The coffin arrived by train. It was labelled urgent and addressed to the 'Deerham Hills Hospital: Pathology Department', although nobody at the hospital seemed to be expecting it. So it waited. But the contents of this coffin were eventually to provide some busy and perplexing weeks for the local police, and especially for Sergeant Charmian Daniels, whose special province was coping with missing girls. And there had already been quite a spate of them that summer . . .

It was a big old violent city where Nell lived, alone since her sister had married and moved away. This city was full of secrets and strange crimes. An unidentified body was discovered not far away from where Nell worked. People said it was dangerous for a young woman to live alone in such a city. Her young friends Amabel and Charlotte thought the house where she lived had its dangers too. But was Nell alone? Or if she was, in what sense was Nell Alone? Nell had her secrets, and her violence too.

In Deerham Hills a girl is missing and another suspected of harming her. An older woman is found dead: murder or suicide? Then there are the terrifying letters sent to Tom Gilroy, another suicide case, and a Peeping Tom. Charmian Daniels, Jennie Melville's policewoman heroine, has all this to cope with: and she meets again the London policeman Robert Ascham, and finds him even more attractive and disturbing than before.

Two people come drifting into the prosperous and growing town of Deerham Hills, forty miles from London. One, already dead and in the river, is an unidentified woman: the other, also faceless, is a hater of women and a murderer. 'It's a classic,' says Sergeant Charmian Daniels of the Deerham Hills Police about this eerie and terrifying case: a case which builds up a momentum that all but engulfs Charmian herself and her career.

Charmian Daniels, the tenacious and attractive policewoman detective, keeps a card index on the inhabitants of Deerham Hills, a village forty miles from London which has little petty crime: when things break out there they are serious. Jennie Melville's novel is concerned with closeknit, dangerous, human relationships. Very far from a whodunit, the story develops tensely and yet inevitably like the formula for a genetic code. Underneath is a problem of identity. What makes up a person? Charmian Daniels has to handle an explosive situation in which her own emotions are involved. She must uncover the identity of the victim as well as the real nature of the crime.

Upon first publication in 1962, crime readers welcomed police sergeant Charmian Daniels, the attractive new recruit to novel detectives whose blend of diffidence and determination would take her far. In Come Home and Be Killed she is working on a dangerous-looking domestic puzzle which has an unmistakable air of worse to come. Kathy is a career girl who dearly loves her home, but the home contains a stepmother whose cosy, embracing warmth is not to be mistaken for love. Mumsy and her daughter Janet have a bad habit of battening on Kathy, and their ways are observed with fascinated disapproval by Emily next door. Their disappearance could be a pleasure and relief if it were not for certain worrying traces about the house, and the ominous, inscrutable behaviour of their men.

As Joan Dingham awaits release from prison, her former partners in crime - Beryl Andrea Barker (otherwise known as 'Baby'), Phyllis and Bee - prepare for her return with hushed excitement. Only one of the original gang is missing - Diana King, now deceased. But even before the prison gates have been opened for Joan, another spate of murders rocks the town. And extraordinarily the corpses bear the very same markings as the bodies of Joan's victims years before. Senior policewoman Charmian Daniels, assigned to protect Joan, is also put in charge of the new murder cases - and soon senses an uncomfortable echo of the past inhabiting the present. Is Joan responsible for these killings, or could there be a copycat killer on the loose . . .? Then Diana King appears out of the blue. But she has been dead for years - hasn't she?

Winifred Eagle and Birdie Peacock are preparing for the opening of their new bookshop, which will specialize in crime fiction. So perhaps they are extra-sensitive to the mystery that is currently dominating local news - the disappearance of two local women. They would be even more disturbed if they knew what Chief Superintendent Charmian Daniels now knows - four other women have gone missing, and with every disappearance, the local police have received a letter containing the victim's name and one of her possessions. To take her mind off the increasingly worrying case, Charmian attends the launch of her friends' bookshop. But a gruesome discovery is made in the shop's garden - a stone coffin and two bodies. One body has been in the ground for centuries. But the second body, that of a woman, is much fresher . . .

Mary March had been having some murderous thoughts as she walked through the Great Park in Windsor early that October morning. So perhaps it was fate that she should find the first victim . . . For only a few hours later, in the recently abandoned home of her neighbour Alice Hardy, Mary discovers the body of a young man, his face painted red, white and blue - his thymus gland expertly cut from his chest. And for high-ranking policewoman Charmian Daniels, brought in to head the investigation, this is just one of a number of disturbing features. Because the thymus gland in animals is known as the sweetbread, an edible delicacy - and Mary has received a note which claims this murder is just a 'taster'. But is Mary all she seems? Is she the persecuted or, in fact, the persecutor? And why has Alice Hardy disappeared? Has she become another victim - or could she be the murderer? As Charmian seeks the answers to these questions, the killer has more work to do . . .

