Following an otherwise-enjoyable literary luncheon, the celebrated crime novelist Ariadne Oliver is accosted by a particularly formidable woman who engages her in conversation about one of her many god-daughters, whom Ariadne hasn't seen since she was a child. She lands a bombshell with the question "What I want to know is this: did her mother kill...

Father Gorman is called to a dingy rooming house to see a woman who, before she dies, confesses a bizarre tale to him. Leaving the house he is followed and, in the fog, a fatal blow is struck. A piece of paper with nine names written on it is found in the dead priest's shoe. The clue leads to The Pale Horse Inn, home of three women: a psychic, a me...

Hercule Poirot and his good friend Captain Hastings are enjoying a well-deserved break on the Cornish Riviera, in the idyllic village of St Loo. Wandering along the terrace of the Hotel Majestic on the first morning of their stay, Poirot literally falls at the feet of a pretty, dark-haired girl and, much to Hastings' delight, insists that she join...

Elinor Carlisle and Roddy Welman are the model English couple, perfect companions set for a life of ease when they inherit Aunt Laura's considerable fortune. But a poison pen letter begins a chain of events which is to end in tragedy. Convinced that Mary Gerrard, a childhood playmate of Elinor's, is attempting to ingratiate herself with her aunt fo...

Gordon Cloade is killed in a London air raid, and his vast fortune passes to his young wife Rosaleen. Five of his relatives are desperate to get their hands on Cloade's money, and Rosaleen begins to fear for her life. The prospects for the Cloades improve when they discover that Rosaleen had a previous husband who perished mysteriously in Africa. T...

Hercule Poirot is a guest at a weekend house party, given at the Cornish clifftop home of the celebrated actor Sir Charles Cartwright. The other visitors include keen amateur detective Mr. Satterthwaite and distinguished Harley Street nerve specialist Sir Bartholomew Strange. Death visits the house soon after Poirot's arrival, the victim an elderly...

When Leonard Vole finds himself accused of murder, his predicament is made even worse when he discovers his wife to be the chief witness against him. The trial proceeds with a number of unexpected twists...

All four episodes of the full-cast BBC Radio 7 comedy police drama written by Alastair Jessiman, originally broadcast in March 2009. A gloriously gritty Scottish police series featuring the duo of the grizzled Detective Inspector Bob Boxer and his slightly less grizzled sidekick Detective Constable Shona Doberman. Join them in these four episodes a...

The second series of Lynne Truss's hugely popular BBC Radio 4 comedy thriller. Inspector Steine - the amiable, unworldly detective who refuses to believe in Brighton's criminal underworld - returns for another six episodes. It is 1957 and, as the series opens, all crime has stopped along the South Coast. But Mrs. Groynes - the cockney charlady who...

Heralded by an instantly memorable signature tune, the adventures of special agent Dick Barton and his friends, Jock and Snowey, originally ran on the BBC Light Programme between 1946 and 1951. Set in an exciting world of criminal masterminds, espionage and adventure, the series was essential listening for an entire generation. Sadly very few of th...

Life-long Father Brown fan Ann Widdecombe explores the enduring impact of the shambolic priest, and looks into the life of his creator G.K. Chesterton. 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of 'The Innocence of Father Brown'. Ann Widdecombe goes on the trail of G.K. Chesterton's crime-solving cleric, whose unlikely methods make him on...

Carleton Hobbs stars as Sherlock Holmes in 12 classic full-cast BBC Radio dramas in these twelve classic stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Carleton Hobbs established the 'sound' of Sherlock Holmes, with Norman Shelley as his superb Watson. Now these unique recordings are available together for the first time ever, with specially commissioned introduct...

Two BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations, starring Brian Cox as McLevy, Siobhan Redmond as Jean Brash and Michael Perceval-Maxwell as Mulholland. Inspired by the real-life memoirs of a Victorian Inspector in Scotland, James McLevy prowls the dark streets of 1860s Edinburgh bringing criminals to justice, with the assistance of Constable Mulholland....

Heralded by an instantly memorable signature tune, the adventures of special agent Dick Barton and his friends, Jock and Snowey, originally ran on the BBC Light Programme between 1946 and 1951. Set in an exciting world of criminal masterminds, espionage and adventure, the series was essential listening for an entire generation. Sadly very few of th...

No Orchids for Miss Blandish was crime author James Hadley Chase's first novel, and an experiment in adapting American hard-boiled crime fiction by a British author. Inspired by James Cain and The Postman Always Rings Twice, it worked so well that it launched the former salesman's writing career. He went on to write over eighty novels sold worldwid...

A foggy night...a lonely country house...and a woman with a gun in her hand quietly surveying the dead body of her husband. It looked like a straightforward case of murder. Or was it? As the ghosts of an old wrong begin to emerge from the past, the case begins to look anything but straightforward... First staged at the Duchess Theatre in London in...

Feisty Chicago private eye Vic 'V. I.' Warshawski is used to getting mixed up in complicated cases. But when three million dollars in share certificates are stolen from a Dominican priory, she really doesn't want to get involved. Because agreeing to investigate would mean doing a favour for Aunt Rosa, the priory's treasurer, and Vic has never forgi...

This collection includes both vintage crime stories such as 'Loopy' by Ruth Rendell; 'Insufficient Evidence' by Frances Hegarty; 'Nine Points of the Law' by E. W Hornung; 'The Case for the Defence' by Graham Greene; 'Bluebeards Bathtub' by Margery Allingham and 'Hunted Down' by Charles Dickens as well the classic crime stories 'The Blue Cross' by G...

The four stories in this collection include Baroness Orczy's 'The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway', Maurice Leblanc's 'The Mysterious Railway Passenger,' Victor Whitechurch and E. Conway's 'A Warning in Red' and Freeman Wills Crofts's 'The Mystery of the Sleeping Car Express'.

When Victor Dean fell to his death on the iron staircase at Pym's Advertising Agency no one was sorry. Nobody had really liked him - and even contributing to his wreath was a bit of an imposition. But when Lord Peter Wimsey (alias Death Bredon) joins the firm and asks some awkward questions it appears that Dean's death was not an accident - it was...

Storm-bound over the New Year at a Fenland rectory, Lord Peter Wimsey willingly lends a hand in the ringing of a New Year's Eve peal of the church bells. Some months later, a handless, disfigured corpse is discovered in a fresh grave in the churchyard. Lord Peter receives a plea for help from the rector and embarks on one of his most complicated in...