Showing results by author "Edward Marston" in All Categories

After a calamitous performance and the death of one of their own, Lord Westfield’s Men are more than despondent. So when the mysterious Simon Chaloner follows Nicholas Bracewell home with an offer of a new play, anonymously penned, his offer seems too good to refuse. It is a story of a simple death used to conceal a greater treachery, perhaps even treason. But they could never have known how dangerous one play could be. Or how telling the tale of a murdered mathematician might put them all in jeopardy.

Araminta Jewell is a beauty, a dazzling young lady who manages to resist all the blandishments that come her way. But even her marriage to Sir Martin Culthorpe has not discouraged the rakes of London, and she is still pursued with unflagging zeal. It is during her first sitting for a portrait that Christopher Redmayne meets the lovely Lady Culthorpe, although he has heard much about her. Before the portrait can be finished, however, Sir Martin is murdered.

In the tenth installment of this dramatic Elizabethan series, Westfield’s Men are flying high after a celebrated performance of The Insatiate Duke at the Queen’s Head. However, victory is bittersweet as the company is soon faced with dissolution and the loss of their theatre; were it not for one of the company’s rising stars. After acquiring a new benefactor, the company plan to build their own theatre. However, before they have the chance to find out who this guardian angel is, one of the group is found brutally murdered.

When Nicholas Bracewell finds himself once again in the parlour of his lost love, Anne Hendrik, he was not expecting her entreaties to embroil him in the murder of a beloved choir master. Between tales of cruelty, forgotten maps of London and a butcher determined to rescue his son, it is yet another mystery for the book keeper to untangle. But will his quest endanger Lord Westfield’s Men?

In this thrilling selection of stories, a young porter is found dead in a coal tub; Colbeck devises a trap to catch a thief; and a burnt train carriage holds a gruesome secret in a small coastal village. As Colbeck and his trusty aide Sergeant Victor Leeming begin to piece together clues and motives for each crime, it becomes clear the pair must stay a step ahead of the culprits to solve the cases. With a new suspect at every turn, can the duo unearth the real villains?

January 1916. Britain is on the brink of enforcing conscription. Eligible young men who have not yet signed up to fight are despised as ‘conchies’ and ‘shirkers’, subjected to hatred and verbal abuse. Cyril Ablatt, leader of Shoreditch’s group of conscientious objectors, makes a rousing speech at a meeting of the No-Conscription Fellowship, refusing to be ‘an instrument of slaughter in a khaki uniform’.

Derby Day at Epsom Downs and a multitude of people crowd to watch the races: dukes and dustmen, bishops and beggars, privileged ladies and prostitutes. The gamut of Victorian society, though, is also a hotbed for crime and crooks of all kinds. With the country a-flutter in the run-up to this national occasion, events reach fever pitch when a disembodied head is discovered on a passenger train at Crewe; the first in a murky course of events that takes in murder, fraud and race-fixing.

1916. As thousands of Brits are fighting on the Front Line, a new breed of women emerges to hold the Home Front together. Fiercely independent and fiery-spirited, the munitionettes, or ‘canaries’, are easily recognisable with their chemically-stained yellow faces. Among the raucous group of women is Florrie Duncan, who plans to celebrate her birthday in style at the Golden Goose pub. But the celebrations are cut short when all but one are killed in a brutal explosion.

Nicholas Bracewell befriends a young beggar who is trying to eke out a living as a counterfeit crank, pretending to have spectacular epileptic fits in order to get money from gullible bystanders. When the beggar is murdered inside Bridewell, Nicholas has to pose as a beggar himself in order to get inside the notorious institution so that he can solve the crime. Counterfeiting of all kinds is exposed.

When unexpected disaster strikes Lord Westfield's Men during a packed performance, Nicholas Bracewell must save the day. Will a vagabond clown prophesy the end of the troupe - and perhaps the demise of Nick himself?

