Classic Mysteries

It couldn't have been suicide - the victim was beheaded inside a watched and locked room - but the room was empty, except for the victim. French police director Henri Bencolin stars in the first novel by John Dickson Carr.

A theatrical and criminal problem for Ludovic Travers to solve.

Right from the start, it was clearly going to be an interesting case – the murder of an inoffensive little man with no apparent enemies, not much in the way of physical clues. And that kind of case can be very frustrating indeed.

What connection could there be between a gruesome fire in a London house and a ski holiday in Lech Am Arlberg in the Austrian Alps? The answer may conceal a ruthless murderer.

Princess Olga Karukhin escaped from Russia after the revolution. Was she murdered for her supposed collection of art objects? 

The death of a two-bit hustler was just the tip of the iceberg – that iceberg being a delicate international dispute over a contested strip of land – a dispute which may have involved no fewer than three murders…with every prospect of more crimes still to come.

a mystery with artfully rearranged bodies & missing heads & eccentric characters & assorted mayhem - and funny as well.

Passersby watching the daily advertising show in French's Department Store window got a lot more than they expected when a dead body fell out of the display's bed.

Claude Merivale admits he strangled his wife - but he says he did so while in a sleep so deep that everything he did, he did in a dream. Will the jury buy it? Or can Anthony Bathurst find evidence of a cunning killer at work?

Lord Edgeware's wife threatened to kill him. Now His Lordship has been murdered - but his wife has an unbreakable alibi! Hercule Poirot is on the case!

Trostler was described by Ellery Queen as "the first important Teutonic sleuth." These early stories find Dagobert using logic and reason to solve crimes.

Set in ancient China, Judge Dee must solve a couple of murders  involving very powerful individuals - and some black-haired foxes.

Cécile had come to the Parisian police headquarters to tell her secret to Inspector Maigret. But Maigret, in the course of a busy day, lost track of Cécile – until she disappeared. And when Maigret, now worried about her, want to her apartment to see what he could find – well, by then it was too late, for Cécile was dead. Now Maigret must uncover her secret.

What was the deadly secret of the book that forced Rena Austen to flee her home and husband and seek help from biblio expert Henry Gamadge?

Amid the turmoil of the late 1960s, Rabbi David Small deals with synagogue politics and the civil rights struggle within his Conservative congregation, not to mention solving a couple of murders.

Bobby Owen was spending the weekend at Cambers, planning to advise Lady Cambers on ways to keep her valuable jewelry safe. But when he woke up the next morning, Lady Cambers had been murdered - and the jewels had vanished. An excellent mystery mixed with some pointed British social satire.

Mr. Mottram's life insurance would pay handsomely, whether he was murdered or died by accident. But they wouldn't pay for a suicide. So insurance investigator Miles Bredon was sent to uncover the true story of Mottram's peculiar death.

It was the kind of murder Los Angeles saw all too often. But this time, Homicide Detective Mendoza had a hunch that he had worked on a similar crime before. Would he be able to solve both murders - or would a killer seek another victim?

Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin travel to Montenegro, in the heart of Europe, to find the person who murdered Wolfe's longest and closest friend.

Inspector French hears a young woman's plea for help too late to save her - but when she is murdered, French must find out why a gang seems to be targeting low-level clerks.