Detective Sergeant Clyde Northcott - DCI Peach's tall, black, powerful protege - has no interest in joining the snooty Birch Lane Tennis Club. So it is unfortunate for him when committee member Olive Crawshaw decides he would be the perfect talisman for the club's new, and controversial, policy to recruit members from a wider ethnic and social background. Clyde soon finds himself thrust into an exclusive community where his rusty tennis skills are the least of his concerns: for 'exclusive' does not mean moral, and while some of the club's members sail very near the law, one or two of them go far beyond it. So when a distinguished club member is murdered, a problem arises: how can he and Peach unveil the killer, when almost everyone seemed to want the victim dead?

"Exceptional ... Not a clue is out of place. This entry could be a primer on how to write a police procedural" Publishers Weekly Starred Review Skeletons have a habit of revealing themselves eventually . . . When a human skeleton is discovered on the boundary of a 20-year-old property development, it seems there are a large number of people who may know the identity of the corpse and how it got there. But twenty years is a long time and those individuals were very different people back then. Skeletons are being revealed in all senses and there are many prominent local figures who are beginning to feel uncomfortable and afraid. It's up to Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert and Detective Sergeant Hook to dig around in the past and unearth the truth of how and why the body ended up buried in the ground all those years ago.

Lambert & Hook discover that interrogating professional actors is an impossible business in the latest intriguing mystery. Sam Jackson is not a man who suffers fools - or anyone else - gladly. A successful British television producer who fancies himself as a Hollywood mogul, he makes enemies easily, and delights in the fact. It is no great surprise that such a man should meet a violent death. Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert and Detective Sergeant Hook deduce that the person who killed him is almost certainly to be found among the company of actors who are shooting a series of detective mysteries in rural Herefordshire. But these are people who make a living by acting out other people's fictions, people more at home with make-believe than real life - and the two detectives find interrogating them a difficult business. How can Lambert and Hook fight their way to the truth when faced with a cast of practised deceivers?

"Exceptional ... Not a clue is out of place. This entry could be a primer on how to write a police procedural" Publishers Weekly Starred Review Skeletons have a habit of revealing themselves eventually . . . When a human skeleton is discovered on the boundary of a 20-year-old property development, it seems there are a large number of people who may know the identity of the corpse and how it got there. But twenty years is a long time and those individuals were very different people back then. Skeletons are being revealed in all senses and there are many prominent local figures who are beginning to feel uncomfortable and afraid. It's up to Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert and Detective Sergeant Hook to dig around in the past and unearth the truth of how and why the body ended up buried in the ground all those years ago.

The potential duality of human character and its capacity for dissembling was a source of fascination to the Elizabethan dramatists. Where many of them used the Machiavellian picture to draw one fair-faced scheming villain after another, Shakespeare absorbed more deeply the problem of the tensions between the public and private face of man. Originally published in 1983, this book examines the ways in which this psychological insight is developed and modified as a source of dramatic power throughout Shakespeare's career. In the great sequence of history plays he examines the conflicting tensions of kingship and humanity, and the destructive potential of this dilemma is exploited to the full in the 'problem plays'. In the last plays power and virtue seem altogether divorced: Prospero can retire to an old age at peace only at the abdication of all his power. This theme is central to the art of many dramatists, but in the context of Renaissance political philosophy it takes on an added resonance for Shakespeare.

Detective Sergeant Clyde Northcott - DCI Peach's tall, black, powerful protege - has no interest in joining the snooty Birch Lane Tennis Club. So it is unfortunate for him when committee member Olive Crawshaw decides he would be the perfect talisman for the club's new, and controversial, policy to recruit members from a wider ethnic and social background. Clyde soon finds himself thrust into an exclusive community where his rusty tennis skills are the least of his concerns: for 'exclusive' does not mean moral, and while some of the club's members sail very near the law, one or two of them go far beyond it. So when a distinguished club member is murdered, a problem arises: how can he and Peach unveil the killer, when almost everyone seemed to want the victim dead?

