Regarded as the first full-length locked room mystery, The Big Bow Mystery focuses on a murder that has occurred inside a locked room, with no clear indication as to the weapon used, the perpetrator of the horrendous crime, or a possible escape route. Scotland Yard is stumped. Yet the seemingly unsolvable case has, as Inspector Grodman says, "one sublimely simple solution" that is revealed in a final chapter full of revelations and a shocking denouement. The Big Bow Mystery has been almost continuously in print since 1891 and has been used as the basis for three commercial films.

"Ted Lyte, amateur thief, has chosen an isolated house by the coast for his first robbery. But Haven House is no ordinary country home. While hunting for silverware to steal, Ted stumbles upon a locked room containing seven dead bodies. Detective Inspector Kendall takes on the case with the help of passing yachtisman Thomas Hazeldean. The search for the house's absent owners brings Hazeldean across the Channel to Boulogne, where he finds more than one motive to stay and investigate"--Page [4] of cover.

Spy thriller fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder 'The men who work for you, General', he observed, 'should rid themselves of any fear of death'. Rome, 1934. Martin Fawley leaves the American secret service and is recruited by General Berati, the most feared man in fascist Italy, as a spy. After a brief encounter with a glamorous yet murderous Italian princess, Fawley's mission takes him undercover to Monaco. Suave and worldly, Fawley is quite at home in the casinos and golf courses of Monte Carlo--but he is soon entangled in a game with higher stakes. As the nations of Europe vie for power, Fawley discovers the secret weapon that will determine the outcome of the looming war. This classic thriller--undoubtedly an influence on Ian Fleming's James Bond novels--is now republished for the first time since the 1930s. With its yachts and cocktail parties, its steely hero and brutal assassins, and its cinematic range across the cities of Europe, this is a gripping and sophisticated tale of a spy who saves the world.

Richard Temperley arrives at Euston station early on a fogbound London morning. He takes refuge in a nearby hotel, along with a disagreeable fellow passenger, who had snored his way through the train journey. But within minutes the other man has snored for the last time-he has been shot dead while sleeping in an armchair. Temperley has a brief encounter with a beautiful young woman, but she flees the scene. When the police arrive, Detective Inspector James discovers a token at the crime scene: a small piece of enamelled metal. Its colour was crimson, and it was in the shape of the letter Z. Temperley sets off in pursuit of the mysterious woman from the hotel, and finds himself embroiled in a cross-country chase- by train and taxi - on the tail of a sinister serial killer. This classic novel by the author of the best-selling Mystery in White is a gripping thriller by a neglected master of the genre. J. Jefferson Farjeon (1883-1955) was the author of more than sixty crime and thriller novels that were highly acclaimed in his lifetime. Farjeon is the author of Number Seventeen, a play that was adapted for the big screen by Alfred Hitchcock. His Christmas crime novel, Mystery in White, was republished as a British Library Crime Classic and became a bestseller. Front cover (c) NRM/Pictorial Collection/Science & Society Picture Library