Other Constable & Robinson Publisher Books $4.44 each (US) [Mystery] (Amazon)

[NightBird]

Historical mysteries under the Robinson imprint of UK publisher Constable & Robinson.

Constable & Co. was founded in 1795 by Archibald Constable, and became Sir Walter Scott's publisher. Robinson Publishing Ltd. was founded in 1983 by Nick Robinson. The two merged in December 1999. Constable & Robinson is probably the oldest independent publishing house in the English-speaking world still trading under the name of its founder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constable_%26_Robinson

Constable & Robinson


Catriona McPherson

Dandy Gilver series - Post WWI Scottish cozy:

After the Armistice Ball (Dandy Gilver Murder Mystery 1) #1

Product Description
A classic murder-mystery set among the struggling upper classes of 1920s Perthshire as, in the aftermath of the First World War, their comfortable world begins to crumble. Dandy Gilver, her husband back from the War, her children off at school and her uniform growing musty in the attic, is bored to a whimper in the spring of 1923 and a little light snooping seems like harmless fun. Before long, though, the puzzle of what really happened to the Duffy diamonds after the Armistice Ball has been swept aside by a sudden, unexpected death in a lonely seaside cottage in Galloway. Society and the law seem ready to call it an accident but Dandy, along with Cara Duffy's fiancé Alec, is sure that there is more going on than meets the eye. What is being hidden by members of the Duffy family: the watchful Lena, the cold and distant Clemence and old Gregory Duffy with his air of quiet sadness, not to mention Cara herself whose secret always seems just tantalizingly out of view? Dandy must learn to trust her instincts and swallow most of her scruples if he is to uncover the truth and earn the right to call herself a sleuth.

About the Author

Catriona McPherson was born near Edinburgh in 1965, the youngest of four daughters, and was educated at Edinburgh University. She then worked for five years as a lecturer in the English department of Leeds University before fleeing academia almost completely. Catriona now teaches part time for the Open University and spends the rest of her time writing. She lives on a farm in a beautiful valley in Galloway.

http://www.amazon.com/Armistice-Gilv...=AG56TWVU5XWC2

The Burry Man's Day (Dandy Gilver Murder Mystery 2)

Product Description
The second classic whodunnit starring Dandy Gilver. Summer 1923, and as the village of Queensferry prepares for the annual Ferry Fair and the walk of the Burry Man, feelings are running high. With his pagan greenery, his lucky pennies and the nips of whisky he is treated to wherever he goes, the Burry Man has much to offend stricter souls like the minister or temperance pamphleteer. And then at the Fair, in full view of everyone - including Dandy Gilver, invited to hand out the prizes - he falls down dead. If he has been poisoned then the list of suspects includes anyone with a bottle of whisky in the house, and, here at Queensferry, that means just about everyone.

http://www.amazon.com/Burry-Gilver-M...=AG56TWVU5XWC2


David Roberts

1930s mystery series:

Sweet Poison (Lord Edward Corinth & Verity Brown Murder Mysteries) #1

Product Description
It is August 1935 and the Duke of Mersham is hosting one of his influential parties, bringing together public figures interested in improving Anglo-German relations. One of his guests is General Sir Alistair Craig VC, who swallows poison in the duke's excellent port and dies just as latecomer Lord Edward Corinth and journalist Verity Browne arrive on the scene. The unlikely pair - the younger son of a duke and a journalist committed to the Communist Party find common ground as they seek for the truth behind the genera's murder and discover that everyone present - including the duke himself - had a motive for wanting Sir Alistair out of the way. First published in hardback in 2000, this classic detective story introducing Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne was much acclaimed.

