"It is London in the early 1960s and Teddy Bean is making a name for himself as a private detective.
However, his personal problems are taking over, with his brother, John, only slowly recovering from a heart attack and his wife, Pearl, dying in a car accident. Added to this, he takes on a difficult case involving a woman presumably drowned at sea by her husband.
Teddy needs help while his brother is incapacitated and finds it in his friend, ex-Detective Inspector Tony Halliday. With the added support of their secretary Muriel, the Bean Detective Agency is open for business once more!"
"Once again we are in the cosy, but slightly scary, world of private eye Teddy Bean. It is 1959 and into his life comes a new client, Brian Amory, who claims he is being followed.
Meanwhile, in a quiet leafy street in a north London suburb a woman is brutally murdered in her hallway. Teddy becomes unofficially involved in the case when Amory’s wife finds the murder weapon in the wardrobe and another client brings him an incriminating letter.
And then, one cold December night, Teddy unwittingly walks into danger when he finally unmasks the murderer."
"In 1913 suffragette Emily St John-Carstairs and her husband disappear from their South London home under mysterious circumstances. The scene shifts to 1958, where Teddy Bean, a former juggler turned private detective, is hired by Emily's sister to find her.
As the story unfolds between the two decades, we follow the fortunes of an unprincipled parlour maid, an unemployed alcoholic cook and a mysterious gentleman known only as ‘Bob’, all of whom are in some way linked to Emily’s fate. Added into the mix, is the ex-juggler's schizophrenic, knife-wielding wife but what part does she play in Emily’s story?"
"A ghost with a secret to tell … but who will hear her?
Rev Bernard Paltoquet becomes involved in another psychic mystery when a young woman, Alice Troy, is murdered and Howard Drake, one of Bernard’s parishioners, is convicted of the crime and sentenced to hang. However, thanks to a mongrel dog, Bernard and his psychic doctor friend, Robbie MacTavish, are alerted to Alice’s unquiet spirit at her graveside.
But time is running out for Drake, and it is only Robbie who can help him. However, he is convinced the verdict is safe…."
"Twins sometimes run in families; in the Fentimans’ case, they positively stampede.
In 1937, Robert Fentiman is hanged for the murder of a barmaid. Twenty years later his ghost claims his innocence, and Rev Bernard Paltoquet is called on to help clear his name by the dead man’s son, Carl.
As Bernard and his pal Robbie begin their investigations, by a cruel twist of fate, another barmaid is murdered, who turns out to be the daughter of the first barmaid. And, by another twist of fate, Carl Fentiman is the main suspect.
A professional medium, with an unconventional use for a crystal ball, is called in to help solve both crimes, but she is as baffled as Bernard and Robbie. Meanwhile Bernard’s housekeeper, Mrs Aitch, has deserted the vicarage for a mysterious suitor…."
"This is another slice of murder, mystery and psychic phenomena in the Reverend Paltoquet series.
Just what happened to two young women who disappeared from the Sunnyside Guest House in Blackpool just after the First World War? Their fate has remained a mystery for many years, despite attempts by the husband of the first woman and the prospective husband of the second to find out.
In 1957, Reverend Bernard Paltoquet and his good friend Dr Robbie MacTavish turn up at the very same Blackpool guest house for a fortnight’s rest and recuperation. Their summer break, however, proves very far from restful or recuperative. Robbie is visited in the night by a ghostly bed companion, and another guest, young curate Oliver Johnson, sees a ghost bleed to death in front of his eyes. The scarred landlady of Sunnyside has a secret or two of her own, as well.
Professional medium, Anna Judge, who we first met in the previous novel in the series, THE DARK SIDE OF THE MIRROR, arrives to try and contact the ghosts. However, her powers are waning and it is only the Reverend Nigel Soames who can help. Soames is a colleague of Bernard’s and is staying at the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool at the same time as Bernard and Robbie are staying at the much less expensive Sunnyside. He is an obese and pompous man (described by Anna Judge irreverently as the ‘fat vicar’) who turns out to be the unlikely and very reluctant conduit for the restless spirits that haunt the Blackpool guest house.
