When two girls, aged nine and ten are abducted and killed in Wind Gap, Missouri, Camille Preaker is sent back to her home town to investigate and report on the crimes. Camille, self-described 'white trash from old money', is the daughter of one of the richest families in town. Long-haunted by a childhood tragedy and estranged from her mother for ye...

Laos, 1976. The monarchy has been deposed, the Communist Pathet Lao have taken over. Most of the educated class has fled, but Dr Siri Paiboun, a Paris-trained doctor remains. And so this seventy-two-year-old physician is appointed state coroner, despite having no training, equipment, experience or even inclination for the job. But the job's not tha...

A BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Dick Francis' pacey thriller starring Nigel Havers. At the annual party celebrating the success of the racing season, everything is running well to form - until a runaway horsebox ploughs into the marquee, causing terrible death and destruction. A witness to the tragedy, wine merchant Tony Beach presumes it is just on...

It's a deadly game of blackmail. And they're making him play. Kyle McAvoy is one of the outstanding legal students of his generation with a glittering future ahead of him. But he has a secret that threatens to destroy his fledgling career and, possibly, his entire life. One night that secret catches up with him in the form of some bad men in a dark...

'The Curious Curate' - When the village curate is found murdered, retired PR guru Agatha Raisin vows to bring his killer to justice, particularly if the investigation also brings her closer to her handsome next-door neighbour, Colonel Lacey. 'The Buried Treasure' - When Agatha embarks on a plan to give up smoking, little does she know that it will...

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of the novel by Ian Rankin. A wealthy banker's daughter goes missing from Edinburgh University. Has she run away, or has something more sinister occurred? Rebus finds a six-inch coffin in her home village, a clue which leads to his discovery that she was involved in an internet game. DC Siobhan Clarke is drafte...

A cBBC Radio 4 dramatisation of John le Carr‚'s fourth novel, starring Simon Russell Beale as Smiley and Piotr Baumann as Fred Leiser. When word reaches 'The Department' - an ailing section of British intelligence - that Soviet missiles are being installed close to the West German border, it seems the perfect opportunity to show Control and S...

It's San Francisco, 1928, and Sam Spade is a wisecracking, womanising Private Investigator. Missing husbands and unfaithful wives are his usual stock-in-trade, but when the beautifully distressed Miss Wonderley calls he gets involved in a dangerous caper most people would run a mile from. Miss Wonderley asks Sam's partner, Miles Archer, to shadow F...

Simon Russell Beale stars in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of John le Carr‚'s novel, which introduced his most famous character, George Smiley. It is 1962: the height of the Cold War and only months after the building of the Berlin Wall. Alec Leamas is a hard-working, hard-drinking British intelligence officer whose East Berlin network is in...

Two full-cast BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of Ngaio Marsh short stories. In 'Opening Night', a leading actor is found gassed in his dressing room. It looks like suicide, until it transpires that he was widely detested. Inspector Alleyn quickly realises that almost everyone in the theatre had a motive for his murder. 'When In Rome' finds Inspector All...

BBC Radio 4 dramatisation starring David Threlfall, Tina Kellegher and T. P. McKenna. 'Prodigal Son': In the first of this murder mystery series set in Dublin, Paolo Baldi, Franciscan priest and philosophy lecturer, accidentaly becomes involved in solving a murder at an Italian chip shop. 'Keepers of the Flame': Paolo Baldi, priest, philosophy lect...

Another adventure from the archives, once again featuring writer and detective Paul Temple and his glamorous wife Steve. In The Alex Affair, the latest mystery for Francis Durbridge's sophisticated sleuth begins with a body on a train, and the word 'ALEX' scrawled on the compartment window.

Radio's smoothest sleuth and his glamorous wife solve a case of international mystery. The case this time involves Dr Conrad's daughter Betty, who has disappeared from her finishing school in Bavaria. Paul is invited by the police to go over there to help trace the missing girl. Initially, though, even he is baffled, since the only clue to the myst...

From 1938 to 1969 crime novelist and detective Paul Temple and his Fleet Street journalist wife Steve solved case after case in one of BBC Radio's most popular serials. They inhabit a sophisticated, well-dressed world of chilled cocktails and fast cars, where the women are chic and the men still wear cravats.

This case involves the Fergusons, who Paul and Steve meet while on the way home from New York. They are flying to England to visit their son Richard, a student at Oxford University. But at the airport, there is shocking news: Richard has been murdered, found shot dead in his room. The only clues are a postcard from Harrogate signed `Jonathan', and...

In a thrilling case that takes Paul and Steve to exotic Egypt, Paul Temple is called in to investigate a mysterious murder. The twisting trail takes them from London to the back streets and nightclubs of Cairo...

BBC Radio 4 Dramatisation, starring Edward Bishop and featuring Robert Beatty and Don Fellows. At six feet five, Moose Malloy was as inconspicuous as a tarantula on angel food and about as dangerous. But Marlowe never was the kind of guy to walk away from trouble when it slapped him in the face, and Moose's girl had disappeared, a mere eight years...

A new BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Ian Rankin's novel. Rebus is ordered to join a team working on an old case, but someone on the team wants it to remain unsolved. Meanwhile, the murder of an art dealer draws Sergeant Clarke into an encounter with a notorious gangster - that Rebus is also investigating.

Includes: Wisteria Lodge, The Cardboard Box, The Red Circle and The Bruce Partington Plans. Clive Merrison stars as Holmes with Michael Williams as Watson in these adventures, part of the unique fully dramatised BBC canon of Conan Doyle's short stories and novels featuring the world-famous sleuth.

THE TERRIBLE TOURIST: Now that their marriage plans have collapsed, Agatha is furious to find that James is taking a holiday on the island where they were to have their honeymoon. But when she sets out in pursuit of him, she stumbles upon another murder. THE FAIRIES OF FRYFAM: Having been hurt by James once too often, Agatha takes a trip to the Cor...

'The Chief Justice of Beauty' finds the ladies hired by a beauty contest judge to check up on the integrity of the finalists in a forthcoming competition, following the embarrassing arrest for shoplifting of a previous winner. Meanwhile, Mma Ramotsweis worried about her fianc‚, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni. 'The Confession' sees Mma Ramotswe consulti...