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Philo Vance finds his old chum District Attorney Anthony Markham up against a bizarre series of murders inspired by children's nursery rhymes. The first murder was apparently based on "Who Killed Cock Robin?"; it is followed by more hideous deaths referencing "Mother Goose." Philo Vance suspects a connection to a rather more sophisticated writer.

Wes Beattie, the hapless young son of a stuffy Toronto family is on trial for murder, and his explanations of what actually happened are entirely too fanciful to convince anyone. But Sidney "Gargoyle" Grant, a disreputable young lawyer, is irritated by the rush to condemnation, and resolves to untangle the truth.

When a man who really doesn't look the part tells hapless mystery author Ethelred Tressider that he may have killed someone, and there is actually not even a body, Ethelred is inclined to laugh the matter off. But the man in question is a successful mystery writer, and with Ethelred's sales none too hot, his agent Elsie think perhaps Ethelred should put in an effort for the reviews.

Julian Kestrel, the dandy detective of Regency London, is most decidedly a man of the world and, through his valet, Dipper, reformed Cockney pickpocket, is not without ties to the underworld. One such connection is Dipper's sister Sally, a prostitute who accidentally happens across the possibility of murder while picking her clients' pockets. Since Sally is not quite in the position to go to the police with her knowledge, she and Julian must chase the clues all through London, from glittery parlors to the dank halls of a home for fallen women.

Last in the delightfully funny Valentine-and-Lovelace series, Canary finds our two protagonists a bit the worse for wear. Their bar is losing money, largely because someone keeps insisting on leaving dead bodies around. The cops, this is the 1980s, after all, are not wildly interested in the gay community's little problems, so Lovelace and Valentine set up shop as sleuths, determined to stop the killer before he puts them out of business.

Like the rest of this cracklingly witty, fast-paced series, Slate is set in an exuberantly pre-AIDS world, when to be young, attractive, and the owner of a successful gay bar was a dandy thing indeed. Clarisse has hauled her dainty posterior off to law school, Valentine has opened Boston's grooviest gay boite, Donna Summer is still on the radio, and there's a dead body at the disco: Life doesn't get a whole lot more fun.

When Emma O'Brea's husband, Charlie, disappears, it quickly becomes apparent that Emma was the only person in Canada who didn't recognize how desperate he had been to leave. Eddie Addison is an overgrown delivery boy dangerously obsessed with a pretty young student. Eddie and Emma would seem to have little in common, but when Inspector Karl Alberg is called in to solve the riddle of Charlie's vanishing act, the two sets of disturbing delusions begin to converge.

Regardless of what the calendar says, Jack and Susan are always, eternally, 27 years old. They are destined for each other like Hepburn and Tracy, Dagwood and Blondie, Nick and Nora. They always acquire a shaggy white dog. In 1933 Jack and Susan are both married to the Wrong People. These People are not quite so Wrong that Jack and Susan would like to bump them off, but when one of them turns up dead, Susan becomes the cops' favorite suspect. Thank heaven Jack (and the intrepid Scotty and Zelda) are on hand to prevent a terrible miscarriage of justice!

Third in the Todd & Georgine series by Lenore Glen Offord, originally published in 1949. Todd and Georgine McKinnon's pleasant domesticity is shattered by the sudden arrival of a distinctly nonconformist young man who tells a wild tale and dies a short time later. When Georgine gets a threatening phone call, solving the mystery becomes an urgent matter.

Inspector Singh has been shipped off to Bali as part of a pan-Asian task force investigating a terrorist bombing. As he knows nothing about terrorists or bombs, it is fortunate he's on hand to investigate the murder that turns up. Unfortunately, he has to work with a partner: a very peppy, very Australian partner he can't seem to ditch. Singh's frustration, however, is the reader's delight, as the giggle-worthy relationship between the two balances the complex, often dark storyline.

Fans of Regency-era romances will love this series, featuring the dashing Julian Kestrel. But it will also be catnip for devotees of classic gentlemen-sleuth mysteries, like those by Dorothy Sayers: with his quips, his impeccable tailoring and his knack for solving "problems" that baffle the police, Kestrel is the spiritual godfather to Lord Peter Wimsey

"Leo Stanhope, a young transgender man in Victorian London, faces blackmail and potential exposure while he tries to protect the vulnerable children of a murdered woman"--

It's murder at a country-house party; a Christmas party, in fact, where all the guests are eccentric, and all the household staff are former criminals. Which of them caused the disappearance of one of the players in the holiday pageant? Luckily, both Inspector Alleyn and his wife, Agatha Troy, are on hand to wrap up the case.

Fans of Emmy Tibbett, have we got the book for you! Vacationing with friends in the Caribbean, Emmy and Henry meet a sprightly and delightful spinster who spins a yarn about a young woman lost at sea and then (perhaps) found again. The yarn gets yet more fascinating when the spinster herself disappears, and Henry--wry, unflappable Henry Tibbett of Scotland Yard--responds in a most uncharacteristic fashion. It's up to Emmy to untangle the clues, contending with drug smugglers on the one hand and an addled husband on the other. And did we mention the hurricanes? Emmy, of course, has resources to spare, so much so that we wish we could bring her back for a series of her very own.