About the Author
David Roberts worked in publishing for over thirty years before devoting his energies to writing full time. He is the author of eight mysteries featuring Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne. He is married and divides his time between London and Wiltshire, England.

http://www.amazon.com/Poison-Edward-...21450&sr=1-149

Bones of the Buried (Lord Edward Corinth & Verity Brown Murder Mysteries) #2

Product Description
Second in the popular Lord Edward Corinth murder-mystery series; This exciting 1930s murder-mystery is the second in the Lord Edward Corinth/Verity Browne series, following the success of David Roberts' first book Sweet Poison. Corinth returns to London after six months in New York to find his sleuthing partner, journalist Verity Browne, Insisting he investigate a murder in Madrid. It is 1936 and Spain is about to erupt into civil war. Verity is now correspondent for a national newspaper and passionately committed to defending the Spanish republic against the Fascist threat. Her lover, David Griffiths-Jones, a senior figure in the Communist Party, has been convicted of murder and Verity appeals to Edward to help save him from the firing squad, even though she knows he sees him as his rival in love.

http://www.amazon.com/Buried-Edward-...=AG56TWVU5XWC2

Hollow Crown (Lord Edward Corinth & Verity Brown Murder Mysteries) #3

Product Description
It is October 1936. Lord Edward Corinth is invited by his friend Joe Weaver, the press lord and close friend of the British royal family, to recover certain letters stolen from the king’s intimate friend Wallis Simpson. There is no mystery about who has taken these letters – a woman called Mrs Raymond Harkness, a former mistress of the king and a close friend of Edward’s. When Edward goes down to Haling, the country house of conservative MP Leo Scannon where Mrs Harkness is also a house guest, he is far from easy in his mind at the task before him, but he cannot guess that retrieving stolen goods is to be complicated by murder…

http://www.amazon.com/Hollow-Edward-...20858&sr=1-120

A Grave Man (Lord Edward Corinth & Verity Brown Murder Mysteries) #6

Product Description
A murder mystery featuring Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne Verity Browne and Lord Edward Corinth are attending the memorial service in Westminster Abbey for Lord Benyon, killed a few months before when the Hindenburg airship burst into flames as it docked in New Jersey. As the congregation begins to disperse after the service, Edward hears Miss Pitt-Messanger cry for help. Her father is slumped in his seat, stabbed to death with an ancient Assyrian dagger. Edward has no wish to investigate the murder but Verity gets herself invited to Swifts Hill, the ultra-modern house in Kent belonging to the millionaire Sir Simon Castlewood. His wife, Virginia, is one of Verity's school friends and she is looking after Maud Pitt-Messanger who is still grieving for her father. Verity quickly discovers that the old man was a selfish bully who had made his daughter's life a misery and prevented her from marrying the man she loved. By coincidence, Mr Churchill then asks Edward to investigate the Castlewood Foundation which Sir Simon has set up to fund medical research among other worthy projects. Churchill has received information that Sir Simon's protege, the eminent surgeon Dominic Montillo, is using the Foundation to fund his own research into racial types – the so-called science of eugenics. Then Maud Pitt-Messanger is herself stabbed to death with a dagger from Sir Simon's archaeological museum, and Edward and Verity join forces to find her killer - but Verity's distrust of Winston Churchill, and her growing attraction to the young German aristocrat, Adam von Trott, drives a wedge between them which brings them both unhappiness and endangers the outcome of the investigation.

http://www.amazon.com/Edward-Corinth...20691&sr=1-115

The Quality of Mercy #7

Product Description
A murder mystery featuring Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne. When the Nazis seize Austria in March 1938, Verity Browne - the New Gazette's correspondent in Vienna - is one of the first to be deported as a well-known anti-Fascist. Before she leaves she is able to arrange for a young Jew, Georg Dreiser, to escape to England, but where he expects to find safety, he finds danger and sudden death. Lord Edward Corinth also finds death where it is least expected, in the grounds of Lord Montbatten's country house, Broadlands. There to meet his friend the Maharaja of Batiala, Edward's nephew Frank stumbles on a corpse. The police are satisfied that the man, identified as Peter Gray, a painter of some repute, died of natural cause but his niece, Vera, persuades Edward that all is not as it seems. Between them, Edward and Verity investigate two murders and Verity's eyes are opened to what has been obvious to all their friends, that Edward is the man she loves and that her destiny is to be his partner in life as well as in crime.

