A. E. Fielding

A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery When Sergeant Peel, a Scotland Yard detective goes missing while on special duty on the coast of Suffolk, Chief Inspector Pointer dispatches private inquiry agent Hugh Duncan to investigate. Duncan fails to find the detective, but almost immediately discovers a body buried in the sand by the shore as well as evidence of a smuggling operation. Trying to determine if Peel's disappearance related to the murder, Duncan soon finds himself embroiled in a much more complicated affair involving Arab politics and a long lost treasure as he investigates a . . . Murder in Suffolk

A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery Chief Inspector Pointer finds himself looking into the suspected suicide of the owner of a chain of high-end hair dressing salons. The only thing suspicious about the death is a tenuous link to the earlier brutal murder of a woman at a cottage called The Clearing in Lincolnshire. The clues in that case are sparse, and while there are suspects, none would seem to have a motive strong enough to fit the nature of the crime, and none of them had any connection the subject of his own investigation. The inspector, however, becomes convinced that there is a connection, and that to solve his own case, he must first solve the earlier murder.

Three Full Length Novels in One Whose Body by Dorothy L. SayersThe Westminster Mystery by Elaine HamiltonThe Clifford Affair by A. E. FieldingPrior to World War I, detective fiction in Britain was largely a male preserve, but in the period between the wars-an era that has been called the Golden Age of British Mysteries-women authors in Britain not only embraced the genre, but came to dominate it. Authors such as Sayers, Allingham, Marsh not to mention the great Agatha Christie topped the best sellers lists, but there were numerous other women writers working to satisfy the public's demand for mystery fiction. Unfortunately, many of these authors are virtually unknown today. This volume brings together the first mystery novel of one of the best known of these writers, Dorothy L. Sayers' Whose Body?, along with novels by two of the lesser known women of the period, Elaine Hamilton's The Westminster Mystery and A. E. Fielding's The Clifford Affair, in the hopes that it will serve as an introduction to the British Women of Mystery.

A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery Charles Dawnay was a devoted husband, a loving father, and an honest and successful man of business. His one quirk, if it could be called that, was that he kept a meticulous diary in which he noted every appointment and encounter both past and future. Therefore, when his body was found with its head bashed in, the police had every hope that the diary might provide a clue as to who the last person to see him alive might be, as that person might well prove to be the murderer. However, when the diary is examined, it proves to be written in an indecipherable code. When Chief Inspector Pointer is called in to handle the case, he quickly determines that the diary found on the body is not the one kept by the murdered man, but a substitute. The search is on for the real diary, for only its recovery will allow Pointer to solve . . . The Case of the Missing Diary

A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery It began simply enough, a group of strangers on holiday meeting at a winter resort in the Italian Tirol. Within a matter of hours, though, after their return to England, one of their number would be dead, another missing, and the rest under suspicion of murder and other crimes. Was the death of the young woman found shot in the flat of the missing man merely a case of a holiday romance gone wrong? Or had the woman, whose life had seemed as mysterious as her death, been involved in some international criminal scheme involving counterfeit Bank of England notes? These are the questions that Chief Inspector Pointer must answer to resolve the mystery of The Paper Chase.

A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery To help make ends meet, Mr. Hillock was in the habit of renting out rooms at his farm to artistic types down in the Sussex countryside looking for a rustic retreat. He wasn't particularly keen on art, nor the attention paid to his two daughters, but the money came in handy. However, when one of his boarders is found with his head bashed in this arrangement is thrown into disarray. Superintendent Gibbs, the county policeman called in to investigate the death enlists the help of one of the other boarders, a writer of mystery plays, to help him out, but even with this assistance, he finds himself out of his depth. It is at this point that Chief Inspector Pointer of Scotland Yard is called in to lend a hand to solve . . . The Upfold Farm Mystery

A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery Farthing was one of the oldest and finest houses in England, and, as with many ancient houses it came with legends attached to this. A particularly gruesome one dated back to the time of Queen Mary when the then current owner of the house, denounced his own wife as a heretic in order to retain possession of the estate. Shortly after he met his own doom. Since that time, a sequence of three eerie laughs has presaged the death of the most recent owner. When Chief Inspector Pointer is approached to investigate when the laughs have sounded twice, he demurs, claiming pressing business, only to be called in when Edgar Danford, the latest owner is found murdered. The call reporting the death had been made by the victim's partner, a Mr. Digby Cox, but when the police arrived on the scene, Cox had vanished leaving Pointer to ponder just who Mr. Cox was and what part had he played in the death of Danford. It would seem that to solve the mystery of Edgar Danford's death, Pointer must first find the Mysterious Partner.

