Christopher Bush: 42 books

As Travers’s finger touched the dead hand, he felt the warmth, and wondered if the man were still alive. Then he saw the knife that stuck sideways in the ribs. It was three years after Ludovic Travers had acquired a painting by the famous contemporary French artist, Henri Larne, that a mysterious...

“If you don’t think I’m taking a liberty in saying so, my opinion is that he was knocked down first and hanged after!” Ludovic Travers starts an investigation of unnatural death by means of an automobile mishap on a rural road. His associate Superintendent Wharton is investigating a...

Travers turned to Wharton. “I ask you, George, as a man of the world—do schoolmasters and mistresses have souls full of glamour and passion and intrigue? Are they torn by the same emotions that rend people like us?” At first the old schoolmaster’s poisoning was judged a suicide. But...

Old Hunt slithered in the most amazing way and then fell to the floor. He lay between the seats, face upwards. Ludovic Travers is on his way by train from Toulon to Marignac. Along for the ride are several suspicious characters, two of whom die en route. Although the murders seem at first unrelated,...

“It was some sort of sudden death?” Travers made a face. “It certainly was sudden. I’ll say it’s ten to one it was murder.” Ludovic Travers is asked by an old school friend, Henry Dryden, to investigate the cause of the agitation in the formerly placid village of Bableigh...

What was I to be this time? A Commandant again of a Prisoner of War Camp? Was I to get a sedentary job at the War Office itself, and begin the slow process of fossilisation? Was I due for some wholly new job of which the rank and file had never even heard? As it turned out, I most certainly was. Ludovic...

“Murder’s my job, not parish politics.” Ludovic Travers, the unofficial expert of Scotland Yard, pairs with his friend, Superintendent Wharton, to dig deeply into an East Anglian murder. Interwoven are the thefts of antique rugs and pictures from old churches, and in putting together...

““This is something desperately secret,” she said. “Something I want you to do for me . . . But I can’t tell you now. It’s something I’m frightened about.” Ludovic Travers, consulting specialist for Scotland Yard, receives two invitations at once to visit Beechingford. One comes...

“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...

He was deader than last year’s hit-song. At the side of the skull was where the bullet had done its work. Four detectives? Surely things must have come to quite a pass if the well-tried team of Ludovic Travers and George Wharton has to be doubled in order to crack even the most baffling case....

“Is he bad, sir?” “Worse than that,” I said. “In fact, he’s dead.” Ludovic Travers, consulting specialist for Scotland Yard, is on a fortnight’s well-earned leave in London from his military posting. Anticipating relaxation, he is instead thrown into a fresh mystery by...

“Good God!” I was staring like a lunatic. “Murdered, you say? When?” “Less than half an hour ago, sir.” TRAVERS: “I don’t know why I should call this case that of the Magic Mirror for there’s nothing in it reminiscent of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” even if...

“It’s about a murder. . . . Here. Five Oaks, they call it. . . . A man, he’s murdered. . . . Oh, no, it isn’t a joke. I wish it was. . . . I said I wished it was. . . . You’ll send someone at once?” Ludovic Travers, still in the army, is obliged to combine his military duties with...

Cities both near and far communicate in a variety of ways. Travel between, through, and among urban centers initiates contact, and cities themselves are sites of ever-changing cultural and historical encounters. Predictable and surprising challenges and opportunities arise when city borders are crossed,...