Lestrade and the Brigade


Book Description

Book five in the Inspector Lestrade series. There is a new broom at Scotland Yard; Nimrod Frost. His first ‘little’ job for Lestrade is to investigate the reported appearance of a lion in Cornwall, a supposed savager of sheep and frightener of men. Hardly a task for an Inspector of the Criminal Investigations Department. Yet even as Lestrade questions a witness, a man is reported dead, horrifically mauled. Having solved that case to his own satisfaction, Lestrade returns to London and to another suspicious death and then another … All old men who should have died quietly in their sleep. Is there a connection – is there a mass murderer at work? Lestrade’s superiors discount his speculations and he finds himself suspended from duty, but that is a mere technicality to the doughty Inspector. He moves from workhouse to royal palace, from backstage at the Lyceum to regimental dinner in search of clues and enlightenment. When can his glory fade?




The World of Inspector Lestrade: Historical Companion to the Inspector Lestrade Series


Book Description

Book eighteen in the Inspector Lestrade series. Many readers of the Lestrade books wonder what is fact and what is fiction – and the author is delighted that they can’t always tell! So, for all the readers out there who have ever asked that question, here is the World of Inspector Lestrade. In this book, the lid is taken off the Victorian and Edwardian society in a way you’ve never seen before. Lestrade knew everybody, from Oscar Wilde in the Cadogan Hotel, to General Baden-Powell, cross-dressing on Brownsea Island, to the hero of Damascus, General Allenby – ‘you can call me Al.’ Have you ever wondered whether Howard Vincent, Director of the brand new CID really had a pet iguana? Find out inside. The Lestrade canon features the great and not so good of Britain when London stood at the heart of the Empire, the biggest in the world on which the sun never set. The novels on which this book is based are genuine whodunnits, with gallows humour and laugh-out-loud moments. Here you will find all the little peccadilloes that Lestrade took for granted. This is history as it really was – and I bet you wish you’d paid more attention at school now!




The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade


Book Description

Book four in the Inspector Lestrade series. It is 1891 and London is still reeling from the horror of the unsolved Ripper murders when Inspector Lestrade (that ‘ferret-like’ anti-hero so often out-detected by the legendary Sherlock Holmes) is sent to the Isle of Wight to investigate a strange corpse found walled up in Shanklin Chine. But this is only the start of the nightmare. It is merely the beginning of a series of killings so brutal, so bizarre and, apparently, so random, that only a warped genius – and a master of disguise – could be responsible. Even when Lestrade pieces together the extraordinary pattern behind the crimes from the anonymous poems sent after each murder, he is no closer to knowing the identity of the sinister, self-styled ‘Agrippa’, the ‘great, long, red-legg’d scissor-man’. It becomes a very personal battle and Lestrade’s desperate race to avert the next death in the sequence takes him all over the country, from London to the Pennines and back, resulting in a portfolio of suspects which covers the entire range of late-Victorian society.




Lestrade and the Guardian Angel


Book Description

Book seven in the Inspector Lestrade series. He was in his forty-third year and knee-deep in murder. Well, what was new? Sholto Lestrade wouldn’t really have it any other way. The first fatality in a series of killings which was to become the most bizarre in the celebrated Inspector’s career, was a captain of the 2nd Life Guards, found battered over the head in the Thames at Shadwell Stair, an Ashanti War medal wedged between his teeth. Lestrade’s next summons was to the underground caves of Wookey Hole where the demise of an Egyptologist – a scarab clamped between his molars – prompted the question; can a man dead for a thousand years reach beyond the grave and commit murder? The further death from a cadaveric spasm of an enobled young subaltern whilst on picquet duty (this time a locket is his dying mouthful) forces Lestrade to impersonate ‘Lt Lister, Duke of Lancaster’s Own Yeomanry’ and into becoming a barrack-room lawyer of incisive command. As the body count rapidly rises, Lestrade, constantly and relievedly touching base with his ‘family’, Harry and Letitia Bandicoot of the Hall, Huish Episcopi, varies a volatile lifestyle with dinner at Blenheim Palace; a disastrous cycle tour ending in a night in gaol; a near-fatal trip in an air balloon; and masterful mediation in East End gang warfare on the Ratcliffe Highway. Eventually, some seven cadavers later, things begin to fit into place and the final conundrum emerges; who or what is Coquette Perameles?




Lestrade and the Hallowed House


Book Description

Book eight in the Inspector Lestrade series. Britain has entered the twentieth century. Queen Victoria is dead and the Boer War rages on. Inspector Lestrade is called upon to investigate the brutal death of Ralph Childers, MP. It is but the first in a series of bizarre and perplexing murders that lead Lestrade around the country in pursuit of his enquiries. The connection between the victims appears to be politics. Is someone trying to destroy the government? It would seem so, particularly when a bomb is found in the Palace of Westminster. But who is responsible? The Fenians? Or have the Suffragettes decided upon a more drastic course of action to further their cause? During his investigations, Lestrade encounters some old and some new faces. Amongst the new ones are the brother and cousin of the late Sherlock Holmes who died eleven years ago at the Reichenbach Falls. But is Holmes really dead? Dr Watson doesn’t think so. Someone wants to keep Holmes alive and Lestrade is forced to tread the boards (playing himself) to discover the truth. And, as if things aren’t serious enough, the King is kidnapped just before his coronation. Amidst all this, Lestrade is faced with the knowledge that his daughter is growing up not knowing who her real father is.




