid, he plans to emigrate for his health, yet claims to require a detective to guard his life in the interim. Ludovic Travers isn’t initially convinced, but when one of his operatives turns up dead, and then Baldlow himself, he takes charge. A series of visitors were asked to call at specific times on the afternoon of Baldlow’s death—was one of these the culprit? Invest...

Woman falls from window of flat. Doctor says killed instantly.Well, thought Ludovic Travers as he set the newspaper aside, that finally put a period to a highly unsuccessful case. The woman, a Mrs. Strand, had seemed a bit deranged when she came to him for help in locating some missing friends, but he quest led to a dead end.So Travers turns to the infinitely more challenging new mystery of the missing diamonds-£50,000 of them, stolen from an impregnable safe in a ...

There was no mess: just a dark stain one could see on the waistcoat. What was horrible was the contortion of the face and the tortured eyes. But even then I thought I knew him.There can be few people who would wish to go so far as to murder a literary agent. Which one takes the trouble to impersonate a well-known author and lure George Posfort of that calling to his violent end in an unlikely London hotel? And why, about the same time, should Richard Alton, a nice young sc...

“Have you heard the news, sir?” the waiter said.“I’m afraid I haven’t. What is it?”“Plumley’s dead, sir. Henry Plumley. We just got the news over the ’phone. Suicide they say it was. Anything else you want, sir?”Out-of-print for over nine decades and one of the rarest classic crime novels from the Golden Age of detective fiction, The Plumley Inheritance, first of the Ludovic Travers mysteries, is now available in a new edition by ...

We’ve got to have a body.That’s what what detective Ludovic Travers says, after being contacted by one Lord Tynworth. Tynworth’s wife has vanished and his lordship wants her found – yet strangely doesn’t seem especially keen on getting her back. When Travers walks into the case, he enters a hall of mirrors. In it are thoroughbred horses, their trainers, at least one man determined not to tell the truth . . . and a burnt corpse.The missing woman is a former crooner,...

"I just wanted to ask you one question.""Yes?""Why did you lie to us about that burglar?"The Case of the Deadly Diamonds starts out as a small-scale caper for Ludovlc Travers, leading light of the Broad Street Detective Agency. The unspectacular sum of two hundred pounds had vanished mysteriously from a safe in the home of Paul Morren, an old-guard London jeweller.But when Travers moves in to investigate for the Insurance company, ...

Between the acting of a dreadful thing, and the first motion...Ludovic Travers sees it happen. He sees a strange young woman assault Clement Foorde, and all because he had expressed his dislike for a certain best-selling novel. Is it a publicity stunt? The matter escapes Travers’s mind until he hears on the radio one night that the author of the novel in question has been drowned. Everyone, including the police, thinks the affair to be no more than a tragic accident; every...

“George Wharton said he hoped I’d have a nice murder for you.”Ludovic Travers and his wife choose to spend part of their honeymoon in the quiet town of Edensthorpe—one place where they can be sure of peace and quiet, and where an eminent author and his famous wife might not be recognised.Unfortunately for them, however, another fugitive has sought anonymity in the nearby village of Pettistone—a swindler named Brewse who has just completed a prison sentence for frau...

Travers looked down at the face. On the collar was a red patch and a long streak. Across the throat was a gash.Two rival London newspaper tycoons are at daggers drawn. But when Sir William Griffith’s corpse turns up in a hamper, his throat cut from ear to ear, the enmity appears to turned deadly. Or is it instead a case of domestic terrorism? Superintendent Wharton of the Yard brings Ludovic Travers into the case and together they investigate a gallery of additional suspec...