Mystery & Detective Stories

William Brodrick

A Whispered Name by William Brodrick (2008)

As a young man, author William Brodrick joined the Augustinian Friars before leaving the religious order six years later to become a lawyer. Father Anselm, the main character in Brodrick’s first series of mysteries, was a lawyer who became a Catholic monk. The success of the first novel, The Sixth Lamentation (1999), allowed Brodrick to retire from legal practice and become a full-time writer. A Whispered Name (2008), the third novel in the series, won the Gold Dagger Award from the Crime Writers’ Association of the United Kingdom in 2009.

A Whispered Name soars above the average mystery novel by its polished prose, intricate plotting, and moral seriousness. As the author explains, “…it is a parable of how a man found meaning in death, and how another—on seeing that—found faith in life.” (p. 344) Chapters alternate between the late-20th century and World War One (1914-17).

A Whispered Name opens when Father Anselm, the beekeeper at Larkwood Priory, notices a woman at the grave of Fr. Herbert Moore and an elderly man weeping in the background. The woman, Kate Seymour, tells Fr. Anselm that Moore had been part of a court martial of Private Joseph Flanagan, an Irish volunteer in the British Army during World War One. They want to understand the special meaning of the trial. Moore had been their last hope.

Fr. Anselm is surprised to learn of Fr. Herbert’s wartime service since the monk had not mentioned it to anyone (it seemed) during his sixty years at the priory. Fr. Sylvester, Herbert’s best friend, says the woman is mistaken. But the Prior, Fr. Andrew, says there’s no mistake that Herbert served in World War One. His corpse had a war wound, there was a military law book in his room, and he was wearing ID tags of a Private Owen Doyle. Previously, Fr. Herbert had expressed his desire to see Joseph Flanagan and tell him to feel no remorse or guilt.

The Prior gives Fr. Anselm his blessing to solve the mysteries of the court martial, Flanagan, and Doyle. The investigation is particularly important to Fr. Anselm because of the role Fr. Herbert played in Anselm becoming a monk. He had first visited Larkwood Priory on a school retreat where he received a leaflet written by Fr. Herbert that stayed with him through schools and his law career. When Anselm was 30, he met Fr. Herbert when helping get the monk’s car out of a ditch. He asked what Fr. Herbert did at the Priory, and the priest responded, “We tend a fire that won’t go out.” (p. 21) Two years later, Anselm decided to enter the same order.

Fr. Anselm’s investigation is hampered by Kate Seymour’s business card having been lost. It’s assumed she’s the daughter of Joseph Flanagan, who is assumed to have been the old man weeping at the cemetery. It is arranged for Fr. Anselm to visit the Public Records Office where military specialist Martin Reid is familiar with the Flanagan file.

Reid says the trial was an anomaly. Only papers of executed soldiers are kept, so the existence of the file indicates that was Flanagan’s fate, yet records of the process and outcome are missing, including no death certificate. No one knows what happened. The trial is also distinctive because it occurred during a lull in the battle of Passchendaele, one of the deadliest campaigns of World War One.

When readers meet the young Captain Herbert Moore he has awakened on a battlefield after a shell hit and is trying to save a fellow soldier from sinking to slow death in the mud. It is an incident that will haunt Herbert into his last years. While Herbert is recovering from his wound, he’s ordered to return for duty to serve as the third officer of a court martial. Three being required for a death sentence.

As the story of the trial unfolds, details about Herbert and Joseph Flanagan’s backgrounds emerges. When Herbert’s father read that Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in 1914 involved Serbs, he asked, “Who in the blazes are they?” (p. 44) Herbert volunteered for duty with a Cumberland regiment to which his family had long ties but was expelled for a reason not clarified at first. His family then moved to Northumberland so he could serve in that regiment.

Joseph Flanagan (Seosamh [SHOH-suff] Ó Flannagáin) was from a small island (fictional Inisdúr) west of the Irish mainland where his family had lived for generations. From his teacher, Drennan, Joseph learned about the wider world and the English language. “In a way … it was a betrayal without treachery. A turning away from my father’s soil…” (p. 126)

Drennan was a devout Irish nationalist but disappointed in Ireland, so he’d come to Inisdúr to find “Celtic purity…” (p. 145) However, the Islanders did not think of themselves as Irish, identifying only with the island and their families. Joseph wanted to break out of island ways, at least temporarily. So, against the wishes of his father but with the secret blessing of his mother, he went to England to work. When the Great War began, he volunteered for the Northumberland regiment.