Fanny Fanfairly has recently inherited an infamous Victorian brothel house in the centre of Windsor. The house is now rundown and empty, apart from the strange wax models - each striking an erotic pose - that inhabit every floor. And Fanny is convinced these models are moving all by themselves . . . She asks her friend, high-ranking policewoman Charmian Daniels, for help. But Charmian has little time to ponder on the old woman's bizarre fears, for a London prostitute, Alicia Ellendale, has gone missing following a day trip to Windsor. Alicia has one very distinguishing feature - the stub of a sixth toe on her right foot. A missing person case would not normally be Charmian's domain - but her bosses are getting twitchy because Alicia was last seen on her way to visit Frank Felyx, a recently retired detective inspector from their division. What's more, Frank is now refusing to open his door. Charmian is given the unenviable task of finding the missing woman before the police are dragged into a messy case. And at some point she's still got to sort out the strange goings-on in Fanny's new house . . . Then a young boy makes a gruesome discovery on the river bank at Runneymede - a shoe bearing a woman's severed foot . . .

The murder of a Windsor schoolgirl at Miss Bailey's Nursery School ten years ago shocked the local community. Closed down, the school stood empty and rotting, but Nancy Bailey would not sell. Sometimes the neighbours thought that the heard voices and saw lights in the 'murder house' . . . Nancy's half-sister inherits the house and, opening up the basement room, is greeted by a horrifying sight: the body of a woman, a decapitated head between its legs. As the police re-open their investigations, high-ranking policewoman Charmian Daniels must dig deep into an underworld of dark secrets and witchcraft to unmask a ruthless, perverted killer.

High-ranking policewoman Charmian Daniels drove home to Windsor on the day in November that the castle burned. The fire chimed in with her mood, almost of despair: she had been brooding on death and murder, for her day had been spent talking to a mother whose child has been abducted by a stranger. Eight-year-old Sarah Holt has now been missing from her home for eight days, and the chances of her being found alive diminish with each passing hour. The only clue to her disappearance is one of her dolls, left battered and alone on the doorstep. Nobody reports having seen Sarah alive, so the police begin the grim task of searching for her body. Then on the patch of land known as Baby Drop where unwanted babies used to be left as foundlings, a gruesome discovery is made. But the child's corpse lying next to the skeleton of a baby buried nearly a century before is not Sarah Holt but a young boy, recently reported missing from his foster home. Could the two deaths and Sarah's disappearance be connected? In tandem with the search for Sarah and the hunt for the boy's killer, Charmian cannot help thinking about the tiny baby abandoned all those years ago. Might the antique locket found near the skeleton be a vital link with the past? Or is Charmian clutching at straws in a desperate attempt to solve the horrors of the present?

Buying a house in the picturesque village of Brideswell was an impulse decision for high-ranking policewoman Charmian Daniels. Green, serene; Brideswell seemed like an ideal retreat from the pressures of work. But when the village beauty, Chloe Devon, mysteriously disappears, Charmian begins to suspect that Brideswell is not all it seems. When part of Chloe's corpse is discovered in London, and another part is unearthed in a shallow grave in Brideswell, Charmian must heed the police maxim of 'whoever has the heart, takes the case'. So, together with local Detective Chief Superintendent Clive Barney, she determines to catch the killer. As Charmian struggles to uncover possible motives for the girl's savage murder, she becomes troubled by the threatening atmosphere surrounding the village. Her enquiries uncover a host of demons from Brideswell's past, which must be exorcised before the villagers can sleep in peace . . .

On the whole, Charmian Daniels felt that her life was going well. She was enjoying the seniority that a recent promotion had brought to her career. If she had one complaint, it was that her new position made it difficult to do any 'real' police work. But the shocking murder of a teenaged schoolgirl was soon to change all that . . . Intrigued by the apparent lack of motive for Louise Farmer's killing, and by the disappearance of Ted Gray, the man who found her body, Charmian decides to investigate. So she visits Ted's wife, Una, but what she discovers about him hardly adds up to a person capable of cold-blooded murder. Meanwhile, news has started to filter through of some strange goings-on at the school where Ted and Una used to work. A young pupil, Pix Prescott, has been unsettling his classmates with hysterical tales of 'double people'. Could Pix's terror simply be put down to the imaginings of an eight-year-old mind? Charmian is convinced that Ted Gray holds the key to the mystery of who killed Louise Farmer and why. But until she finds out more about him she is powerless to stop the ripples of violence from spreading still further, powerless to prevent another death . . .

After the hottest English summer in years, the wet autumn that follows brings little relief for Chief Superintendent Charmian Daniels, whose recent successes have earned her not just a promotion but also deep resentment from some of her colleagues. Now she must find the killer of Nella Fisher, a young woman whose unlikely connections extend to two friends of Charmian's, women Nella tried to bribe with information about a man intending to do them harm. The case is loaded with problems for Charmian, from her links to two possible suspects to her growing sense that police corruption may be involved. A lingering scent of cigar smoke, threatening letters, and a brush with death confirm Charmian's fear that she is the killer's real target, but can she unmask her enemy before it's too late? A complex, riveting mystery from one of the genre's most acclaimed writers.

