J S Fletcher: 108 books

It's old Mr. Bartle, sir, he whispered. He's in your room there -- dead! Dead? exclaimed Eldrick. Dead! Pratt shook his head again. He came up not so long after you'd gone, sir, he said. Everybody had gone but me -- I was just going. Wanted to see you about something I don't know what. He was very...

“I’ll never rest until I’ve seen his murderer hanged!” But Dick Blake didn’t know what he was letting himself in for. Not only did he have to contend with the strangely complicated network of intrigue which surrounded the passionate, neurotic Malvery clan, but more baffling still,...

From the time that he had taken up the study of astronomy as a pleasant means of spending his newly acquired leisure, and had built himself a small but well-equipped observatory as an adjunct to his house, which stood on one of the highest slopes of Leith Hill, Mequillen had formed the habit of rising...

Of the many thousands of utterly ordinary-looking individuals who journeyed into the city from various suburban retreats every workday morning Limmis was, by a long way, the most ordinary and least likely to attract attention. He was the sort of young man whom no one would have ever troubled to look...

Excerpt: "At seven of the clock I turned away from the window, where, for a full hour, I had stood flattening my nose against the pane in a vain attempt to see something of interest in the dripping garden or the dank meadows outside. Sir Nicholas moved in his deep chair by the fire and then groaned,...

I think my first notion was that this was the cry of some animal, trapped close by, or seized by another. But on the instant it came again, and I knew it then for the cry, desperate, terrorised, of a man in deadly fear and peril. I had sprung to my elbow at the first sound: at the second I looked...

     Presently came along another Corporation official, whom Bunning knew as well as he knew the Mayor, an official who, indeed, was known all over the town, and familiar to everybody, from the mere fact that he was always attired in a livery the like of which he and his predecessors had been...

Who murdered the man found roped to the gibbet on Gallows Tree Point? Who stole Miss Ellingham’s famous Kang-He Vase? What was Uncle Joseph doing at Middlebourne? From the date that old scoundrel turned up, trouble began—murder, robbery, and abduction; trouble in which Ben Heckitt and Pepita played prominent and perilous parts.

All the folk who lived in No. 85 had gone to bed by that time, and the landlady, knowing that there was no late-comer to arrive, had locked and bolted her front door. It took Jennison a minute or two to turn the key and draw the two bolts, and all the time something was pulsing and throbbing in his...

Dr. Hextall receives a call in the early hours of the morning to attend the beautiful Paquita Tress, who has accidentally wounded herself while attempting to shoot Kesteven, a friend of her brother Darrell. Paquita is convinced that Kesteven is not only a bad influence on her brother, but actively...

An elderly sailor is found murdered. When authorities attempt to contact his brother to inform him of the bad news, they discover a shocking coincidence: he too had met his end—the victim of foul play—the very same night. Is there a connection between the two deaths? An intrepid detective tries his best to crack the case.

Pippany Webster, handy-man and only labourer to Abel Perris, the small farmer who dragged a bare living out of Cherry-trees, the little holding at the top of the hill above Martinsthorpe, came lazily up the road from the village one May afternoon, leading a horse which seemed...

A wealthy businessman is found dead in his study, but conflicting forensic evidence regarding the time and manner of his death raises more questions than it settles. With a sizable estate hanging in the balance and clues indicating foul play, a persistent detective endeavors to unravel the mystery.

Excerpt: "It may well and fittingly be complained that of late years we English folk have shown an unpardonable spirit of curiosity about things which do not concern us. We have brought into being more than one periodical publication full of gossip about the private life and affairs of folk of...