Lestrade and the Devil's Own


Book Description

Book fourteen in the Inspector Lestrade series. ‘From his brimstone bed at the break of day, A-walking the Devil is gone, To visit his snug little farm, the earth, And see how his stock goes on.’ Coleridge and Southey ‘Sholto Joseph Lestrade, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Mrs Millicent Millichip on January 13th last in the City of Westminster.’ Lestrade had never been arrested before. Neither had he faced the drop. But when a woman died in his arms in the middle of a London pea-souper, the Fates were stacked against him. Millicent Millichip, as it turned out, was not the only victim in a series of murders where the only clue was the Devil’s calling card. And the Devil struck in such diverse places as the croquet lawn of Castle Drogo, the theatre of war games on Hounslow Heath and the offices of Messrs Constable, publishers extraordinary, in Orange Street. The condemned cell at Pentonville is a lonely place, even for a man with a loving family and powerful friends. But are they powerful enough?




Lestrade and the Deadly Game


Book Description

Book eleven in the Inspector Lestrade series. The Papers call it suicide. The deceased’s father doesn’t. But when Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard investigates the death by duelling pistol of Anstruther Fitzgibbon, 27, son of the Marquess of Bolsover, his suspicions of foul play are immediately aroused. One of Britain’s leading athletes, ‘nimbler than a wallaby on heat’, Fitzgibbon is the first victim in a series of murders which threatens to extinguish the exhilaration of the Olympic Games held in London that glorious summer of 1908. As the capital plays host to an army of athletes from the Empire, Europe and the United States, international politics rears its ugly head; a respected German journalist is discovered with an ornate paper-knife embedded in his back. When a hurdler of the Ladies’ Team falls victim to her own bust improver (dubbed ‘the killer corset’) fingers are pointed in all directions and not least of Lestrade’s worries is that his leading lady’s husband is an American detective with a short temper and the physique of a brick privy.




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 Sawdust Ring


Book Description

Book one in the Inspector Lestrade series. ‘In the circus, nothing is what it seems …’ Walk up! Walk up! This way for the greatest show on earth! It is 1879. Disraeli is at Number Ten. The Zulu are being perfectly beastly to Lord Chelmsford. And Captain Boycott is having his old trouble again. What has this to do with the young Detective-Sergeant Sholto Lestrade? Absolutely nothing. Or has it? He has his work cut out investi-gating mysterious goings-on at ‘Lord’ George Sanger’s Circus. First, the best juggler in Europe is shot in full view of a thousand people. Then Huge Hughie, the dwarf, dies an agonizing death under the Ether Trick. Finally, the Great Bolus dies by swallowing the wrong sword. And all of this after two bodies have been found with multiple slashes … And what is the link with Mr Howard Vincent, founder of the CID? And has the Prince Imperial really been caught by the Impis? A trail of murder is laid among the llama droppings as the World’s Second Greatest Detective goes undercover to solve the Case of the Sawdust Ring.




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 Brother of Death


Book Description

Book thirteen in the Inspector Lestrade series. ‘I cannot sing the old songs I sang long years ago, For heart and voice would fail me And foolish tears would flow.’ Claribel Recovering from a broken leg after his ignominious fall from the Titanic, Superintendent Lestrade goes to convalesce at the home of his betrothed, Fanny Berkley and her father Tom, the Chief Commissioner of Surrey. It should have been a relatively peaceful time, apart from Lestrade’s lack of dexterity in steering his Bath chair, but an attempt on the life of his father-in-law (that kills the butler instead) makes him realise that a policeman is never really off duty. What is even more puzzling is the arrival of a letter which simply reads ‘Four for the Gospel Makers’ – and it isn’t the first Lestrade’s been sent. So begins one of Sholto Lestrade’s most mystifying cases; a case that encompasses not only the present, but the past. Lestrade walks down Memory Lane to the time when he was a young and very naïve constable. He looks back on episodes in his career that never came to a satisfactory conclusion and that hold other clues as to who the sender of the letters is – because whoever it is, it is a cold blooded killer.




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?




Lestrade and the Mirror of Murder


Book Description

Book ten in the Inspector Lestrade series. Beyond the mountains of the moon … ‘Right, gentlemen. Recapping by numbers.’ Superintendent Lestrade, in martinet mood, was driving his minions. ‘Murder One. Four victims, Captain Orange, late of the merchant service and his three nieces, when the harness of their trap broke on a downhill gradient near Peter Tavy, Devon.’ ‘Clues?’ ‘A tall man seen near the Captain’s horse shortly before the trap left. He could have cut the harness.’ ‘And?’ ‘A broken mirror found in the Captain’s breast pocket.’ ‘Murder Two, sir. Janet Calthrop, fell downstairs at King’s College, London, on the way to the boudoir of her lover. Tripwire across the stairs. Broken neck.’ ‘Clues?’ ‘One broken mirror found in said lover’s boudoir.’ ‘Murder Three. Juan Thomas de Jesus-Lopez, honorary major in the Sixteenth Lancers; body found in a ruined lighthouse near Beachy Head.’ The clues accumulate; so do the mirrors and the murders … And the suspects. ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall,’ mused Sholto Lestrade. ‘Who’s the guiltiest of them all?’ He was to find out …




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 Sign of Nine


Book Description

Book two in the Inspector Lestrade series It was a puzzle that faced Scotland Yard from its very begin-ning – whose was the limbless body found among the foundations? And in the murderous world of Sholto Lestrade, one question is invariably followed by another – what do a lecherous rector, a devious speculator and a plagiaristic novel-ist have in common? Answer: they’re all dead, each of them with a bloody space where his skull used to be. And six others are to join them before our intrepid inspector brings the per-petrator to book. But 1886 was a bad year for the Metropolitan Police. The People of the Abyss have heard the whisper and the spectre of Communism haunts the land. There is a new Commissioner, a regular martinet, at the Yard. And then, there is that very odd couple, sometime of Baker Street … Lestrade braves haunted houses, machine-gun bullets and two Home Secretaries in his headlong hunt for the truth. And at last, this is the book that chronicles his now legendary impersonation of the Great Sarah Bernhardt. The Police Re-vue was never the same again.