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E.C.R. Lorac

Bruce Attleton dazzled London’s literary scene with his first two novels but his early promise did not bear fruit. His wife Sybilla is a glittering actress, unforgiving of Bruce’s failure, and the couple lead separate lives in their house at Regent’s Park. When Bruce is called away on a sudden trip to Paris, he vanishes completely until his suitcase and passport are found in a sinister artist’s studio, the Belfry, in a crumbling house in Notting Hill. Inspector Macdonald must uncover Bruce’s secrets, and find out the identity of his mysterious blackmailer. This intricate mystery from a classic writer is set in a superbly evoked London of the 1930s.

Wildside Press

Robert Macdonald

Bats in the Belfry

A crime detective story featuring Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, a “London Scot” and an avowed bachelor with a love for walking in the English countryside and his assistant, Detective Inspector Reeves.

Death Came Softly

The Garths had farmed their fertile acres for generations, and fine land it was with the towering hills of the Lake Country on the far horizon. Here hot-tempered Robert Garth, still hale and hearty at eighty-two, ruled Garthmere Hall with a rod of iron. Until, that is, old Garth was found dead–‘dead as mutton’–in the trampled mud of the ancient outhouse.

Glowering clouds gather over the dramatic dales and fells as seasoned investigator Chief Inspector Macdonald arrives in the north country. Awaiting him are the reticent Garths and their guarded neighbours of the Lune Valley—and a battle of wits to unearth their murderous secrets!

Fell Murder

1945, with England still at war. Scotland Yard's Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald is tasked with solving an impossible crime—finding the killer of a man on the bridge. The only clue: a set of bicycle tracks that come to an abrupt end.

Murder by Matchlight

Templedean Place in the Cotswold Hills of England was among the last of the truly aristocratic estates, where old family traditions still ﬂourished. When Gerald Vanstead arrived from Australia with his family, to attend his father in his last illness, other, more deadly things flourished.
Gerald's wife was the bickering kind; he drank too much, was given to feuding with the chauffeur, and seemed excessively tightlipped and disagreeable—and so no one was particularly sorry when one day the brakes on Gerald's car failed to hold, and he and his wife were killed.

A family picnic ended in the accidental death of another Vanstead, a fire destroyed what might have been a clue, and there was a night of horrible suspense before Inspector Macdonald could say who hated Gerald Vanstead the most and who, in a house of cultured, well-bred men and women, was most capable of murder.

Accident by Design: A Robert Macdonald Mystery

Templedean Place in the Cotswold Hills of England was among the last of the truly aristocratic estates, where old family traditions still ﬂourished. When Gerald Vanstead arrived from Australia with his family, to attend his father in his last illness, other, more deadly things flourished.

Gerald's wife was the bickering kind; he drank too much, was given to feuding with the chauffeur, and seemed excessively tightlipped and disagreeable—and so no one was particularly sorry when one day the brakes on Gerald's car failed to hold, and he and his wife were killed.

A family picnic ended in the accidental death of another Vanstead, a fire destroyed what might have been a clue, and there was a night of horrible suspense before Inspector Macdonald could say who hated Gerald Vanstead the most and who, in a house of cultured, well-bred men and women, was most capable of murder.

Accident by Design

When Dr Raymond Ferens moves to a practice at Milham in the Moor in North Devon, he and his wife are enchanted with the beautiful hilltop village lying so close to moor and sky. At first, they see only its charm, but soon they begin to uncover its secrets—envy, hatred, and malice.

Everyone says that Sister Monica, warden of a children's home, is a saint—but is she? A few months after the Ferens' arrival her body is found drowned in the mill-race. Chief Inspector Macdonald faces one of his most difficult cases in a village determined not to betray its dark secrets to a stranger.

Murder in the Mill-Race [Speak Justly of the Dead]

They were five strangers on a fogbound train— 

a psychiatrist's pretty secretary,

an agitated young man

a tweedy lady with a deep voice

a stockbrockerish businessman

and an eel-like "spiv."

One was brutally attacked in the choking black fog in Paddington Station. Attempted murder became bona fide manslaughter, and examination of the intimate lives of the passengers involved Chief Inspector MacDonald in a macabre game of hide-and-seek in which one man tried to find his identity and another was ready to kill to preserve the shroud of darkness that obscured his.

Shroud of Darkness

Superintendent Macdonald, C. I. D. , studied his fellow-passengers on the Vienna plane simply because he couldn't help it, because he hadn't conditioned himself to being on holiday. The distinguished industrialist he recognised: the stout man he put down (quite mistakenly) as a traveller in whisky. The fair girl was going to a job (he was right there) and the aggressive young man in the camel coat might be something bookish. Macdonald turned away from his fellow-passengers deliberately: they weren't his business, he was on holiday--or so he thought.

Against the background of beautiful Vienna, with its enchanting palaces and gardens, its disenchanted back streets and derelicts of war, E. C. R. Lorac constructs a detective story with all its complexities; an exciting and puzzling new crime story.

Murder in Vienna

The last novel to feature Superintendent Robert MacDonald finds the officer planning his retirement. After buying a hill farm to the south of Lunesdale, he rents it to a young couple to oversee his property while he's still working.

A prison break and the discover of an unexpected corpse in the abandoned farm house complicate things for Macdonald.