The year is 1817, and Captain Matthew Hervey has returned from India to an England in turmoil. The clamour for parliamentary and economic reform is bringing the country close to revolution. Every day the newspapers report conspiracies, violent assemblies, machine-breaking, arson and murder. There is no professional constabulary, and the onerous task of policing falls increasingly to the army, especially the cavalry. Read More...

1826: Napoleon Bonaparte is dead, the Congress of Vienna's work is done, and there is peace in Europe. However, in Portugal there is the scent of civil war in the air following the death of King John VI. And with Spain, and perhaps even France, threatening to take sides, England's historic treaty with Portugal is set to be invoked. Newly returned from India, Matthew Hervey joins a party of officers sent to make an assessment and lend support to the Portuguese regent. Read More...

The last two years have not been good ones for Matthew Hervey. His beloved wife Henrietta is dead and, believing that he can no longer remain in a regiment where men like Lord Towcester can rise to command, he has turned his back on the Sixth. He is left kicking his heels in a corrupt and unruly England far removed from its once glorious past. Read More...

The year is 1824; the Sixth Light Dragoons are still stationed in India, and the talk in the officers' mess is of war. The Burmese are increasingly encroaching on Company land and skirmishes are becoming common on India's borders. Meanwhile, across the country, the succession to the Raj has been usurped. The rightful claimant, Balwant Singh, has been forced from the throne by the warmonger Durjan Sal. A conflagration looks set to flare, taking the surrounding provinces with it. Read More...

Mr Davenport has written a witty and learned introduction on various methods of murder. He has explored the many possibilities, including a number that are not included in this anthology. The examples are drawn from history and fiction, and range from classical Greece and Biblical times to the present. Read More...

When Palmer Stoat notices the black pickup truck following him on the highway, he fears his precious Rover Ranger is about to get carjacked. But Twilly Spree, the man tailing Stoat, has vengeance, not sport-utility vehicles, on his mind. Read More...

Jack Trigger is a frustrated journalist. His outspoken views have relegated him to the obituary page and the newspaper's florid owner has decreed that his byline will never again disgrace the front page. But jack has stumbled across a whale of a story that might just resurrect his career... Read More...

Fifteen years after Inspector Louis Markowitz adopted the wild child, no one in New York's Special Crimes section knew much about Kathy Mallory's origins. They only knew that the young cop with the soul of a thief could bewitch the most complex computer systems, could slip into the minds of killers with disturbing ease. Read More...

After bringing in a unanimous and very dubious acquittal in a murder case, only three of the original jurors remain alive. And someone, known only as the 'Reaper' because of the signature of a bloody scythe left at the crime scenes, is clearly determined to make a clean sweep of the terrified survivors. Read More...

Classic Crime. Who killed solo violinist Lucy Carless during a concert? Her first husband? Or her second? Or womanizer Bill Ventry? Or the clarinetist and fellow Polish emigré? Read More...