Joseph Flanagan served faithfully for three years on the battlefields of the Western Front without taking home leave. (This was the time of the Easter Rising and its aftermath.) In June 1917, after helping bury more than two thousand soldiers, he witnessed the massive mine explosion at the Battle of Messines that killed thousands of Germans, burying many alive.

On August 26, 1917, Flanagan was charged with desertion. As ordered, he had taken a wounded officer to the reserve trenches for medical care, then upon returning to the line he met Private Owen Doyle, a stranger to him. Both soldiers allegedly deserted to the French coast, being stopped by military police before escaping. Flanagan was apprehended on August 27, away from the coast but three miles behind the line. Doyle was listed as killed in action on September 15. During the trial, Flanagan refuses to defend or explain his actions.

Investigating decades later, Fr. Anselm tries to learn if and (if so) why both men deserted, why Flanagan did not defend himself, how Doyle could have been listed as killed-in-action though not listed as returning for duty, who Doyle was, why Fr. Herbert was wearing his ID tags, whether the death sentence was carried out, and if so, who was executed, and who Kate Seymour and her elderly companion are. The meticulously plotted story will keep readers guessing.

More significantly, A Whispered Name conveys with solemn sympathy the difficult moral decisions made in wartime for those on the battlefield and those tasked to judge the actions of their fellow soldiers, as well as the impact on the loved ones of the soldiers and the gulf that separates them from those who served. As the story develops, there is an underlying Christian motif of substitutionary atonement. The novel is emotionally powerful to the last page.

Marek Krajewski

Phantoms of Breslau by Marek Krajewski, trans. by Danusia Stok

When the butchered, naked bodies of four men are discovered in the Oder River, a message indicates their deaths are in retaliation for a past mistake by Criminal Assistant Inspector Eberhard Mock. As other deaths occur of people Mock interviews, it becomes clear that the serial murderer is following the inspector. He’s removed from the case officially but continues to pursue the killer.

Set in the German city of Breslau (the post-1945 Polish city of Wroclaw), this noir crime novel depicts the decadence and corruption of the Weimar Republic. Mock, a World War One veteran, feels “[t]rapped in a tedious existence, between booking prostitutes, alcoholic delirium and the superhuman effort it took to continue to show his father respect … He was already used to unhappy thoughts and his own partially feigned cynicism … But all of a sudden he was afraid for his future.” (p. 34)

Most of the events in Phantoms of Breslau (2005, trans. 2010) happen in September 1919 except for the opening and closing chapters, set in October 1919, plus a flashback to the war in 1916. The book includes interesting passing references about the era, such as the novelty of wristwatches. The narrative is interspersed with chapters from the murderer’s journal notes with references to occultism and suggestions of a conspiracy. Mocks’ dreams juxtapose with reality.

The plot does not present many suspects, so the mastermind of the deaths may not be a surprise if the reader shares Mock’s reliance on intuition. The emphasis of the story is on the psychology and philosophy of the protagonist: “’Defensive pessimism is the best attitude,” he thought, ‘because the only disappointment you can suffer will be a pleasant one.’” (p. 141)

Polish author Marek Krajewski (b. 1966) was a professor of Classical Philology and Ancient Culture at the University of Wroclaw until 2007 when he became a full-time writer of crime novels. Phantoms of Breslau is the third publication in his Eberhard Mock series, although set first chronologically. Krajewski has two other series featuring Jaroslaw Pater and Edward Popielski.

Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Golden Child

Years ago, I enjoyed reading several of Penelope Fitzgerald’s novels and recently finished her debut novel, The Golden Child (1977). Her fictional work often depicts characters dealing with unfortunate life circumstances but is leavened with wit and evocative prose. The Times of London in 2008 named her one of “the 50 greatest British writers since 1945” and in 2012 the book editor of the Observer chose her The Blue Flower (1995) as one of the ten best historical novels.

After graduating with first-class honors from Somerville College, Oxford, Penelope Fitzgerald (1916-2000) worked for the Ministry of Food, the BBC, and then briefly co-edited with her husband, Desmond Fitzgerald, the World Review journal. In her late 50s, she began publishing her own work, beginning with biographies of pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burnes-Jones (1975) and of her father and three uncles, The Knox Brothers (1977).