http://www.amazon.com/Quality-Edward...21326&sr=1-139

Something Wicked (Lord Edward Corinth & Verity Brown Murder Mysteries) #8

Product Description
Lord Edward Corinth’s fiancé, Verity Browne, returns from Prague with suspected tuberculosis. The only cure for TB in 1938 is rest and a healthy diet so she goes to a private clinic in Henley-on- Thames run by a Cambridge friend of Edward’s. Meanwhile, Edward investigates a series of murders with a Henley connection. His dentist, Eric Silver, has been murdered – shortly after sharing with Edward, his final patient, his suspicions about the deaths of three of his elderly patients. Silver had identified an entomological connection between the deaths. General Lowther had had a heart attack drinking a wine called Clos des Mouches, Hermione Totteridge, a well-known gardener, had been poisoned by the new insecticide with which she had been experimenting, and James Herold had been stung to death by his bees. Edward goes to stay with his old friend Harry Makin inherited a title and a property in Henley. His investigation comes to a thrilling climax during what many believe will be the last Henley Royal Regatta before a new European war. Both Edward and Verity face death from someone, or something, wicked.

http://www.amazon.com/Something-Wick...21196&sr=1-144

Sweet Sorrow #10

Product Description
August 1939, the last hot days of a perfect English summer – war is now certain, this week, next week . . . soon. Lord Edward Corinth, newly married, is determined to spend these last days of peace quietly with Verity in their new house, The Old Vicarage, in the sleepy Sussex village of Rodmell – a honeymoon of sorts. Fight against it as he might, for Edward it turns out to be a busman’s holiday. The poet, Byron Gates is bizarrely murdered after the village fete - executed, in fact, his head chopped off on a wooden block – and Edward is asked to investigate. Alas, murder is not yet done with Verity and Edward. For even in the hallowed studios of Broadcasting House, murder dares to rear its ugly head while Verity is being interviewed about her interesting life as a war correspondent. And before she can take up her new foreign posting, reporting on the international crisis for the New Gazette, there are more deaths, and the intrepid couple embark on one of their most dangerous investigations to date.

http://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Sorrow-e...21578&sr=1-150


David Dickinson

Victorian series:

Goodnight Sweet Prince (Lord Francis Powerscourt 1)

Product Description
Mystery surrounds the death of Queen Victoria's grandson England, 1892. Victoria, Queen and Empress, is in the 54th year of her reign, when her grandson Prince Eddy, eldest son of the Prince of Wales, is found slaughtered in his bed at Sandringham. Terrified of more royal scandal, the Prince of Wales and his spindoctors decide to cover up the facts and the murder is disguised as death by influenza. Lord Francis Powerscourt, an Irish investigator, is privately asked to find the killer. His quest takes him on a journey through the prince's debauched and dissolute past, across Europe to the misty waterways of Venice where, amidst scandal and suicide, Powerscourt finally unravels themystery of the sweet prince's last goodnight.

About the Author
David Dickinson was born in Dublin. After reading Classics at Cambridge he joined the BBC and was editor of Newsnight and Panorama and series editor on Monarchy, a three part programme on the British royal family. He has two children and lives in London

http://www.amazon.com/Goodnight-Prin...=AG56TWVU5XWC2

Death and The Jubilee #2

Product Description
The discovery of a headless corpse jeopardises Queen Victoria’s glittering Diamond Jubilee! In this second Lord Francis Powerscourt mystery, London is preparing for the 1897 Diamond Jubilee. But one morning a man’s corpse with no head or hands is dragged out of the Thames. He is old, but not destitute. With no clues to his identity, the police ask for Powerscourt’s assistance. His investigation leads to a mysterious mansion in Oxfordshire, with classical temples in the gardens and in the house a second corpse, killed in a fire. On the track of the murderer, Powerscourt soon realises that both he and his family are in great danger – and so is the Queen’s Jubilee...

http://www.amazon.com/Death-and-The-...=AG56TWVU5XWC2

Death of an Old Master (Lord Francis Powerscourt 3)

Product Description
In May 1901 the Salisbury Galleries announce the biggest exhibition of the Old Master Paintings ever seen in Europe. Excitement is intense. But before it opens, one of Britain's leading art experts, Christopher Montague, is found murdered in his study. When Lord Francis Powerscourt is called in to investigate he finds every book, notepad and scrap of paper has been removed from the scene of the crime. Montague had been working on something that would have rocked the art world. Did his article that claimed a number of the 'Old Masters' had been painted recently by a single hand have anything to do with his death? Powerscourt embarks on an odyssey through atreacherous world of art dealers and picture restorers in pursuit of a master forger. He travels to Sicily where the trail goes cold, but, after the thrills and danger of that wild, lawless isalnd, in a remopte corer of England, the truth is finally revealed.