An award-winning mystery novel whose pleasure lies largely in the intricate relationships between the characters, Mother Love has Karl Alberg, the series protagonist, working on a case that seems to hinge on the questions of why a placid housewife abandoned her family for seven years, and what prompted her to return.

The Death Chamber, set in both the past and the present, takes us to Calvary Gaol, a former prison where a TV crew has turned up for a shoot. But the ghosts of the prison's gruesome past have a way of reaching into the present.

No one could doubt that Mr. Percival Pyke Period was genuinely distraught to hear that his neighbor, Harry Cartell, had turned up dead in a ditch. But how is it that Mr. Percival Pyke came to write the letter of condolence before the body was found? And how did Mr. Cartell inspire such violence? Yes he was boring and stuffy, but who would kill a man for the crime of being a bad conversationalist?

World War II rages on, and Inspector Alleyn continues as the Special Branch's eyes and ears in New Zealand. While his primary brief is spy-catching, he's also happy to help with old-fashioned policing. Flossie Rubrick, an influential Member of Parliament and the wife of a sheep farmer, is murdered. Had she made political enemies? Had a mysterious legacy prompted her death? Or could the shadowy world of international espionage have intruded on this quiet farm?

First in the Henry Gamadge series. Bibliophile-sleuth Henry Gamadge investigates the bizarre death of Amberly Cowden and uncovers murder and mayhem in the midst of a troupe of impoverished actors.

It's murder in the little English village, but the two local spinsters, Miss Campanula, the victim, and Miss Prentice, her friend who may have been the intended victim, are not exactly the beloved little old ladies of song and story. They were (and are) waspish, gossiping snobs, passionate only about their own narrowly defined religion....and, perhaps, about the local vicar. But could they have been sufficiently unpleasant to provoke a murderer?

Inspector Roderick Alleyn has to date confined his investigations to England, but Vintage Murder finds him journeying to New Zealand (Ngaio Marsh's homeland). Traveling with Alleyn are the members of the Carolyn Dacres English Comedy Company. The actors' operatic intrigues offer an amusing diversion until, unexpectedly, they turn deadly. And Alleyn learns - not for the last time - that while he may be able to leave his badge back in Blighty, he's still a policeman, even on the other side of the world.

Lord Pastern and Baggot is a classic English eccentric, given to passionate, peculiar enthusiasms. His latest? Drumming in a jazz band. His wife is not amused, and even less so when her daughter falls hard for Carlos Rivera, the band's sleazy piano player. Aside from the young woman, nobody likes Rivera very much, so there's a wealth of suspects when he is shot in during a performance. Happily, Inspector Alleyn is in the audience.

It's true that Denton and Henry James are both American writers now living in London, but they have little else in common: James has the gravitas (and perhaps the pomposity) of a living legend, master of the literary kingdom, while Denton...well, he's scruffy and often covered in dog hair. But he does have this knack for sorting out problems, and James has just such a problem. There was a box, you see, and now it's gone missing, and in the box were certain letters that, if made public, could be most embarrassing. Most embarrassing indeed.

Professor of botany Andrew Basnett is looking forward to retirement and to settling into the little village where he's borrowed a cottage while his flat in town is renovated. It sounds bucolic, even if the village murderess lives right up the road. But the case never came to trial, says Basnett's nephew, lender of the cottage: She had the perfect alibi. Not entirely comforted, Basnett is more unnerved when a blizzard knocks out the power and provides a dark, snowy night just like the one six years ago when someone shot Charles Hewison through the head. It doesn't help that there's been another murder and that Pauline Hewison, once again, has motive to spare.

Photo Finish's dead diva, the soprano Isabella Sommita, was so widely loathed that the problem is less a lack of plausible suspects than an embarrassment of options. Though the grand country-house - and with it, the country-house murder - was history by 1980, when Photo Finish was originally published, Dame Ngaio got around the problem by setting the story on a lavish island estate, cut off from the mainland by a sudden storm. Happily, Inspector Alleyn is among the guests, and can take charge in the coppers' absence. The penultimate book in the series, Photo Finish is also one of only four books set in Marsh's native New Zealand.

The shabby Vulcan theater is not where Martyn Tarne hoped to work when she moved from New Zealand to London to pursue an acting career. But Martyn takes a job as dresser to the Vulcan's leading lady. This provides her with a ringside seat to the backstage circus: the aging alcoholic actor, the waspish playwright, the surprisingly gracious grande dame. There is, of course, a murder, so--enter Inspector Alleyn.

Daniel Valentine, a gay bartender, and his straight friend Clarisse Lovelace, a real estate agent, are the investigative duo of this set of four light mysteries set in Boston in the 1980s, all named after a color. In the first of these, Vermillion, the two investigate the murder of a 19-year old gay male hustler.

Daniel and Clarisse are summering in Provincetown (he is tending bar and she working at a gift shop) when Clarisse discovers Jeff's body on a beach. Cobalt is the color of Jeff's arresting eyes, and those eyes have made him both a lot of friends and quite a few enemies. Which of these killed him?

"Virginia and Felix ferret out the links between two apparently unconnected murders, revealing some unpleasant secrets about their neighbors"--