Bøger i Felony & Mayhem Mysteries serien

Opera singers are often described as being larger than life, and certainly this is true of Gaylene Ffrench. Her appetites?for men, for food, for attention?are gargantuan, and her ability to irritate is similarly outsized. So when someone electrocutes the bombastic Australian contralto, few tears are shed at the Northern Opera Company. In fact, most of the company members are dancing a jig, and it falls on Superintendent Nichols to determine which of them might have helped Gaylene along to her just reward. With so many potential suspects, Nichols has his hands full, but Barnard and his readers have a deliciously malicious good time.

It's the fall of 1940, and London is being destroyed by the Blitz. Every night, its citizens cram into shelters, basements, subway stations - anything to avoid the bombs. And every morning, they awake to scenes of fresh devastation. But some of those citizens don't wake up. In many cases, it's the bombs that are to blame. But for a handful of the dead, there seems to have been a more immediate cause. The victims were all prostitutes, like the victims of another, notorious serial killer. Jack the Ripper may be long gone, but it's clear that someone is following in his footsteps. Based on the true story of the "Blackout Ripper."

Loni Meadows is the beautiful, unstable director of an arts foundation headquartered in a crumbling castle outside Florence. When Meadows dies under peculiar circumstances, it becomes clear that almost everyone at Castello Orfeo would have been pleased to see her dead. Years ago, as a low-level member of the Florence police force, Sandro Cellini, now working sporadically as a private eye, ran a routine background check on Meadows, and he hopes that the tidbits he learned back then can help him determine who helped her to her death.