Bernard and Robbie, meanwhile, try to enjoy their holiday, but Robbie is spooked by ghosts and Bernard is unsettled by the attentions of another guest at the Sunnyside, the charming and beautiful Celia Pargeter."
"It is winter in the Cotswolds and a suspicious death has occurred. Psychic medium ‘Madame Zelda’ is found dead on Christmas morning, an open box of chocolates by her side. DCI Hayley Pascal and her new oppo, DS Artie Frobisher, have little to occupy themselves over the dead time that is Christmas at Oxford Police Station, until the chocolates are found to contain a poisonous substance. Cold cases can wait. They now have a new case to solve: one of MURDER.
There are no shortage of suspects: the victim’s feckless husband Charlie, her simple-minded son Luke and Grant Vaughan, the man she has cut out of his mother’s will. Added to these complications, Hayley Pascal is missing her daughter, who lives with her ex-husband in Paris and who has promised to visit her at New Year, but doesn’t. Here is a straightforward murder mystery in the tradition of Agatha Christie, but it is also a story of ordinary people driven to drastic measures through loneliness, misery and the need for revenge."
"Sometimes, the only enemy a man has is his own …
Jed Parks, Bernard Paltoquet’s new gardener, has an unusual psychic gift: he can see people’s auras. A black aura is a death sentence. He also has a guilty secret.
Having helped to cover up two murders, he lives in fear his past will come back to haunt him. Thus, when Lady Mountjoy, his former employer and lover, turns up telling him he is the father of her son, he is torn between his old life and his new.
Bernard and his friend Robbie become involved in Jed’s plight, but they are powerless to prevent the tragedy which follows…."
"The year is 1935. Art connoisseur-cum-private investigator Felix Underwood is asked to find out what happened to Reggie Soper, a young solicitor who disappeared without trace 15 years previously.
Determined to help Charlotte Soper find her missing father, his investigations take him from the comfort of his Bond Street art emporium to the wilds of Yorkshire where he finds his presence among the village locals not entirely welcome.
Undaunted by the wall of silence surrounding him, he continues his search, finding a friend and helpmeet in Mavis, the landlady of the inn where he lodges. Together, they uncover a nightmare; the full horror of which nothing has prepared them for."
"‘Oh dear, what can the matter be ....’Why does a woman keep falling from the Big Wheel at a South London fair?
Hallucination or something more sinister? It seems that Robbie MacTavish and Mrs Harper’s great-nephew Alfie are the only two people who can see her.
Meanwhile, Rev. Bernard Paltoquet is asked to investigate a 60-year-old mystery, when the Vicarage plumber asks for his help in tracing his long-lost grandmother. As Robbie tries to discover who the falling woman is and what she wants, Bernard begins to uncover the tragic events surrounding Albert’s grandmother’s fate."
"The date 1888; the place Whitechapel in London’s East End. Yes, it is the time of the unholy, but mercifully brief, reign of Jack the Ripper.
Prostitutes are being viciously murdered by an unknown assailant and, as the murders become ever more horrific, young Polish immigrant, Jacek Kaminski, is gradually suspected of being the perpetrator. He even begins to suspect so himself, being subject to blackouts during which he has no recollection of what he has done.
But can it be true? Can he ever be sure? We follow Jacek’s trials and tribulations in this highly fanciful story of just one possible solution to the Ripper case."
"A serial killer is on the loose, going round strangling women with their own tights and removing their right shoes. Various suspects turn up but, with no obvious motive, the police are impotent and the murders continue. The only link they can find concerns a ‘religious’ meeting, regularly held at the local civic centre, which was attended by at least two of the victims.
Amateur detective Samantha Powers is dating Jack Parkinson who, it transpires, is seeing another woman behind her back. He comes under suspicion when that young woman becomes another victim of the strangler as it seems he was the last one to see her alive.
There are other suspects, including a vicious, depraved copper and a creepy vicar. As the story unravels, the real culprit remains hidden until almost the last page."