The Golden Child is a murder mystery that spoofs the popular Tutankhamun exhibition at the British Museum in 1972. It was written as an amusing diversion for her husband, who was terminally ill.

The Golden Child is part of the (fictional) Golden Treasure of Garamantia (based on an actual civilization in ancient North Africa), discovered in 1913 by Sir William Simpkin. When the story opens, he is an elderly archaeologist with a private apartment in the British Museum. The unscrupulous museum director, Sir John Allison, “immune from the necessity of being liked” (p. 14), is expecting that Sir William will leave his fortune to the museum under Sir John’s discretionary spending authority. The personalities of their secretaries echo the two men’s character clash: Sir William’s Dousha Vartarian, voluptuous and languid, sits “curled in creamy splendour in her typing chair…” (p. 20), while Sir John’s Miss Rank, is rigidly efficient.

Similar to Shirley Hazzard’s skeptical look at UN bureaucracy, Fitzgerald lampoons the inner workings of the British Museum: “I am thinking about the formation of a consultative committee to discuss the preparation of a report to recommend the appointment of a special purchasing committee.” (p. 16) In charge of the Golden Child exhibition is Marcus Hawthorne-Mannering, recently appointed Keeper of Funerary Art but whose heart is with watercolors. “His appointment had been … an administrative error, or perhaps a last resort…” (p. 18)

The Golden Child entwines multiple mysteries. Who is distributing pamphlets warning people of the curse of the Golden Child exhibition, and why does Sir William refuse to visit it? What is contained in the exhibition’s secret report? What are the roles of the Hopeforth Best tobacco corporation, North African politics, and the Soviet government? Does Sir William die naturally of a heart attack or was he murdered with colliding library stacks?

Unwillingly involved in unraveling these mysteries is Waring Smith, a junior exhibitions officer. He is an unexceptional young man who worries about mortgage payments and his wife Haggie’s dislike of his late hours, yet he has “an instinct for happiness” (p. 30) He will eventually be sent on a secret mission to consult Golden Child expert Professor Semyonov in Russia. The journey becomes, like Churchill’s description of that country, “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” It’s frustrating for Smith, but funny for readers.

Fitzgerald has a fitness for names and character sketches, as with the visiting French and German scholars, Dr. Tite-Live Rochegrosse-Bergson and Professor Untermensch. The suave Rochegrosse-Bergson begins his speech at the museum with 15-minute introduction, then “proceeded to a refutation of his unseen enemies. … He moved his dapper hands with the gestures of an expert laundryman. … ‘The journey of humanity is a progression neither forward nor backward but noward.’ … Amazingly enough, this arrant nonsense was eagerly taken down by the two journalists.” (pp. 50-51) The German tendency for compound words manifests in the title of Professor Untermensch’s monograph: Garamantischengeheimschriftendechiffrierkunst. (p. 54)

Other key characters include left-wing technician Len Coker, Sir William’s loyal gofer, Jones, and Police Inspector Mace. The Golden Child is a clever, lively beginning to Fitzgerald’s literary career.

Fitzgerald later won Britain’s prestigious Booker Prize for her novel Offshore (1979) and two other novels, The Bookshop (1978) and The Gate of Angels (1990), were shortlisted for the prize. Her novel The Blue Flower (1995) won the US National Book Critics Circle Award. She received the Golden PEN Award for “a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature” in 1999. Her other novels are Human Voices (1980), At Freddie's (1982), Innocence (1986), and The Beginning of Spring (1988). Her biography of poet Charlotte Mew and Friends was published in 1986, and a collection of her short stories, The Means of Escape (2000), was published posthumously.

Seishi Yokomizo

The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo (trans. Louise Heal Kawai)

In 2019, Pushkin Press (London) reissued The Honjin Murders (1946) by one of Japan’s most popular mystery writers, Seishi Yokomizo (1902-81). He published his first mystery story in 1921 and became a full-time writer in the 1930s. He eventually wrote 77 novels, selling 55 million books, several of which have been adapted to the stage or television. Pushkin Press has now published four of Seishi Yokomizo’s mystery novels and books by four other Japanese authors.