Chief Superintendent Charmian Daniels is on sick-leave at her home in Windsor, which she shares with her cat, Muff. She has her first encounter with her enigmatic neighbour, Miss Eagle, when their cats have a fight. Although Winifred Eagle lives alone she receives many visitors, nearly all female, one of whom is a local policewoman. Rumour has it that the group are a coven of witches. One of their number, a young woman, is brutally murdered in her own home, her hands tied in front of her, her body surrounded by objects usually associated with witchcraft. Someone arrives to find her dead, but leaves and says nothing. Later that day the grisly scene is discovered by beauty consultant Denise Flaxon who raises the alarm. Despite being on leave, Charmian finds herself drawn into investigations of the coven and comes up against a wall of silence. Who is the dead woman, and why did she come to Windsor? And what is the true identity of the witches' companion, the enigmatic Josh Fox? In this superbly crafted whodunit Charmian Daniels cleverly unveils the truth and reveals a killing motivated by baser instincts than the supernatural.

After the hottest summer for years the wet autumn that follows is one that Chief Superintendent Charmian Daniels will look back on as the worst of her life. The success of her last case has proved a double-edged sword, for while it has brought her promotion and respect from some colleagues, in others it has caused deep resentment and made her some bitter enemies. Then a young girl, who called herself Nella Fisher, is found dead outside the home of two of Charmian's closest friends. Nella had been visiting them for some time, warning them of danger from a person who hates them. But before she will reveal that person's identity she demands payment, so the women send her away. Now Nella has been murdered - is she a victim of the watcher's anger, or has she pushed the patience of Charmian's friends too far? Charmian's feelings of unease strengthen when the hatred shown in the threatening letters and mail she receives fever pitch. And she has the feeling she's being watched. Not that she's seen anyone, but the lingering smell of cigar smoke around her house tells her that someone has been there. Even the police protection she reluctantly accepts can't put her completely at her ease. After all, there are some nasty elements in this case. Police corruption being one of them. Braving the threats against her life and wary even of her closest friends and colleagues, Charmian persists with her hunt for the killer. A look into her past leads her to confront him face to face, but justice is not done until Charmian has suffered almost the ultimate humiliation . . . Jennie Melville's new Charmian Daniels mystery is a strong and devious book which keeps the reader guessing until the last venomous twist.

Charmain ran down the stairs and out into the yard. 'What is it Anny, what's up? Why were you screaming?' 'The sack,' muttered Anny, not looking up. 'In the sack.' Charmian walked over, dragged open the sack and looked inside. The smell that rose up at her alerted her to what she was going to find. Flesh. Dead flesh of some kind. A butcher's throw-out parts perhaps. Then she took in what she was seeing. The gorge rose in her throat. 'God!' Charmian Daniels is on sabbatical from the police force, living in Wellington Yard, Windsor, researching into feminist crime with a group of women criminals. Her sabbatical is disturbed by the disappearance of Anny's daughter Kate and her violent boyfriend. Dismembered limbs from an unidentified body are discovered in a rubbish sack. A child is snatched from its pram. Headless torsos are found outside Windsor. Is there a thread connecting these events to the group of women she is working with?

Edwina, Cassie and Alice, three young women who had become an inseparable trio, shared a birthday, success in their respective professions and a belief that nothing could change their relationship. Then Edwina's lover Tim, father of her unborn child, died in a road crash. All three received anonymous telephone calls and at the reception for Edwina's father's second marriage their publicity agent drank poisoned whisky, dying in agony. They found themselves sharing at least one more experience, that of being murder suspects. As the police investigate the killing amongst the residents and workers of Covent Garden, where all three women conduct their business, the nameless caller concentrates on Edwina and in such a menacing way that she decides to run. But she cannot hide from the caller, or from her friends, or from the man who wants to replace Tim in her life, and when another killing occurs she returns to the familiar, but now claustrophobic, surroundings of the Garden and to increasing danger. Jennie Melville was renowned for creating suspense novels full of tension and atmosphere and startling insights into the human mind. Here she is at the top of her form in a whodunit that is intriguing, surprising and wholly satisfying.

Charmian was right that disporder was on its way to Deerham Hills. The first instalment had arrived in the form of one dead man, unknown, probably murdered: and a robbery at a local furrier's which was Charmian's immediate business. Was the strange woman who had recently come to town the catalyst which produced the violence? Or was she just a symptom of it? An eruption on the face of a patient who already has the plague? Charmian did not know. Not at first. There was nothing strange about a Woman Police Officer getting on with her job, but this was the first time it was a woman against a woman . . .

Sergeant Charmian Daniels of the Deerham Hills police force was at Midport University on a three-fold mission-to lecture to local police cadets, to keep an eye on student trouble-makers and to start a diploma in criminology. The subject of her thesis was already forming in her mind-the new kind of killer. The population was growing younger all the time; given a decade or two, statistics would show that one man in three would have a violent act in his past. Society was creating a new kind of killer, casual, committing murder almost without thought. And in the world of the future, Charmian knew that woman stood a better than average chance of being victims. What she didn't know was that even as she thought about the new pattern in crime, the ominous statistics for it were already being proven on dangerously close ground.

Up until now Stella's memories have been clouded with grief: for ten years she has mourned the death of her husband. And yet she she can't resist the enigmatic figure who appears one night, claiming to be her lost husband.