Bill Dughaille Ordine dei libri

A visitor is out of luck at the Angel and Duck pub in the West Country: they've been murdered there. The locals are concerned by two things: (a) a mysterious package due imminently; and (b) one of them has to be the murderer. And (c) that person might be looking for more victims. London-based Chief Inspector Samson arrives with local boy Detective Constable Morton to investigate. Morton's initial enthusiasm at having such an important visitor quickly dissolves as he concludes that London has used the opportunity to get rid of one of their rejects. He finds himself being mentally and physically dragged into every dead-end in the county. Eight-year-old Thuthan wants to do the sword-dance with him with real swords. The beautiful and enigmatic Carry looks down on him as a country bumpkin. There's a nude painting of Carry somewhere he can't find. And he keeps waking up with nightmares after being treated as the fatted calf. His only aim in the end is to solve the case before the irascible old fool Samson accidentally trips over the solution. But the denouement, when it comes, is something only one of them ever expected.

Jim Allbright, ex-bobby and now easy-going window washer, innocently responds to an advert for window washing placed in the newspaper by the local council. The response is a torrent of paperwork, political correctness and a computer system doing exactly what it was told to do, but not quite what was intended. But if the system cannot be beaten, the interchange of letters can be used to have a little fun and get to know some of the people struggling behind it. There's Sandi, who signs herself as "(pp the Administrator)"; her four-year old little angel Helen; Graham, a shadowy computer programmer who definitely has too much time on his hands, and a slew of Project Managers and Senior Administrators eager to ensure standards are upheld no matter how many problems they create. Against a run of bad luck and circumstances Jim and Sandi aim to meet up one day, eventually. Hopefully. The window might even get washed. Maybe.

A group of friends get together during the last weekend of August 1939 at the rural retreat named Longwood, a few miles from Portsmouth. Their host, American novelist and socialite Georgina Riley, is scheduled to leave for her native New York to marry her childhood sweetheart. With a possible war looming, they decide to have an 'end of the world' party. The following morning Georgina is discovered in her bedroom covered in blood, her throat slit, barely alive. Her maid is dead. Detective Inspector Rudman arrives to investigate. But with Germany's invasion of Poland a week later the suspects disperse across the land, some to the armed forces, others to reserved civilian jobs. Rudman does not give up. Wherever they are he can be found. Whatever the defeats and victories of the Allied cause, he has only one aim: to find the person responsible for what happened that weekend at Longwood. The war ends; some have survived, some not. And then comes an invitation to spend another weekend at Longwood. The message is that Rudman has found the evidence he has been looking for. One of the surviving couples motor slowly down to Portsmouth, remembering the original weekend, the trials and the tribulations of the past years, and wonder: what will be revealed during the coming weekend at Longwood?

Meet a detective unlike any other. He's happy. He likes women. He enjoys life. He doesn't have a problem drinking. He's Detective Sergeant Frank Summers, a man on a mission: to keep his head down, stay out of trouble and enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of the easy-going, genteel town of Wellbury, his new posting. It's a town just made for him, where, he believes, even the criminals take bank holidays off. But, while perceptive in his professional life, he tends to miss the subtleties in his private life. In this case he fails to realise that his own tranquillity is being threatened by three women and a philanderer. The fact that the women in question are his boss, his constable and the local pathologist adds just the touch of danger to his life that he had hoped to avoid. The philanderer has been dead several decades. The women are very much alive.