Showing results by author "M. J. Trow" in All Categories

It is 1891, and London is still reeling from the horror of the unsolved Ripper murders when Inspector Lestrade is sent to the Isle of Wight to investigate a strange corpse found walled up in Shanklin Chine. It is merely the beginning of a series of brutal and bizarre killings so apparently random, that only a warped genius could be responsible.

It is 1879, and the young Detective Sergeant Sholto Lestrade has his work cut out for him as he investigates mysterious goings-on at "Lord" George Sanger's Circus. First, the best juggler in Europe is shot in full view of a thousand people. Then Huge Hughie the dwarf dies an agonising death whilst performing the Ether Trick. Finally, the Great Bolus dies by swallowing the wrong sword. And all of this comes after two bodies are found with multiple slashes.

Peter Maxwell is delighted when an old college friend asks him to be the historical adviser on a film being made on the coast near Leighford. Dreams of becoming the next Spielberg soon founder when he discovers that the world of film is pretty much the same as the world of education - full of incompetents and backstabbers. Unfortunately, shooting becomes all too literal when the director takes a musket ball to the head. With one of his students implicated, another off on a jealous rant, and almost everyone out to get everyone else, Maxwell finds telling the truth from fiction to be more difficult than even he could have imagined.

May 1588. With Elizabeth I’s court rocked by stories of an imminent invasion and one of his key undercover agents missing, Sir Francis Walsingham despatches Kit Marlowe to the Isle of Wight: the first line of defence against the approaching Spanish Armada. Marlowe finds the Islanders a strange and suspicious lot, with their own peculiar customs and dialect. But is there reason to doubt their loyalty to the Crown? And is the Island really haunted, as some believe? Of one thing Marlowe is certain: it’s no ghost behind the series of violent and inexplicable deaths which plague the region.

July 1586. Sir Francis Walsingham has dispatched Kit Marlowe to the English College, the school for exiled priests in Rheims, where he suspects the Catholic traitor Matthew Baxter is hiding, the only one of the Babington plotters to have escaped the spymaster's net. Infiltrating the college undercover, Marlowe learns that the community has been rocked by a series of unexplained and violent deaths.

The murder of Sarah Culdrose is just the first in a series of mysterious and often gruesome deaths that London's subterranean trains will witness. The deceased - all women - pile up quickly. There is a maniac at large, and Inspector Sholto Lestrade of Scotland Yard is detailed to work with the Railway Police. The detective plunges through a tangled web of deviants to solve a string of murders so heinous that every woman in London fears for her life. Will the London Transport System survive? Or will Lestrade run out of steam?

With girlfriend DS Jacquie Carpenter back at work, and baby Nolan rapidly growing into a feisty toddler, Peter "Mad Max" Maxwell, Head of Sixth Form at Leightford High, hires an au pair. But one afternoon Max returns home to find that the exotic Juanita seems to have disappeared into thin air. Meanwhile, two walkers are surprised and disturbed when their Border collie digs up an arm on Dead Man's Point.

As Head of Sixth Form at Leighford High and a new father, Peter "Mad Max" Maxwell is a very busy man. Despite this, he still finds time for some amateur sleuthing, even though his policewoman "Significant Other", DS Jacquie Carpenter, has decided that, this time, he's leaving any murder investigations to her. But how can he refuse when the school photographer asks for his help after accidentally photographing a murder on the beach?

History teacher Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell, a bit of a maverick, is sent on a short-term swap with another teacher at a nearby private school, Grimonds.

It is a puzzle that has faced Scotland Yard from the beginning - whose was the limbless body found among the foundations? And in the murderous world of Sholto Lestrade, one question is invariably followed by another - what do a lecherous rector, a devious speculator and a plagiarist novelist all have in common? Answer: they're all dead - each of them with a bloody space where his head used to be. And six others are to join them before our intrepid inspector brings the perpetrator to book.

The first fatality in a bizarre series of killings is a Captain of the Second Life Guards, found in the River Thames with a war medal wedged between his teeth. Then a dead Egyptologist is discovered with a scarab clamped between his molars. When a young soldier is found dead in the saddle (this time a locket is the dying mouthful), Sholto Lestrade is forced to impersonate a barrack-room lawyer.

Lestrade had never been arrested before, although he had often had his collar felt by unsuspecting constables. But now a woman has died in his arms in a London pea-souper, and he is not only arrested but facing the drop. Millicent Millichip, in the wrong place at the right time, is neither the first nor only in a series of murders by someone so cunning that all the brains of the Yard can’t catch them - and this despite the calling card left helpfully at every scene.

Recovering from a broken leg after his ignominious fall from the Titanic, Lestrade should have had a peaceful time convalescing. But an attempt on the life of his future father-in-law makes him realise that a policeman is never really off duty. What is particularly puzzling is the arrival of a letter which simply reads, "Four for the Gospel Makers", and it isn’t the first Lestrade has been sent. So begins one of Sholto Lestrade’s most mystifying cases, encompassing both the present and the past.

The wings that retired Superintendent Lestrade comes on are those of a de Haviland Hercules. The archaeologist Howard Carter has made the discovery of the century in the Valley of the Kings, but all around him men are dying. Lord Carnarvon, careless with his razor, falls prey to a mosquito bite. Alain le Clerk leaves the tomb in a hurry to die alone in the desert. Aaron G String, the railway magnate, blows his brains out yards from the tomb's entrance.

July 1585. Desperate to escape Sir Francis Walsingham's clutches and pursue his chosen career as a professional playwright, the young Christopher Marlowe abandons his Cambridge studies to join Lord Strange's men, a group of travelling players.

Lestrade’s detectives at Scotland Yard have promised him that 1910 is going to be a peaceful year. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out that way. His daughter, Emma, brings him news of a tragic boating accident and he is soon up to his neck in a series of vicious murders. On top of all this, Lestrade is roped in to help with the coronation of George V and Inspector Walter Dew needs help with the disappearance of a certain Belle Crippen.

April 1865. Having been an eyewitness to the assassination of President Lincoln, Matthew Grand, a former captain of the 3rd Cavalry of the Potomac, has come to London on an undercover assignment to hunt down the assassin's coconspirators. Ambitious young journalist Jim Batchelor has been charged with writing a feature article on the visiting American. Both men are distracted from their missions by the discovery of a body in London's Soho district.

Cambridge, 1583. About to graduate from Corpus Christi, the young Christopher Marlowe spends his days studying Virgil and Aristotle, and his nights carousing with old friends. But when one of them, Ralph Whittingside, is discovered lying dead in his King’s College room, mouth open in a silent scream, Marlowe refuses to accept the official verdict of suicide.

Inspector Lestrade is called upon to investigate the brutal death of Ralph Childers, MP. It is but the first in a series of perplexing murders that lead Lestrade around the country. The connection between the victims appears to be politics. Is someone trying to destroy the Government? It would seem so, particularly when a bomb is found in the Palace of Westminster. During his investigations Lestrade encounters some old and some new faces.

There is a new broom at Scotland Yard: Nimrod Frost. His first “little job” for Lestrade is to investigate the reported appearance of a lion in Cornwall. This is hardly a task for an Inspector. Yet even as Lestrade questions a witness, a man is reported dead - horrifically mauled. Having solved that case to his own satisfaction, Lestrade returns to London and to more suspicious deaths - all old men who should have died quietly in their sleep. Is there a connection? Lestrade's superiors discount his speculations....