A fire at the Queen's Head deprives Westfield's Men of their home, so they seize the opportunity to travel to Denmark with their patron, Lord Westfield, who is to marry a beautiful young Danish widow. When they reach Elsinore castle, they are given a warm welcome, but the murder of Rolfe Harling, who brokered the wedding, changes the whole atmosphere of the place. Danger threatens from all sides, including England, where one man seeks revenge and dispatches assassins after the troupe. They are soon caught up in a complex web of political intrigue and betrayal.

The fiery star of the company of players called Lord Westfield’s Men, Laurence Firethorn, is hot for a lady, wife of the Lord Mayor elect. A tryst at London's Nine Giants Inn is arranged. Meanwhile, the lugubrious landlord of the actors' home base is laid even lower by a plot to take over ownership of the inn. A young apprentice actor is subjected to a horrible assault and a waterman pulls a mangled corpse from the Thames.

A vicious rivalry threatens to cause chaos for Lord Westfield’s Men when the onstage duels between Owen Elias and Sebastian Carrick become ever more realistic. However, it is an axe that splits open Sebastian's head one night in a Clerkenwell alley. Company book holder Nicholas Bracewell, accustomed to damage control, begins to investigate the victim's death and learns that in life, he was prone to make enemies from his weakness for women and his unwillingness to settle his debts. A web of deception has in fact been spun that stretches all the way to the Virgin Queen.

1865. A passenger train stands in York station. Jack Follis, the guard, patrols the platform to make sure that everyone is safely aboard. Returning to the brake van to load a box into it, he is alarmed by a smell of burning. Before he can find the cause, there is an explosion and the van is engulfed in flames. Responding to summons from the North-Eastern Railway, Robert Colbeck and Victor Leeming are sent to investigate. The two are split on whether a murder has taken place. Although the information they received was scant, Colbeck is convinced this is a murder case.

Capitan Daniel Rawson is a soldier, spy, linguist and ladies' man. Whether he is extracting valuable intelligence from the wife of a French general or leading his men in a Forlorn Hope, Rawson is a man on whom the Duke of Marlborough can always rely. Seething with intrigue and packed with swashbuckling heroics, the novel follows the Confederate army on the long, perilous trek across Europe to meet the French and their allies at the ferocious battle of Blenheim.

February 1918. Detective Inspector Harvey Marmion and Detective Sergeant Joe Keedy are pulled from their beds to attend a sinister siege involving three burglars where one policeman has already been shot dead. Attempts at talking the men in the house into surrender are met with stony silence so the police proceed to batter down the door and Keedy bravely leads the way. A gunshot is heard. Keedy is hit. As Keedy is rushed to hospital, Marmion is on the trail of the men who fled the scene and startling revelations emerge.

In June 1916, a young woman named Charlotte Reid is found murdered in a cinema. Harvery Marmion and Joe Keedy are assigned the task of finding the killer who so elusively fled in the dark. Before long, two more victims, of striking similarity but differing backgrounds, are found dead around the city. Meanwhile, miles from home, Marmion’s son Paul prepares for life on the front line as he marches towards the Battle of the Somme.

Chicago, 1931. While the Great Depression has tightened its grip on the world, there are still some who have the means to make their dreams a reality. One of these men is Hobart St John, who wants a mansion in the suburb of Oak Park. For young Welsh architect Merlin Richards, the opportunity to work on the house is an answer to his prayer.

For Lord Westfield’s Men, every high road leads to death. When the deathly horrors of the Black Plague decimate the audiences in London’s theatres, the acclaimed troupe of players called Lord Westfield’s Men take to the high road to seek out fresh audiences. But wherever they go, they are thwarted by misfortune, and are baffled by mysteries. Their scripts are stolen, their players abducted. A dead man walks, and a beautiful woman hears the voice of God. Only one man is clever enough to match swords with the troupe’s burgeoning troubles.

Dashing career soldier and ladies' man, Captain Daniel Rawson, happily accepts the Duke of Marlborough's dangerous undercover mission to find a missing spy - a Dutch tapestry-maker's beautiful daughter Amalia, unaware of her father's espionage role, is fearful for her safety. It's up to Daniel to find her father and put Amalia's mind at rest.