Ex Ireland rugby player and now successful businessman Jim O'Connor is shot dead, point blank range, in the car park of a restaurant where he is hosting a family celebration. DCI Percy Peach is brought back from holiday to head up an investigation that has got nowhere. It seems Jim O'Connor had some rather unpleasant business contacts, many with the motive to get rid of him. However, when law-abiding Dominic O'Connor is also killed, within days of his brother, Brunton CID can only assume there must be some link between the two murders, so should they really be looking closer to home for the culprit. . . ?

Skeletons have a habit of revealing themselves eventually . . . When a human skeleton is discovered on the boundary of a 20-year-old property development, it seems there are a large number of people who may know the identity of the corpse and how it got there. But twenty years is a long time and those individuals were very different people back then. Skeletons are being revealed in all senses and there are many prominent local figures who are beginning to feel uncomfortable and afraid. It's up to Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert and Detective Sergeant Hook to dig around in the past and unearth the truth of how and why the body ended up buried in the ground all those years ago.

"A seemingly idyllic English holiday park turns into the scene of a grisly murder and a perplexing case for Lambert & Hook"
Twin Lakes is a tranquil place. It is a complex of holiday homes in a particularly beautiful part of England. 'Rest Assured', says the sign at its entrance. And the people fortunate to occupy the luxury homes on the site are indeed able to relax in a beautiful setting.
Then a series of mysterious threatening notes are delivered to one of the lakeside homes. DS Bert Hook conducts an informal investigation and the notes cease to appear. All is peaceful once more as spring moves into summer and the site is seen at its best. But suddenly a brutal death shatters the peace of this quiet place. As Lambert and Hook and the murder team investigate the crime, it emerges that the victim was by no means as innocent as most people thought him. And it seems that many of the residents lead far from ordinary lives and have secrets they will do anything to keep concealed . . .

When the committee members of the Oldford Literary Festival all receive anonymous letters telling them to resign or die, it marks the start of an unusual case for Chief Superintendent Lambert and DS Hook. All of the members identify one man as being capable of such a thing: Peter Preston, a self-important snob who is in disagreement with the head of the festival over what he sees as the dumbing down of the events programme. But could such a disagreement lead to murder? It's not long before Lambert and Hook have their answer . . .

London, February 1896. What had seemed at first to be no more than tasteless horseplay at Royal Blackheath Golf Club is now threatening to escalate into serious violence. An attempt at murder, brings Holmes and Watson swiftly to the scene of the crime at the famous old golf club. The thrilling climax of the tale is set on the last day of the 1896 Open Championship at Muirfield, with the conclusion as unexpected as it is timely. Noted crime author J.M. Gregson has turned his attention to his favorite detective duo of Holmes and Watson, and his first Sherlock Holmes novel will delight his fellow enthusiasts.

Superintendent Lambert and DS Hook have their work cut out when a local headteacher is shot in the back of the head. Because his character is one of vice and virtue being shot may have been his just comeuppance or perhaps he upset someone with far worse morals than his.

Camellia Park Golf Club had completed its first ten years and its owner, Patrick Nayland, felt it was time to splash out. Determined to give his employees a good time, he booked the entirety of Soutters Restaurant. A riotous evening was had by all. In fact they were making so much noise, the screams from the lavatory could easily have gone unnoticed. Chief Superintendent Lambert usually finds that the more enemies a murder victim has, the harder it is to decide who has more motive than anyone else. This victim was at the opposite, even trickier, end of the spectrum: popular with absolutely everyone.

Eric Walsh is found strangled in the car park after the North Brunton Masonic Lodge Ladies' Night. Walsh being a ladies' man, suspicion falls on many cuckolded husbands - one of whom, Peach is entertained to discover, is the Master of the Lodge. Equally suspicious is Cartwright the loan shark, Afzaal the waiter who seems to have something to hide, O'Connor the Irish Republican who has cause for vengeance ... and of course Chief Inspector Tucker, Peach's boss. After all, he too is a mason and, as Peach will never let him forget, masons are four times as likely to commit a serious crime in the area as anyone else.

When the body of a beautiful young woman is found on the Lady Chapel altar in Hereford Cathedral, Lambert and Hook have little time to solve one of the most puzzling cases of their career, before the media drown the police force in a wave of hysteria.