Death in the Quadrangle
By Eilís Dillon

When Professor Daly is called out of his comfortable retirement at Crane’s Court to deliver a series of lectures at his old college in Dublin, he is surprised to discover how little he has missed academia and how eccentric, not to say vicious, his former colleagues now seem to him. He soon learns he has another job to do: find out who has been sending death threats to Professor Bradley, the new and almost universally disliked president of the college. To this end he enlists the aid of his old friend Inspector Mike Kenney, who like the rest of his fellow Guards is terrified at the prospect of dealing with the egocentric faculty. First published in 1956, this third and final mystery by the author is a witty and perceptive look at professors behaving badly, a subject that as a faculty wife herself she had ample experience of.

Read more, and order this book!

Death and the Maiden
By Gladys Mitchell

Miss Priscilla Carmody and her niece Connie are dismayed when their overbearing second cousin Edris Tidson, a banana grower from the Canary Islands, arrives at their home uninvited with his much younger wife Crete and announces their intention to move in with them. They all go on holiday to Winchester, where Tidson is anxious to follow up reports of a naiad who has been spotted in the River Itchen. Then, shortly after their arrival, two boys are found murdered in the very area Tidson has been prowling. Mrs. Bradley, a friend of Miss Carmody, immediately begins investigating with the aid of her lively niece Laura and her old friend Detective Inspector David Gavin. First published in 1947, it’s generally ranked as one of Gladys Mitchell’s best works, and it richly reflects her love of the English countryside.

Read more, and order this book!

Sent to His Account
By Eilís Dillon

Miles de Cogan is an impoverished Dublin bookkeeper who is overjoyed to find that he has inherited the prosperous County Wicklow estate (and title) of his late cousin, a baronet. A kind and generous man, Miles decides to put some of his progressive ideas into practice and turn the village flour mill into a cooperative, a plan that’s enthusiastically welcomed by all involved, but it gets put on hold when his overbearing neighbor, Tom Reid, is murdered. Reid’s plans to build a roadhouse had incurred the wrath of everyone in Dangan, and when Inspector Pat Henley of the Irish Guards arrives on the scene, he finds more suspects than he can handle. Full of Irish wit and color, it’s this distinguished author’s second mystery, first published in 1954.

Read more, and order this book!

Death at Crane's Court
By Eilís Dillon

George Arrow is a bachelor of independent means who, when diagnosed with a weak heart, is urged to live out his days at Crane’s Court, a comfortable hotel on the Bay of Galway. On the train he chances to meets the hotel’s new owner, John Burden, who has just inherited the property and announces his intentions to shake things up a bit. And so he does. He quickly makes enemies of all the guests and staff, except for Eleanor Keane, the ambitious office manager who means to marry him. Meanwhile George makes friends with the amiable Professor Daly, one of the many old people who reside permanently on the premises. When Burden is stabbed through the heart, Daly’s old friend Inspector Mike Kenny soon discovers that practically everybody at the hotel has good reason to want him dead.

Read more, and order this book!

Murder Begins at Home
By Delano Ames

Leave it to Dagobert Brown to suggest that he and Jane travel to Detroit from New York via New Mexico. "It’s more or less on the way," he explains. Jane wonders if their route has anything to do with Miranda Ross, a beautiful WAC Dagobert met in World War II and has been rhapsodizing about ever since. So it’s no surprise that when they get to Alamogordo, Dagobert suddenly remembers that Miranda lives somewhere near there. Soon he and Jane are house guests at Miranda’s luxurious adobe ranch, along with an assortment of other visitors and family members, all of whom are satellites revolving in the saintly Miranda’s orbit. But oddly enough, Miranda is nowhere to be seen—until she’s found stabbed in the chest the next morning. And it turns out that every one of the guests had an opportunity as well as a motive to kill Miranda, who was perhaps not the kind and generous woman she appeared to be.

Read more, and order this book!

His Burial Too
By Catherine Aird

The first sign anyone had that something was wrong in the tiny Calleshire village of Cleete was when Fenella Tindall woke up to find her father missing. Nobody at his office had seen him that day either, and when the body of a man is found crushed to death under the fragments of a massive marble statue in the local church tower, Inspector C.D. Sloan’s suspicions that the victim may be Richard Tindall are soon confirmed. This doesn’t make his superior officer, Superintendent Leeyes, at all happy, nor does a second murder, this time of a prominent industrialist. Once again Sloan is assigned his least favorite partner, the inept Detective Constable Crosby (generally known as the "Defective Constable").

Read more, and order this book!

The Fifth Man
By Manning Coles

Five English prisoners of war are recruited by the Nazis to be trained as spies and returned to England to work for Germany. One is killed, three land on an English beach and are more than happy to be captured by the police, and another remains at large—until a mysterious figure claiming to be Major Aylwin Brampton, the nephew of a prominent English Nazi sympathizer and the fifth man to be chosen by the Nazis, turns up asking to speak to British Intelligence. It falls to our old friend Tommy Hambledon to interview Brampton and he is treated to an enthralling story of stolen identities, hair-raising escapes from almost certain discovery and death, and a final forced placement in London as part of a German spy ring. First published in 1946 but taking place early in World War II, it introduces a character who’s very nearly as resourceful and quick-witted and sardonic as Tommy himself. Sixth in the series.

Read more, and order this book!