A MAN LAY DEAD

Wealthy Sir Hubert Handesley's original and lively weekend house-parties are deservedly famous. To amuse his guests, he has devised a new form of the fashionable Murder Game, in which a guest is secretly selected to commit a 'murder' in the dark and everyone assembles to solve the crime. But when the lights go up this time there is a real corpse, with a real dagger in the back. All seven suspects have had time to concoct skilful alibis - and it is Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn who has to try and figure out whodunit...

ENTER A MURDERER

The Crime was committed on stage at the Unicorn Theatre, when an unloaded gun fired a very real bullet; the Victim was Arthur Surbonadier, an actor clawing his way to stardom using blackmail instead of talent; the Suspects included two unwilling girlfriends and several relieved blackmail victims. The stage was set for one of Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn's most baffling cases

THE NURSING-HOME MURDER (in collaboration with Henry Jellett)

Sir John Phillips, the Harley Street surgeon, and his beautiful nurse Jane Harden are almost too nervous to operate. The emergency case on the table before them is the Home Secretary - and they both have very good, personal reasons to wish him dead. Within hours he does die, although the operation itself was a complete success, and Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn must find out why...

DEATH IN ECSTASY

When lovely Cara Quayne dropped dead to the floor after drinking the ritual wine at hte House of the Sacred Flame, she was having a religious experience of a sort unsuspected by the other initiates. Discovering how the fatal prussic acid got into the bizarre group's wine is but one of the perplexing riddles that confronts Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn when he's called to discover who sent this wealthy cult member to her untimely death.

VINTAGE MURDER

Theatrical manager Alfred Meyer wanted to celebrate his wife's birthday in style. The "piece de resistance" would be the jeroboam of champagne which would descend on to the stage after the performance. But something went horribly wrong. Was Meyer's death the product of Maori superstitions?

ARTISTS IN CRIME

It started as a student exercise, the knife under the drape, the model's pose chalked in place. But before Agatha Troy, artist and instructor, returns to the class, the pose has been re-enacted in earnest: the model is dead, fixed for ever in one of the most dramatic poses Troy has ever seen. It's a difficult case for Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn. How can he believe that the woman he loves is a murderess? And yet no one can be above suspicion...

DEATH IN A WHITE TIE

Debutantes and chaperones were planning their luncheons, teas, dinners, balls. And the blackmailer was planning his strategies, stalking his next victim. But Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn knew that something was up. He had already planted his friend Lord Robert Gospell at the scene.

OVERTURE TO DEATH

It was planned as an act of charity: a new piano for the parish hall, an amusing play to finance the gift. But its execution was doomed when Miss Campanula sat down to play. A chord was struck, a shot rang out and Miss Campanula was dead. A case of sinister infatuation for the brilliant Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn.

DEATH AT THE BAR

At the Plume of Feathers in south Devon one midsummer evening, eight people are gathered together in the tap-room. They are in the habit of playing darts, but on this occasion an experiment takes the place of the usual game - a fatal experiment which calls for investigation. A distinguished painter, a celebrated actor, a woman graduate, a plump lady from County Clare, and a Devonshire farmer all play their parts in the unravelling of the problem...

SUFFEIT OF LAMPREYS (also published as Death of a Peer) (Classic Mystery Literature)

The Lampreys had plenty of charm - but no cash. They all knew they were peculiar, the charades with which they entertained their guests became quite complicated. And when Uncle Gabriel Lamprey dies, Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn is called in.

DEATH AND THE DANCING FOOTMAN

It began as an entertainment: eight people, many of them enemies, gathered for a winter weekend as guests of a host with a love for theatre. Everybody had an alibi - and most a motive as well. But for Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn the case rested on the dancing footman.

COLOUR SCHEME

It was a horrible death - Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud. Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that anyone could have killed the man - the English spies he despised, the Maoris he insulted or the spies he thwarted.

DIED IN THE WOOL

One summer evening in 1942 Flossie Rubrick, MP, one of the most formidable women in New Zealand, goes to her husband's wool shed to rehearse a patriotic speech - and disappears. Three weeks later she turns up at an auction - packed inside one of her own bales of wool and very, very dead...

FINAL CURTAIN

Agatha Troy, world famous painter, is working on the portrait of 70-year-old Sir Henry Ancred, the Grand Old Man of the stage. But just as she has completed her portrait, the old actor dies. The dramatic circumstances of his death are such that Scotland Yard is called in.

A WREATH FOR RIVERA (also published as Swing, Brother, Swing)

When Lord Pasern Bagott takes up with the hot music of Breezy Bellair and his Boys, his disapproving wife Cecile has more than usual to be unhappy about. The band's devastatingly handsome but roguish accordionist, Carlos Rivera, has taken a rather intense and mutual interest in her precious daugher Felicite. So when a bit of stage business goes awry and actually kills him, it's lucky that Inspector Rodrerick Alleyn is in the audience. Now Alleyn must follow a confusing score that features a chorus of family and friends desperate to hide the truth and perhaps shelter a murder in their midst.

OPENING NIGHT (also published as Night at the Vulcan)

Dreams of stardom had lured Martyn Tarne from faraway New Zealand to make the dreary, soul-destroying round of West End agents and managers in search of work. The Vulcan Theatre had been her last forlorn hope, and now, driven by sheer necessity, she was glad to accept the humble job of dresser to its leading lady. And then came the eagerly awaited Opening Night. To Martyn the night brought a strange turn of the wheel of fortune - but to one distinguished member of the cast it was to bring sudden and unforeseen death

SPINSTERS IN JEOPARDY (also published as The Bride of Death)

High in mountains stands the magnificent Saracen fortress, home of the mysterious Mr Oberon, leader of a coven of witches. It is not the historic castle, however, that intrigues Roderick Alleyn, on holiday with his family, but the suspicion that a huge drugs ring operates from within its ancient portals. But before the holiday is over, someone else has stumbled upon the secret. And Mr Oberon decides his strange and terrible rituals require a human sacrifice

SCALES OF JUSTICE

Colonel Cartarette's body lies sprawled beside the River Chyne, beside him is the giant trout he has been trying to catch for years. They both died by violence - but it is the fish that will be playing the starring role in the murder investigation.