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Master-F...=AG56TWVU5XWC2

Death of a Chancellor (Lord Francis Powerscourt Mystery) #4

Product Description
A case of murder in the cathedral. Compton Minster is prerparing to celebrate a very special anniversary in the year 1901 - a thousand years of Christian worship. But a few weeks before the main ceremonies, a high official of the cathedral, the chancellor, dies in mysterious circumstances, and no on except the doctor and the undertaker is allowed to view the corpse. It then transpires that the chancellor was one of England's richest men. When his sister suspects foul play, Lord Francis Powerscourt is asked to investigate. As Powerscourt paces the ancient cloisters and listens to evensong from the choir stalls, he begins to suspect that a terrible secret lies hidden in the cathedral, one that may have someting to do with the anniversary. Then a chorister is strangles, his body found turning on the great spit in the Vicars Hall kitchen. Powerscourt himself escpaes death by a whisker, as does his wife, Lady Lucy, before he uncovers the astonishing secret of Compton Minster and unmasks a murderer.

http://www.amazon.com/Chancellor-Fra...20224&sr=1-101

Death Called to the Bar (Lord Francis Powerscourt 5)

Product Description
Queen's Inn is London's youngest and most fashionable Inn of Court. On 29th February 1902, at a Feast, senior barrister Alexander Dauntsey collapses into his soup and dies. He has been poisoned. Soon after his friend Woodford Stewart is shot dead, and Lord Francis Powerscourt is summoned to discreetly investigate the matter of the murdered barristers. His inquiries take him into the heart of legal London where the wills of the dead can reveal the crimes of the living. It takes him to the heart of a troubled marriage where lack of children imperils everything. And it takes him to Calne, a mysterious house in the country where the glorious past is boarded up and the treasures of generations hide beneath the dustsheets. There are many suspects: a jealous wife, a mistress fearful of being jilted, a work colleague beaten to the senior role in the Inn and a cuckolded husband who writes books about poisons. Powerscourt himself is put in grave danger before he finally solves the mystery of Death Called to the Bar

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Called-F...20136&sr=1-100

Death on the Nevskii Prospekt (Lord Francis Powerscourt 6)

Product Description
1904: Powerscourt comes out of retirement for one last time, heading for Russia in one of the strangest cases of his career. A British diplomat has been discovered, his throat cut, on one of the bridges spanning the Nevskii Prospekt in St Petersburg. It transpires the diplomat knew a secret - and that secret killed him. As Powerscourt strides through the halls of the Winter Palace and falls foul of the Okhrana - the Russian secret police - he has to attend other matters. Russia is on the verge of revolution and he must escape - before time runs out on him.

http://www.amazon.com/Nevskii-Prospe...=AG56TWVU5XWC2

Death on the Holy Mountain (Lord Francis Powerscourt 7)

(** The Soho version of this was $2.62 back in January, now $8.79.**)

Product Description
The year is 1905 and Powerscourt is sent to Ireland to investigate a series of art thefts from stately houses. Motive troubles Powerscourt; were these robberies merely for gain? A number of Old Masters had been left untouched and the ones taken were all ancient family portraits of the aristocratic Protestant gentry. Are these thefts political? Then, astonishingly, some of the portraits begin to return – but with altered faces; the aristocrats’ being replaced by those from the estates and towns beyond the gates. Truly an elaborate joke, but then real people begin to disappear – and not long after the first body is found in the chapel at the top of Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s Holy Mountain on the very day 10,000 people make the great pilgrimage to the summit. More follow, and as Powerscourt makes his way towards the killer his own life comes under threat, while his patriotism, and his devotion to Ireland is called into question on his journey towards the truth.

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Mountain...20224&sr=1-104


Barbara Cleverly

The Last Kashmiri Rose (Joe Sandilands Murder Mystery S.) #1

Scotland Yard detective in international settings in the 1920s.

