Julian Symons: 13 books

A likeable but rather hapless young man decides he’s tired of small-time games and attempts to break into the big league. However, he finds himself woefully out of his depth and ends up caught out in an ingenious back-firing murder conspiracy. Entertaining and full of suspense, Symons’ plot has enough twists to keep you guessing right until the final thrilling conclusion.

Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder 'Cleverly told ... brilliant character work and plotting up to the usual Symons standard.' —Observer 'An intriguing puzzle centered on identity...' —Publishers Weekly Lady Wainwright presides over the gothic gloom at Belting,...

Gilbert Welton’s life changed one breakfast time – his wife, Virginia, announced she was leaving him. Perhaps not the expected beginning of a comedy, but Symons employs his customary skill and brilliant wit to reveal the funny side of the tale. The result is a hilarious and riotous look at the life of a very ordinary middle-aged man.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARTIN EDWARDS 'One of our most ingenious and stylish home-grown crime novelists' — Spectator 'A book to delight every puzzle-suspense enthusiast' — New York Times John Wilkins meets a beautiful, irresistible girl, and his world is turned upside down. Looking...

‘Count Dracula meets Bonnie Parker. What will they do together? The vampire you’d hate to love, sinister and debonair, sinks those eye teeth into Bonnie’s succulent throat.’ Is this the beginning of a sadistic relationship or simply an extract from a psychopath’s diary? Either way it marks...

Bill Hunter, TV personality, made his living by asking the rich and famous difficult and highly personal questions. But when the tables were turned and he found himself being asked about his own rather murky past, he wasn’t quite so sure of himself. Out of a job and little hope of finding another,...

The office party was in full swing so no one heard the shot – fired at close range through the back of Lionel Hargreaves, elder son of the founder of Hargreaves Advertising Agency. The killer left only one clue – a pair of yellow gloves – but it looked almost as if he had wanted them to be found....

Arthur Brownjohn has never quite got anything right. Whatever he does, it always seems to go more than a little awry. The same could be said for the murder of his wife – a bungled, inferior affair despite his having consulting all the experts in the field of killings, executions and dastardly deeds....

Small-time actor, Sheridan Haynes, had a rather unhealthy preoccupation with Sherlock Holmes. So when the chance came for him to play the famous detective in a TV series, it seemed his dreams had come true. And when London was plagued by a series of unsolved murders, well it seemed only natural for...

When a girl turns up dead in a Mayfair mews, the police want to write it off as just another murdered prostitute, but Superintendent Manners isn’t quite so sure. He is convinced that the key to the crime lies in 'The Dell' – an affluent suburban housing estate. And in 'The Dell' lives Solomon Grundy. Could he have killed the girl? So Superintendent Manners thinks.

A purchase at a second-hand bookshop seems an innocent enough event. Tony Shelton hadn’t expected it to be anything but that – and he certainly hadn’t expected it to throw him head first into the world of violence, blackmail and robbery. For it becomes clear that the book has a rather higher price than he paid for it – a price that was to lead to murder.

Anderson was a bored, unhappy sales executive longing for something to liven up his monotonous life. But perhaps he wished too hard because not long later he found his wife lying dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs. An accident of course – so why wouldn’t the police believe him?

Crime-writer Charles Applegate decided to set his second novel in a progressive school. Taking a job at Bramley Hall to see what such a school was like ‘from the inside,’ Applegate found to his dismay that he was expected to do rather more than just people-watch. And when a murder took place on...