In his youth, Yokomizo was an avid reader of English-language mystery writers, such as Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Edgar Allen Poe. He was particularly influenced by John Dickson Carr, who specialized in the “locked room” mystery in which a murder is committed in an enclosed space that seems impossible to enter. The Honjin Murders is a locked-room mystery.

In The Honjin Murders, the narrator says his favorite British writer was A. A. Milne, known for his Winnie the Pooh series, but also the author of The Red House Mystery (p. 81). Yokomizo’s detective, Kosuke Kindaichi, is modeled on Milne’s detective, Antony Gillingham. Like Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Kosuke was a drug addict, although one who reformed. He solved his first murder while visiting the Japanese community in San Francisco (p. 82). One of the characters in The Honjin Murders, has a large collection of detective novels by English- and Japanese-language authors, the latter probably unfamiliar to most English-language readers: “Edogawa Ranpo, Fuboku Kozakai, Saburo Koga, Udaru Oshita, Takataro Kigi, Juze Unno, [and] Mushitaro Oguri. (p. 99)

The Honjin Murders is set in 1937 in a small Japanese village, and centers on the murder of the eldest son of a wealthy family and his bride on their wedding night. There is a helpful annotated list of the cast of characters at the front of the book. For me, not generally a reader of locked-room mysteries, the interesting parts of The Honjin Murders were the aspects of 1930s Japanese culture integrated into the story: the architecture, folkways, spiritual beliefs, ceremonial rites, class relations, family relations, and the Japanese stringed musical instrument—the koto—that plays a key role in the plot.

Georges Simenon

Belgian-born writer Georges Simenon (1903-1989) is known primarily for creating the world’s most famous fictional French detective, Inspector Jules Maigret. Simenon published an astonishing number of novels and short story collections: approximately 500. His work has been translated into 55 languages and adapted into 50 films and more than 120 television episodes. He was a favorite author of André Gide, Ford Madox Ford, Robert Graves, and other prominent authors.

After moving to France in 1922, Simenon wrote about 200 pulp fiction books over the next decade, making him a millionaire. In 1929, he published the first of 84 Maigret books. In them, it’s not unusual for the perpetrator to be revealed early. The reason to savor the wonderful Maigret stories is not for the mystery so much as for the masterly prose, the perceptive character studies, and the descriptive settings.

Besides the Maigret series, Simenon’s literary achievement includes a critically acclaimed trilogy set in Africa: Tropic Moon (1933), Aboard the Aquitaine (1936), and Talatala (1943). After World War Two, Simenon wrote several novels set in the United States, where he lived for almost a decade. He also published three autobiographical works, including Intimate Memoirs after his daughter’s suicide. In the last three decades of his life, he lived in France and Switzerland.

Simenon’s novel Dirty Snow (1948) was republished in 2003 as part of the New York Review of Books classics series, with translation from the French by Marc Romano and Louise Varése. It is a compelling character study of an amoral young man living in his mother's bordello in a country under Nazi occupation. His compulsions lead to crime and incarceration. The story follows a trajectory of hell, purgatory, and, perhaps, redemption ... or is the latter another of his self-delusions? It is an enthralling read.

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Maigret Series:

*Lock No. 1: good character study, well-paced story
*Maigret’s Dead Man: one of the best
*Maigret Takes a Room: one of the best; good characterizations
*The Shadow Puppet: good mini-character studies and a well-told tale
*Maigret’s Holiday: good story of how Maigret catches one suspect
*Maigret and the Saturday Caller: Will the Saturday Caller kill his wife and her lover or be killed?
*Madame Maigret’s Friend: an interesting plot with a role for Mrs. Maigret
*Maigret Gets Angry: a well-paced story of family secrets
*Maigret’s Pickpocket: interesting characters, setting, story, and conclusion; one of the better ones
*Maigret’s Revolver: a broken family, Maigret’s compassion, and a London hotel setting
*The Madman of Bergerac: Maigret oversees an investigation from bed during recovery
*Maigret in Vichy: While on vacation with his wife, Maigret assists in finding the murderer of a mysterious woman
*The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien
*The Saint-Fiacre Affair
*Maigret and the Tall Woman
*Maigret Hesitates

Other Simenon books (mainly Maigret):