Product Description
It is India 1922 and the wives of officers in the Bengal Greys have been dying violently, one each year and always in March. The only link between the bizarre but apparently accidental deaths is the bunches of small red roses that appear on the women's graves. When a fifth wife is found with her wrists cut in a bath of blood the Govenor rejects the verdict of suicide and calls in Joe Sandilands, an ex-soldier and Scotland Yard Detective. It becomes clear to Joe that the deaths are, indeed, a series of murders and they are have not yet run their course. Who will be the recipient of the next - and last - Kashmiri Roses? As he discovers the shocking truth Joe must work fast to unmask a killer whose motives are rooted in the dark history of India itself.

From the Inside Flap

The Last Kashmiri Rose

In a land of saffron sunsets and blazing summer heat, an Englishwoman has been found dead, her wrists slit, her body floating in a bathtub of blood and water. But is it suicide or murder? The case falls to Scotland Yard inspector Joe Sandilands, who survived the horror of the Western Front and has endured six sultry months in English-ruled Calcutta. Sandilands is ordered to investigate, and soon discovers that there have been other mysterious deaths, hearkening sinister ties to the present case.

Now, as the sovereignty of Britain is in decline and an insurgent India is on the rise, Sandilands must navigate the treacherous corridors of political decorum to bring a cunning killer to justice?knowing the next victim is already marked to die.

http://www.amazon.com/Kashmiri-Sandi...20973&sr=1-127

Tug of War (Joe Sandilands 6)

Product Description
Joe Sandilands has been despatched to France to stay as the guest of a glamorous French war-widow on her Champagne estate. The widow is determined that Joe should support her claim that a mysterious shell-shocked soldier, suffering from amnesia and a loss of speech is her husband. The problem is that four other claimants have identified him differently, and his doctor suspects he is an English soldier. Joe decides to investigate the four claimants and picks his way through a tangle of lies, deceit, and manipulation, discovering that each of the four has an undeclared motive for claiming the unknown soldier. He uncovers a cleverly concealed murder committed during the war years and during this pursuit he finds out who the soldier really is. The discovery presents him with an even greater dilemma, he must not only to solve a killing in the past, but avert a tragedy in the future.

http://www.amazon.com/Tug-War-Joe-Sa...21675&sr=1-154

[poohbear_nc]

These sales are going to be the death of my credit card!
I just love murder mysteries set in the 1920's & 1930's!

And the Joe Sandilands are very well done too!

Hadn't ever heard of the Lord Powerscourt series .... hmmmm....

Thanks for the post!

[HarryT]

These are new authors to me. I'll have to try them out. I too am a real sucker for this type of mystery.

[NightBird]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

These sales are going to be the death of my credit card!
I just love murder mysteries set in the 1920's & 1930's!

Thanks for the post!

Heehee - you're welcome.

Originally Posted by HarryT

I too am a real sucker for this type of mystery.

Oh good!

[sufue]

Originally Posted by HarryT

These are new authors to me. I'll have to try them out. I too am a real sucker for this type of mystery.

If you like this sort of mystery, have you tried Andrew Martin's Jim Stringer/Railway mysteries? They're not Constable and Robinson (sorry for being a bit off thread/topic), and are sort of pricey, but I've picked up a couple when on sale or in DTB, and I like them.

And also Michael Pearce's two series (Mamur Zapt, only in DTB; and Dead Man in ebook and DTB, although pricey). I have to read these by myself because I laugh out loud...the only two series that do that to me other than Sarah Caudwell.

[NightBird]

From their Constable and Corsair imprints:

Richard Zimler

The Warsaw Anagrams

Autumn 1940. The Nazis seal 400,000 Jews inside a small area of the Polish capital, creating an urban island cut off from the outside world. Erik Cohen, an elderly psychiatrist, is forced to move into a tiny apartment with his niece and his beloved nine-year-old nephew, Adam. One bitterly cold winter's day, Adam goes missing. The next morning, his body is discovered in the barbed wire surrounding the ghetto. The boy's leg has been cut off, and a tiny piece of string has been left in his mouth. Soon, another body turns up - this time a girl's, and one of her hands has been taken. Evidence begins to point to a Jewish traitor luring children to their death… In this profoundly moving and darkly atmospheric historical thriller, the reader is taken into the most forbidden corners of Nazi-occupied Warsaw - as well as into the most heroic places of the heart.