A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery The house known as The Nook would have been a perfect place for the newly wedded Layngs to live while awaiting the completion of the house they built. Perfect, that is, except for the body of a young woman found under the kitchen floor while the couple are moving in. The corpse, whose identification is made uncertain by the injuries to the face and the several months the body had lain there before being discovered, appears to be of someone well known to the family, though oddly, Douglas Layng disputes this. All this leaves Chief Inspector Pointer the task of unraveling the usual mysteries of why and when and how the victim was murdered, but possibly also who the victim really was.

A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery The four Cautley cousins, Major Howard Cautley, Lionel, Jack, and Fabian could not have been more different, a wealthy businessman, explorer, architect, and mystic respectively. But the cousins, while they might argue amongst themselves, could always be counted on to stick together. This certainly appeared to be the case when the Major is killed in a seeming accident by his own shotgun. The local police, very familiar with the family, are reluctant to suspect the surviving cousins of murder. Chief Inspector Pointer, though, when consulted over a pearl necklace that has gone missing on the same day, is less reticent. As a matter of long practice, he suspects everyone. But can even Pointer unravel the Conundrum that is the Cautley cousins?

A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery Sir Adam Youdale, K. C. was Britain's preeminent barrister, at least for the defense. If there was anyone who could get his clients off, it was Sir Adam. Yet when the lawyer is found dead at Westwood, his home in Wimbledon, it is the barrister who becomes the center of a murder investigation. When Scotland Yard's finest, Chief Inspector Pointer, takes over the case, he finds that he has plenty of clues, perhaps too many, and a plethora of suspects as well. He soon realizes, though, that one clue is missing from the crime scene, the clue that will provide the solution to The Westwood Mystery

A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery After a chance meeting on a Channel ferry, reporter Martin Blair had no expectation of meeting the "Fairy Princess" ever again. He had no idea that when he wrote an article for his paper after attending an inquest into the supposed accidental death of a woman, that Joan Ingilby, the person that his article implicated as a murderer would prove to be the very same woman. But was she in fact guilty of the crime? When she comes to him professing her innocence, Blair decides to prove her innocence only to find himself surrounded by suspicious characters, each of whom seems to be hiding something. Fortunately, Chief Inspector Pointer is called in to handle the case for Scotland Yard. But can even the chief inspector untangle... The Net Around Joan Ingilby?

When the body of Rose Charteris is found at the bottom of a sand pit off Medchester Common, everyone assumed it was the result of a tragic accident, but when Chief Inspector Pointer of Scotland Yard discovers certain discrepancies, it becomes clear the death of the young woman is a case of murder. There are plenty of suspects for the chief inspector; the dead woman's jealous Italian fianc , her cousin who would gain an inheritance, even a mysterious man who spent the night in the summer house unknown to anyone else. Yet Pointer finds himself drawn into a political intrigue that takes him to Genoa and the Italian Tyrol before finally resolving the case in his chambers in New Scotland Yard. The Charteris Mystery is the second of the Chief Inspector Pointer mysteries.

When John Tait collapses in front of the house of his step-mother, it is first assumed to be due to a heart attack. But when Chief Inspector Pointer is called to the scene, he quickly comes to suspect poison, a suspicion that is borne out by the autopsy. Pointer finds himself confronted with plenty of suspects, the three cousins who stood to lose a comfortable life by Tait's imminent marriage, a vengeful Italian woman who has vowed a vendetta against his step-mother, a mysterious young woman who may well be a blackmailer who has insinuated herself into the household. There is also the fact that Tait's business associate had died the previous day in what might be a case of either suicide or murder. But the case of John Tait's death will prove to be much more complicated than even these possibilities hint at.

A nice little country murder. When Ronald Craig succumbed after a short illness it came as a surprise, but when a specialist called down to consult declares the death as due to chronic arsenic poisoning it proves even more of a puzzle. There are plenty of suspects, the ex-wife, the reluctant fianc , the governess who doesn't care for children, the widow of the dead-man's cousin, the attending physician, his sister, each with a motive, and each lacking an alibi. There are plenty of clues as well, footprints in the garden, the curious tea, the torn wrapping of the package never sent to name but a few. All in all, quite a tangle. No wonder then that Chief Constable was only too happy to turn the investigation over to Chief Inspector Pointer of Scotland Yard who fortuitously was in the neighborhood on another matter. But is even Inspector Pointer up to solving . . The Craig Poisoning Mystery