Julian Symons

Private detective Francis Quarles visits a man with a valuable collection of manuscripts written by murderers. During his stay, the man is killed after drinking cyanide-laced port....

The murder, a brutal stabbing, took place on Guy Fawkes night. It was by the bonfire on the village green. There were a number of witnesses. And yet, was it clear to anybody exactly what they had seen? In the writhing, violent shadows, it seems as if the truth may have gone up in smoke....

John Wilkins meets a beautiful, irresistible girl, and his world is turned upside down. Looking at his wife, and thinking of the girl, everything turns red before his eyes - the colour of murder....

Lady Wainwright presides over the Gothic gloom at Belting, in mourning for her two sons lost in the Second World War....

The Count and Bonnie played their game of love, lust, and power to the very limits of fantasy....

During a production of Hamlet, the actress playing the Queen is poisoned with cyanide. With castmates under suspicion, private detective Francis Quarles must unravel the threads of the Shakespeare play to find the murderer....