Maigret and the Lazy Burglar: integrates two stories fairly well, with good character sketches; a near top-tier story
Maigret’s Patience: good jewel theft-murder story with interesting characters in an apartment complex, and a World War 2 tie-in; a near-top tier story
Maigret and the Ghost: interesting story about art forgery, although the conclusion involves characters barely mentioned
The Cellars of the Majestic: interesting characters and good story through most of the book, but the last few chapters seem a bit contrived
Maigret and the Headless Corpse: enjoyable, interesting, mysterious character, although the solution is somewhat contrived
Maigret and the Good People of Montparnasse, enjoyable story with a deus ex machina ending
Maigret and the Old Lady: enjoyable story with interesting characters, although Maigret pulls the solution out of the air
Maigret’s Mistake: enjoyable read; Maigret figures out the solution (how he does so is a mystery), but too late
Maigret and Monsieur Charles only a couple of suspects, but the main one is interesting and the tale, as usual, well told
Maigret Sets a Trap: enjoyable, but a multiple murderer is caught because of a button
Maigret Goes to School, village insularity
Maigret and the Minister: political corruption; the plot is a bit too complex with too many characters only superficially treated
Maigret and the Man on the Bench: interesting situation and characters, but a contrived (although simple) solution
The Yellow Dog; an interesting setting and characters, but the solution is too elaborate
The Carter of La Providence: ditto
Signed, Picpus: ditto
A Crime in Holland: a somewhat obvious solution, but a story well told.
Maigret at Picratt’s: interesting setting and characters, except the murderer is introduced late and from afar and we only meet him at the end when he is shot dead without a word
Félicie, Maigret is obsessed (infatuated?) with the lead suspect, who I did not find quite so interesting; a contrived solution.
Maigret at the Coroner’s: Set in Arizona, Maigret is an observer at an inquest. Fairly interesting, although the ending downplays the death of a woman treated as a sexual object
The Misty Harbour: no clues and convoluted ending
My Friend Maigret: not a very interesting story, but the ending was a bit better
Maigret is Afraid
The Grand Banks Café
Cécile is Dead
The Blue Room

Donald Henderson

A Voice Like Velvet by Donald Henderson

Actor, playwright, and novelist Donald Henderson died at the age of 41 in 1947 from the long-term result of lung damage caused by a German bomb that destroyed his London home during World War II. His books were soon forgotten until his best work was reissued in 2018.

First published and set during World War Two, A Voice Like Velvet (1944) is an amusing, well-paced light comedy (touching on serious themes) about a well-loved BBC news announcer, Ernest Bisham, who moonlights as a jewel thief. Compelled by the thrill of the caper and outwitting the police, he aims to be a sort of Robin Hood, robbing from the wealthy—but never “the poor-rich or the nice-rich” (p. 61)—and ultimately planning to send the loot to the Soviet (“Russian”) government to fund its efforts to defeat the Nazis.

Readers learn of the childhood origins of Ernest’s penchant for burglary. His widowed father was the silent type, rarely speaking to his son and feared by others. Once when Ernest threw a book to get his father’s attention, the old man waited four minutes before asking, “Well?” At his school, Ernest is challenged by his chums to steal and later return the headmaster’s birch rod. He does so calmly and successfully.

In young adulthood, Ernest steals jewels from a shop, disappears into the crowd, then mails the jewels back to the shop. He stole for the thrill and to prove his belief that he would not be caught. Sometimes he threw jewels into the Thames after he became bored looking at them or sent money to insurance companies if he felt their loss had been too great. He never sells them.

A family friend arranges for young Ernest to join a banking and insurance house, for which he quickly realized he was not suited. After working there only two days, he gave a week’s notice. “It was at these vague and dangerous moments that life was shaped.” (p. 51)

Ernest decides his thieving days are over, then he sees an open window, goes through, but does not take anything. Even when, later in the book, he’s almost caught, burglary has become like an addiction he can’t give up. There’s always just one more time. Eventually, “it came to him that he was a cat burglar because he was disappointed in himself…” (p. 77)

His sister, Bess, gets Ernest a job at the BBC, the workings of which the author conveys from experience. Another theme in the novel is celebrity influence on the public. Previously, as part of his school’s debating club, Ernest had criticized and pointed to similarities in the public school system and the prison system. He was labelled a pansy and a socialist. Once he became a well-known radio announcer, he would get applause in speeches for the same views he was derided in his youth for espousing. He admitted, though, that the applause was really for his voice. When Ernest’s name is connected to several places that are burgled, his celebrity shields him from serious scrutiny. Inspector Hood has difficulty considering him a suspect, while Mrs. Hood is eager to meet the famed announcer.

