A Shakespearean actor shuffles off his mortal coil in this "skillfully wrought" country-house mystery (The New York Times). Sir Henry Ancred, a celebrated Shakespearean actor, has arranged to have his portrait painted by Agatha Troy, wife of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. But when Ancred is killed at his own birthday party, leaving behind a family full of suspects, Troy's work ends and Inspector Alleyn's begins ...

On a ship traveling back to England, Miss Agatha Troy finds Inspector Roderick Alleyn tedious and dull; he thinks she's a bohemian cliché. They may be destined for romance, but there's a murder in the way: No sooner has Alleyn settled in to his mother's house, eager for a relaxing end to his vacation, than he gets a call that a model has been stabbed at the artists' community down the road. And the talented Miss Troy is one of the community's most...

Upper Quintern is the sort of Little English Village that is home mostly to the very rich and the servants who make their lives delightful. But Sybil Foster's life is not delightful; exhausted from her various family stresses-- a daughter, for instance, who wants to marry a man without a title! ? Sybil takes herself off to a local hotel that specializes in soothing shattered nerves. When she's killed, Inspector Alleyn has a real puzzler on his hands....

Did lovely Cara Quoyne get a whiff of the bitter almonds as she raised the goblet to her lips? We'll never know: With a single sip of prussic acid she transported herself to the Hereafter. Now Inspector Alleyn must investigate a murder at the House of the Sacred Flame, a rather quirky little religious sect in London where Cara was a novice. It seems that somebody was operating from very un-spiritual motivations ...

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, often drunk, and always over-interested in the nurses. Nor is the weather helping. A storm has killed the electrical power, leaving Alleyn, the soldiers, the...

Inspector Roderick Alleyn is a Scotland Yard detective whose aristocratic breeding gives him access to the elite and their crimes. This second set of elegant mysteries contains four episodes.

Superintendent Alleyn's old school chum, nicknamed the "Boomer," has become the president of the newly emerged African nation of Ng'ombwana, newly emerged in the wake of colonialism. Old school ties being what they are, his friend-making an official visit to London-insists that Alleyn handle his security, rather than Her Majesty's Special Branch. The Special Branch is not best pleased about this, as the Boomer is known to have some very deadly enemies,...