Kobo $2.79

Hunting Midnight

From the Inside Flap
From the internationally bestselling author of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon comes a novel of incomparable scope and beauty that takes the reader on an epic journey from war-ravaged nineteenth-century Europe to antebellum America. A bereft child, a freed African slave, and the rich history of Portugal's secret Jews collide memorably in Richard Zimler's mesmerizing novel--a dazzling work of historical fiction played out against a backdrop of war and chaos that unforgettably mines the mysteries of devotion, betrayal, guilt, and forgiveness.

Hunting Midnight

At the dawn of the nineteenth century in Portugal, John Zarco Stewart is an impish child of hotheaded emotions and playful inquisitiveness, the unwitting inheritor of a faith shrouded in three hundred years of secrecy--for the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula have been in hiding since the Inquisition. But a season of loss and bitter discovery brings his innocence to an abrupt end. It is only the ministrations of a magical stranger, brought to Porto by his seafaring father, that restore his safety: Midnight, an African healer and freed slave, the man who will become John?s greatest friend and determine the course of his destiny.

When Napoleon?s armies invade Portugal, violence again intrudes on John?s fragile peace, and seals his passage into adulthood with another devastating loss. But from the wreckage comes revelation as he uncovers truths and lies hidden by the people he loved and trusted most, and discovers the act of unspeakable betrayal that destroyed his family--and his faith. And so his shattering quest begins as he travels to America, to hunt for hope in a land shackled by unforgivable sin.

With stunning insight and an eye for rich historical detail--from the colorful marketplaces of Porto to the drowsy plantations of the American South, from the Judaism John discovers as a young man to the mystical Africa that Midnight conjures from his memories--in Hunting Midnight Richard Zimler has crafted a masterpiece.

About the Author
Richard Zimler was born in Manhasset, New York. He currently resides in Portugal, where he is associate professor of journalism at the University of Porto. He is the author of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, The Angelic Darkness, and Unholy Ghosts. He also writes for the Los Angeles Times and The Literary Review (London).

Amazon $3.59

Guardian of the Dawn

Product Description
In late 16th-century Goa, despite the Catholic Inquision, the Zarco family holds firm to its Portuguese-Jewish roots. Ti and his sister enjoy their childhood with secret dips into the heady chaos of the Hindu festivals of their beloved cook, Nupi. But as they reach adulthood, the family is torn apart when the father and then the son are imprisoned by the Inquisition. Only someone close to the family could have denounced them. Intent on revenge, Ti is forced finally to face the truth of the betrayal and reassess his most fundamental beliefs.

Amazon $3.59

[NightBird]

Alan Hunter

Gently Does It (Inspector George Gently 1)

Product Description
The last thing you need when you're on holiday is to become involved in a murder. For most people, that would easily qualify as the holiday from hell. For George Gently, it is a case of business as usual. The Chief Inspector’s quiet Easter break in Norchester is rudely interrupted when a local timber merchant is found dead. His son, with whom he had been seen arguing, immediately becomes the prime suspect, although Gently is far from convinced of his guilt.

Norchester City Police gratefully accept Gently’s offer to help investigate the murder, but he soon clashes with Inspector Hansom, the officer in charge of the case. Hansom’s idea of conclusive evidence appals Gently almost as much as Gently’s thorough, detailed, methodical style of investigation exasperates Hansom, who considers the murder to be a straightforward affair.

Locking horns with the local law is a distraction Gently can do without when he’s on the trail of a killer.

About the Author
Alan Hunter was born in Hoveton, Norfolk in 1922. He left school at the age of 14 to work on his father's farm, spending his spare time sailing on the Norfolk Broads and writing nature notes for the Eastern Evening News. He also wrote poetry, some of which was published while he was in the RAF during World War II. By 1950, he was running his own book shop in Norwich and in 1956, he wrote the first of 45 George Gently novels. He died in 2005 aged 82.

http://www.amazon.com/Gently-Does-In...ys_ir_kinc_101