A significant portion of the novel deals with marital relations: between Bisham and his second wife, Marjorie, as well as each of them with their former spouses. Marjorie’s first marriage, less than a month after the death of her father, was to Captain Bud, an older man who spent much of her money at pubs and on other women. She fled that marriage, but Bud refused her divorce until three years later under the charge of abandonment.

Ernest “met his first dangerous woman” (p. 37), a 16-year-old neighbor, Violet. They talk across the fence, where Violet always stands near a manure pile for her family’s garden. Later, after trying to sneak out of her house at night, he tumbles down the stairs, waking the household, and is hit by her angry father. Violet is sent away by her family.

Ernest then meets his future first wife on a bus, 21-year-old Celia, known as “Seal.” “He didn’t even yet know he was a person who did things he only thought he wanted to do.” (p. 54) Bess urges him against Celia, which has the opposite effect, although he accepts responsibility for the marriage. Seal begins sleeping with other men but uses a woman friend to lure Ernest into a hotel room, so Seal can serve him with divorce papers on the false charge of infidelity.

Bess then introduces Ernest to her friend Marjorie. Unlike the younger Violet and Seal, Marjorie seems to be about the same age as Ernest. The resulting marriage had affection and mutual respect, but neither was initially in love with the other. However, when Marjorie is surprised to find a revolver in Ernest’s room, she wonders if he is in the secret service, and is more convinced when she later finds the gun missing. That thrilling discovery makes her fall in love with her husband because he “was not the mere automaton he pretended to be.” (p. 96) As Ernest fears that finally he may be caught and sent to prison, he realizes that he is in love with Marjorie. Marjorie had sought security in marriage, but wanted excitement. Ernest had sought excitement in his burglaries, but realized he wanted the security of his marriage.

As the story unfolds the action becomes more intense. Ernest begins making mistakes resulting in humorous chase scenes reminiscent of cinematic screwball comedies of the 1930s and ‘40s.

Will Ernest be caught? Will the jewels get to Russia? Will Marjorie find out she’s married to a burglar? Read, and find out!

Edith Caroline Rivett

Born in Middlesex, England, Edith Caroline Rivett (1894-1958) was the author of 78 mystery novels from 1931 until her death in 1958, most (51) under the pseudonym of E. C. R. Lorac (“Carol” spelled backward). She also published under the names Carol Carnac, Mary Le Bourne, and Carol Rivett. Some of her best work has recently been republished as part of the excellent British Library Crime Classics series. Her stories often feature the suave and savvy Scotsman, Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald of Scotland Yard, London.

Besides well-constructed plots, one of the pleasures of Rivett’s prose is the description of the people and places of mid-20th-century England, both city and countryside. Checkmate to Murder and Murder by Matchlight place readers amidst the dangerous blackout conditions of World War Two London. Fire in the Thatch and Murder in the Mill Race are set in Devonshire in southwest England, while Fell Murder unfolds in Lancashire in the northwest. The latter opens with a lush description of the landscape:

The River Lune wound its serpentine curves across the wide flood plane [sic]: beneath the clear September sky the water shone blue, flowing out to Morecambe Bay, whose golden sands gleamed palely in the western distance. On the opposite side of the valley the ground rose in a series of ridges, wooded in places, but in the main showing the chequered carpet of farmland … on the farther side … the fell was clothed in heather, its fragrance heavy with the sweetness of honey … [Below was] the rough pasture, in which bracken and bramble and bilberry mingled, sloped down to the richer pasture of the lower levels.

These Names Make Clues (ECR Lorac, 1937)
Bats in the Belfry: A London Mystery (ECR Lorac, 1937)
Checkmate to Murder: A Second World War Mystery (ECR Lorac, 1944)
Fell Murder (ECR Lorac, 1944)
Murder by Matchlight (ECR Lorac, 1945)
Fire in the Thatch: A Devon Mystery (ECR Lorac, 1946)
Murder in the Mill-Race: A Devon Mystery (ECR Lorac, 1952)
Crossed Skis: An Alpine Mystery (Carol Carnac, 1952)
Two-Way Murder (ECR Lorac, 2021, posthumous first edition)