Felony Mayhem Press: 138 books

It’s 1972, and while Elton John and Alice Cooper may be topping the charts, Inspector Alleyn’s latest case is set in that most gloriously retro environment: The country-house party. A Christmas party, as it happens, where Agatha Troy is enjoying the local holiday pageant and also painting the host’s...

We do love a man in a uniform, but the “Constables” in question are not policemen but paintings – the landscapes, specifically, of the 19th-century painter John Constable. Agatha Troy (the artist wife, you’ll remember, of Inspector Alleyn) has a special fondness for Constable’s work, so...

Ng’ombwana is a (fictional) African nation to have emerged in the wake of colonialism; as it happens, its President is Inspector Alleyn’s old school chum, the “Boomer.” Old school ties being what they are, the Boomer – making an official visit to London – insists that Alleyn handle his security,...

Ngaio Marsh was, among other things, a well-respected theatrical producer (having started out as an actress), and her passion for and knowledge of the theater was displayed in many of Alleyn’s adventures. In Enter a Murderer, the Inspector has been invited to an opening night, a new play in which...

Ricky Alleyn, who first appeared in Spinsters in Jeopardy, is now 21 and has taken himself to a secluded island to write a novel. Or think about writing a novel. Or look for distractions so he can avoid writing a novel. The distractions abound, mostly in the form of colorful local characters, so all...

Familiarity doesn’t always breed contempt. If it did, none of us would read series fiction. “Noooo,” we’d whine. “Not another book about Inspector Alleyn!” When it comes to Ngaio Marsh – and in truth, one or two other writers we could mention – familiarity has tended mostly to breed delight.And...

Inspector Alleyn just wants to write a letter to his wife, but World War II, for one, keeps intruding. It’s war-work, after all, that has brought Alleyn to this seedy hospital in New Zealand’s hinterlands, and it’s the war that has left the hospital swimming in convalescing soldiers – noisy,...

Like half the young men in London, Leo Stanhope is rich in dreams but poor of pocket. He dreams of making a home with Maria, the prostitute he loves. He dreams of a life far from the blood and stink of the morgue where he works. And he dreams of a world where no one cares what is tucked between his...

Third in the Henry Gamadge series. One hundred years earlier, a beautiful guest had disappeared from the wealthy Vauregard household, along with the second volume of the collected works of Byron. Improbably, both guest and book seem to have reappeared, neither having aged a day. The elderly Mr. Vauregard...

Take one grand house, stuff it with staff, and make it home to several generations. If they send their sons to Oxford and occasionally knock each other off, you've got a country-house murder mystery, the delight of classic English crime fiction. But if the boys are at Yale, odds are that you're reading...

Like the rest of this cracklingly witty, fast-paced series, Slate is set in an exuberantly pre-AIDS world, when to be young, attractive, and the owner of a successful gay bar was a dandy thing indeed. Clarisse has hauled her dainty posterior off to law school, Valentine has opened Boston’s grooviest...

Last in the delightfully funny Valentine-and-Lovelace series, Canary finds our two protagonists a bit the worse for wear. Their bar is losing money, largely because someone keeps insisting on leaving dead bodies around. The cops, this is the 1980s, after all, are not wildly interested in the gay community’s...

Michael McDowell wrote three Jack & Susan books in which Jack & Susan, always 27 years old, meet, acquire a dog, and solve a crime in different decades. In 1913, Jack and Susan are living just across the river from glamorous Fort Lee, New Jersey, home of the exciting new film industry. But...

Michael McDowell wrote three Jack & Susan books in which Jack & Susan, always 27 years old, meet, acquire a dog, and solve a crime in different decades. In 1953 Jack is engaged to be engaged to a margarine heiress, and Susan has a dark and mysterious suitor, and New York is at its glamorous...