"Humorous cosy-crime caper from the author of the beloved, bestselling Vinyl Detective series in which a feisty, amoral book dealer uses her unique skills to solve fiendish crimes, A love letter to Agatha Christie murder mysteries and classic whodunnits."
"The Vinyl Detective plunges into the world of Italian movie soundtrack music in his eighth adventure that is sure to delight those who love whimsical British cosy crime. Expect laughs, LPs, cats and the return of fan favourites, Nevada, Tinkler, Stinky Stanmer and more.
Some of the greatest (and grooviest) music ever committed to vinyl has come out of Italy.
And some of the greatest music to come out of Italy is the rich diversity of soundtracks composed for the indigenous film industry – particularly for gruesome thrillers known as ‘gialli’. The maestros who composed for these include Ennio Morricone, Piero Piccioni, Armand Trovajoli…
And Valerius Passeri.
He was one of the finest composers of this genre and his original LPs from his 1960s heyday fetch a fortune from collectors.
No one disputes that Passeri was a genius…
The argument is whether or not he was a murderer.
Passeri’s mistress was killed in London in the 1960s while he was here on location for a film shoot. There was never enough hard evidence to lead to a prosecution but the stink of scandal has never gone away.
Passeri’s granddaughter Chloe has come to England to hire the Vinyl Detective. She wants him to negotiate for a collection of her father’s LPs. The mastertapes of the albums have been destroyed and she needs immaculate vinyl copies to provide the source for a series of reissues – Chloe’s mission is to preserve her grandfather’s heritage.
And also, it transpires, to clear his name.
So it turns out that the Vinyl Detective’s real job will be to find out who actually committed a murder – over half a century ago, in Swinging London.
But the real killer is not enchanted with the notion of being exposed. And, having killed once before, they see no problem in doing so again."
"Humorous cosy-crime caper in which a feisty, amoral book dealer uses her unique skills to catch a murderer, desperate to hide the secrets kept by the yoga-obsessed staff and students of a West London ashram.
When a set of rare, impossible-to-find yoga books are stolen from a West London ashram, its leaders turn to Cordelia, the paperback sleuth, to recover them – a set-up that's a little awkward as they've previously barred her from yoga classes for selling marijuana to their students. But what begins as a hunt for missing paperbacks soon becomes a murder investigation as those involved with the ashram can't seem to stop dropping down dead – murdered with a whisky bottle to the head or a poisoned curry. Can Cordelia work out who the killer is and bring them to justice before they bring an end to her sleuthing for good."
"The Vinyl Detective plunges into the world of electronic dance music in his seventh adventure.
Expect laughs, LPs, cats and the return of fan favourites, Nevada, Tinkler, Stinky Stanmer and more.
The Vinyl Detective enters the fraught and frenzied realm of electronic dance music.
Lambert Ramkin aka Imperium Dart, techno trickster and ambient music wizard of the 1990s, has gone walkabout, disappearing from his rather palatial home in Kent.
This isn't the first time he's pulled a vanishing act, but he's never been gone so long before and his wife — wives, actually; it's complicated — are worried and hire the Vinyl Detective to find the old rascal.
They theorise that wherever the missing man is, he won't be able to resist turning up at a record fair somewhere in search of 12-inch white label acid house singles, which he collects compulsively.
And no one knows the world of record fairs better than the Vinyl Detective.
They're not wrong…"
"Cordelia knows books. An addict-turned-dealer of classic paperbacks, when she's not spending her days combing the charity shops and jumble sales of suburban London for valuable collector's items, she's pining for the woman of her dreams and nimbly avoiding her landlord's demands for rent.
The most elusive prize of all, her white whale, has surfaced — a set of magnificent, vintage Sleuth Hound crime novels. Gorgeous, and as rare as they come. Just one problem. They're not for sale. Still, that won't stop a resourceful woman like Cordelia… One burglary later, the books are hers. Unfortunately, the man she's just robbed turns out be one of London's most dangerous gangsters, and now he's on her trail and out for blood.
Cordelia's best laid plans to pay the rent and woo the object of her affections start to fall apart, and she realises she may have placed herself in the crosshairs of a villain torn straight from the pages of her treasured novels."
"The Vinyl Detective plunges into the world of death metal in his sixth adventure. Expect laughs, LPs, cats and the return of fan favourites, Nevada, Tinkler, Stinky Stanmer and more.
The Vinyl Detective goes Scandi noir in his sixth adventure. Disfigured corpse. Check. Grotesque snowman. Check. Headless animals. Check. But in fact the killer is taking their cue not from Scandi noir fiction but another popular Scandinavian export – death metal."
"The Vinyl Detective goes punk in his fifth hilarious adventure.
Semi-retired god of rock guitar and local poseur Erik Make Loud has got himself a new girlfriend. Helene Hilditch - formerly known as Howlin' Hellbitch - of all-girl punk outfit Blue Tits is a mean guitarist, someone is trying to kill her. With a rare pressing of their first album to find, the Vinyl Detecive and Nevada are soon called into to help but this time the question is who isn't a suspect. With a trail of grudges behind her, the list of people who could want Helene dead includes her ex-bandmates, their former producer turned record label mogul, the TV presenter that Helene got fired - even their old roadie could be in on it.
'Like an old 45rpm record, this book crackles with brilliance.' DAVID QUANTICK on Written in Dead Wax.
“Hilarious and thrilling.” BEN AARONOVITCH."
"It's all Tinkler's fault. If it weren't for his obsession with the 1970s band, Black Dog, none of this would have happened. The members of Black Dog performed an infamous publicity stunt on Halig Island: they burned a million dollars on an enormous bonfire. But the stunt backfired, splitting the band for good, and increasing the value of their final, recalled album tenfold. The Vinyl Detective and Nevada accept the challenge to hunt a copy down for Tinkler, but soon realize that the search is going to be their most dangerous yet. Narrowly avoiding a killing spree, negotiating deranged fans, and being pursued by hack celebrity Stinky Stamner, they discover that perhaps all was not as it seemed on Halig Island—and that in the embers of that fire are clues of a motive for murder…
The fourth book in the hilarious and enthralling Vinyl Detective mystery series."
"When one of his cats accidentally discovers a rare Victory Disc, the Vinyl Detective and his girlfriend Nevada are whisked into the world of big band swing music, and a mystery that began during the Second World War. Hired to track down the rest of the highly sought-after recordings of the Flare Path Orchestra, our hero will discover that the battles of the last world war aren't over yet. And if all this sounds simple, it's only because we haven't mentioned drive-by shootings, murderous neo-Nazis, or that slight case of being buried alive…"
"When a mint copy of the final album by Valerian - England's great lost rock band of the 1960s, surfaces, all hell breaks loose. Finding this record triggers a chain of events culminating in our hero learning the true fate of the singer Valerian, who died under equivocal circumstances just after... or was it just before the abduction of her two-year-old son? Along the way, the Vinyl Detective finds out what happened to the missing child, and it wasn't what anyone expected, or wanted, to hear."
"He is a record collector and a connoisseur of vinyl, hunting out rare and elusive LPs. His business card describes him as the Vinyl Detective and some people take this more literally than others. For example, the beautiful, mysterious woman who wants to pay him a large sum of money to find a priceless lost recording on behalf of an extremely wealthy, yet shadowy, client. And so begins a painful and dangerous odyssey in search of the rarest jazz record of them all…"
"Welcome aboard the space vessel Vancouver. Its mission: to guard a vast shipment of grain from Earth to the planet Safenesthome. It's Captain is called Ace. She seems a little unsure of herself. In fact, some might almost think she was new to the job..."
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