OFF WITH HIS HEAD (as published as Death of a Fool)

When the pesky Anna Bunz arrives at Mardian to investigate the rare survival of folk-dancing still practised there, she quickly antagonizes the villagers. But Mrs Bunz is not the only source of friction - two of the other enthusiasts are also spoiling for a fight. When the sword dancers' traditional mock beheading of the Winter Solstice becomes horribly real, Superintendent Roderick Alleyn finds himself faced with a case of great complexity and of gruesome proportions...

SINGING IN THE SHROUDS

The police found the third corpse on a wharf in the Pool of London, her body covered with flower petals and pearls. Once again, the killer walked away, singing. Within the hour he was safe at sea - and among his fellow-passengers were four more potential victims.

FALSE SCENT

Little did beloved British actress Mary Bellamy know that she would be done in at her own birthday party--choked by toxic mist from the bottle of "Slaypest," a deadly insecticide. Basking in the glow of her most adoring fans--who all happened to be her most duplicitous enemies--Mary would make her final performance. When Superintendent Roderick Alleyn arrives, he smells a rat amongst the contemptuous collection of theatre types detained at the party, for this case has the unmistakable scent of murder...

HAND IN GLOVE

The April Fool's Day had been a roaring success for all, it seemed - except for poor Mr Cartell who had ended up in the ditch - for ever. Then there was the case of Mr Percival Pyke Period's letter of condolence, sent before the body was found - not to mention the family squabbles. It was a puzzling crime for Superintendent Alleyn.

DEAD WATER

Times are good in the Cornish village of Portcarrow, as hundreds of unfortunates flock to taste the miraculous waters of Pixie Falls. Then Miss Emily Pride inherits the celebrated land on which Portcarrow stands and wants to put an end to the villagers' thriving trade in miracle cures, especially Miss Elspeth Costs's gift shop. But someone puts and end to Miss Cost herself, and Miss Pride's guardian angel, Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, finds himself on the spot in both senses of the word...

DEATH AT THE DOLPHIN (also published as Killer Dolphin)

A mystery patron gives Peregrine Jay the bombed-out Dolphin Theatre and a glove that belonged to Shakespeare. Peregrine displays the glove in the dockside theatre and writes a successful play about it. But then a murder takes place, a boy is attacked, and the glove is stolen.

CLUTCH OF CONSTABLES

"He looks upon the murders that he did in fact perform as tiresome and regrettable necessities," reflected Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn on the international crook known as 'the Jampot'. But it was Alleyn's wife Troy who knew 'the Jampot' best: she had shared close quarters with him on the tiny pleasure steamer Zodiac on a cruise along the peaceful rivers of 'Constable country'. And it was she who knew something was badly wrong even before Alleyn was called in to solve the two murders on board...

WHEN IN ROME

When their guide disappears mysteriously in the depths of a Roman Basilica, the members of Mr Sebastian Mailer's tour group seem strangely unperturbed. But when a body is discovered in an Etruscan sarcophagus, Superintendent Alleyn, in Rome incognito on the trail of an international drug racket, is very much concerned...

TIED UP IN TINSEL

When a much disliked visiting servant disappears without trace after playing Santa Claus, foul play is at once suspected - and foul play it proves to be. Only suspicion falls not on the staff but on the guests, all so unimpeachably respectable that the very thought of murder in connection with any of them seems almost heresy. When Superintendent Roderick Alleyn returns unexpectedly from a trip to Australia, it is to find his beloved wife in the thick of an intriguing mystery...

BLACK AS HE'S PAINTED

When the exuberant president of Ng'ombwana proposes to dispense with the usual security arrangements on an official visit to London, his old school mate, Chief Superintendent Alleyn, is called in to persuade him otherwise. Consequently, on the night of the embassy's reception the house and grounds are stiff with police. Nevertheless, an assassin does strike, and Alleyn finds he has no shortage of help, from Special Branch to a tribal court - and a small black cat named Lucy Lockett who out-detects them all...

LAST DITCH

Young Rickie Alleyn had come to the Channel Islands to try to write, but village life was tedious - until he saw the stablehand in the ditch. Dead, it seemed, from an unlucky jump. It might have ended there had Rickie not noticed some strange and puzzling things. But Rickie's father, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, had been discreetly summoned to the scene, and when Rickie disappeared, it was the last straw

GRAVE MISTAKE

The death of wealthy hypochondriac Sybil Foster at fashionable Greengages is looked into by Superintendent Roderick Alleyn and Sybil's friend, Verity Preston, both of whom are puzzled by the absence of motives and suspects.

PHOTO-FINISH

The luxury mansion was an ideal place for the world-famous soprano to rest after her triumphant tour. Chief Superintendent Alleyn and his wife were among the house guests - but theirs was not a social visit. When tragedy struck, Alleyn was to face one of his trickiest cases.

LIGHT THICKENS

Peregrine Jay, owner of the Dolphin Theatre, is putting on a magnificent production of "Macbeth", the play that, superstition says, always brings bad luck. One night, the claymore swings and the dummy's head is more than real. Luckily, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn is in the audience.