Lestrade and the Kiss of Horus


Book Description

Book sixteen in the Inspector Lestrade series. ‘And death shall come on soft wings to him that touches the tomb of the Pharaoh …’ The wings that retired Chief Superintendent Lestrade came on were those of a de Havilland Hercules, named Olivia. The archaeologist, Howard Carter, had made the discovery of the century in the Valley of the Kings, but all around him, men were dying: Lord Carnarvon, careless with his razor, fell prey to a mosquito bite; Alain le Clerk left the tomb in a hurry to die alone in the desert; Aaron G. String, the railway magnate, blew his brains out yards from the tomb’s entrance. And so it was that Sholto Lestrade flew East to solve a riddle every bit as impenetrable as that of the sphinx. People remarked on the funny old Gizeh, in his bowler and Donegal, battling the elements against sand, revolting Egyptians and the Curse of the Pharaohs … But could he avoid the Kiss of Horus?




Lestrade and the Dead Man's Hand


Book Description

Book six in the Inspector Lestrade series. The London Underground Railway, in 1895, was described as ‘dark, deadly and halfway to Hell’. Only too true, for as the last train rattled into Liverpool Street, the one remaining passenger did not get off. How could she, when her eyes stared sightless and her heart had stopped? There was another corpse at the Elephant in the morn-ing, wedged between the seats like an old suitcase. And another had missed the late-night connection at Stockwell. What was left of her lay on the floor of the ‘padded cell’, her shoes kicked off in the lashings of her agony as she died. There is a maniac at large and Inspector Lestrade is detailed to work with the Railway Police, something he needs a little less than vivisection. Heedless of warnings to ‘mind the gap’ and ‘mind the doors’, the doughty detective plunges through a tangled web of vicious deviants to solve a string of murders so heinous that every woman in London goes in fear of her life. Who is the legendary Blackfriars Dan? What are the secrets of the Seven Sisters? Whose body lies at Ealing? Will the London Transport System survive, or will Lestrade run out of steam?




Literary Afterlife


Book Description

This is an encyclopedic work, arranged by broad categories and then by original authors, of literary pastiches in which fictional characters have reappeared in new works after the deaths of the authors that created them. It includes book series that have continued under a deceased writer's real or pen name, undisguised offshoots issued under the new writer's name, posthumous collaborations in which a deceased author's unfinished manuscript is completed by another writer, unauthorized pastiches, and "biographies" of literary characters. The authors and works are entered under the following categories: Action and Adventure, Classics (18th Century and Earlier), Classics (19th Century), Classics (20th Century), Crime and Mystery, Espionage, Fantasy and Horror, Humor, Juveniles (19th Century), Juveniles (20th Century), Poets, Pulps, Romances, Science Fiction and Westerns. Each original author entry includes a short biography, a list of original works, and information on the pastiches based on the author's characters.




Lestrade and the Ripper


Book Description

Book three in the Inspector Lestrade series. In the year 1888, London was horrified by a series of brutal killings. All the victims were discovered in the same district, Whitechapel, and they were all prostitutes. But they weren’t the only murders to perplex the brains of Scotland Yard. In Brighton, the body of one Edmund Gurney was also found. Foremost among the Yard’s top men was the young Inspector Sholto Lestrade and it was to his lot that the un-solved cases of a deceased colleague fell. Cases that included the murder of Martha Tabram, formerly a prostitute from Whitechapel, and that of the aforementioned Gurney. Leaving no stone unturned, Lestrade investigates with his customary expertise and follows the trail to Nottingham-shire, to a minor public school, Rhadegund Hall. It is his intention to question the Reverend Algernon Spooner. What he finds is murder. As the Whitechapel murders increase in number, so do those at Rhadegund Hall and so do the clues. What is the connection between them all? As if it weren’t confusing enough, Lestrade is hampered by the parallel investigations of that great detective, Sherlock Holmes, aided by Dr Watson. Who is the murderer of Rhadegund Hall and are he and the man they call ‘Jack the Ripper’ one and the same?




Lestrade and the Leviathan


Book Description

Book twelve in the Inspector Lestrade series. ‘You’re promising me a peaceful one, eh? This Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Ten? Let’s hope you’re right.’ Unfortunately, his men can’t fulfil Superintendent Lestrade’s wish. Nor can his daughter Emma, who moments later brings him news of a tragic boating accident involving members of her family. In fact, Lestrade’s lot is definitely not a happy one. He has a number of vicious murders to solve, including that of a man hanged in a church bell-tower; of a potential cross-Channel swimmer and of his old sparring partner, Dr Watson. Anarchists threaten the peace of Europe and the whole of the Yard is looking for ‘Peter the Painter’. On top of all this, Lestrade is roped in to help with the plans for the coronation of George V. His daughter is in love; and Inspector Dew needs help with the disappearance of a certain Belle Crippen. And while Lestrade has his hands full, a violent London cabbie lies in wait for the Assistant Commissioner. A Mr Frederick Seddon is letting out the top flat of his house to elderly spinsters. And new bride Sarah Rose wanders forlornly around the National Gallery, waiting for George Joseph Smith.