The Crime at Black Dudley

Wealthy Sir Hubert Handesley's original and lively weekend house parties are deservedly famous. To amuse his guests, he has devised a new form of the fashionable Murder Game, in which a guest is secretly selected to commit a 'murder' in the dark, and everyone assembles to solve the crime. But when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse....

Everyone fell under the spell of Jimmy Sutane, the charming and talented song-and-dance man. Everyone, that is, except the spiteful practical joker who put a pin in his stick of grease-paint and pasted 'Last Week' over the 'House Full' notices. Nothing too deadly. But as soon as Albert Campion is called in to investigate, people begin to die, and there's no shortage of suspects when the first victim's death is so convenient for so many.

Amateur detective Albert Campion is summoned to Cambridge to assist the Faraday family with a mystery. He must untangle a web of family resentments and discover the truth behind the disappearance of one of the Faraday cousins, vanished without a trace one Sunday morning after church, only to be found dead in a secluded stream. Matters are complicated further by the murder of Julia, one of the Faraday sisters, poisoned by her morning cup of tea.

The secrets of the respected publishing house of Barnabus Ltd. stretch back many years, but when one of the directors is found dead, locked in the company's strongroom, it's time for Albert Campion to set to work puzzling out the mysteries.

First, there is a skeleton in a dinner jacket. Then, a corpse in a golden aeroplane. After another body is found, Albert Campion nearly makes a fourth. Both the skeleton and the corpse have died with suspicious convenience for Georgia Wells, a monstrous but charming actress with a raffish entourage. Georgia's best friend just happens to be Valentine, a top couturier and Campion's sister. In order to protect Valentine, Campion must unravel a story of blackmail and ruthless murder.

"Anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe," declared the parson, "would be doing the world at large a service!" It was a careless remark for a man of the cloth. And one which was to come back and haunt the clergyman just a few hours later. From seven potential murderers, Miss Marple must seek out the suspect who has both motive and opportunity.

Anne Elliot has grieved for seven years over the loss of her first love, Captain Frederick Wentworth. But events conspire to unravel the knots of deceit and misunderstanding in this beguiling and gently comic story of love and fidelity.

The villagers of Chipping Cleghorn, including Jane Marple, are agog with curiosity over an advertisement in the local gazette that read: "A murder is announced and will take place on Friday October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6:30 p.m." Unable to resist the mysterious invitation, a crowd begins to gather at Little Paddocks at the appointed time when, without warning, the lights go out....

This is the very first Poirot/Hastings story. Set in 1916, we meet Captain Hastings as he is invalided out of the Great War and goes to convalesce at Styles Court, the family home of his great friend, John Cavendish. By an extraordinary coincidence, billeted in the village is a brilliant little retired detective with an egg-shaped head, who made a considerable impression on the Captain when he was in Belgium. Styles is not a happy household and in the blistering summer heat, tensions mount.

Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life. But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...

Timothy Kinnit needs Albert Campion's help. He is rich, handsome and successful but his past is a mystery to him and he needs Campion to find out how it connects him to the notorious Turk Street Mile slum. In addition, his illustrious adoptive family has a sinister secret of its own - involving a murderous 19th-century governess - that must also be brought to light by Campion's investigations.

Albert Campion is summoned to the village of Kepesake to investigate a particularly distasteful death. The body turns out to be that of Pig Peters, freshly killed five months after his own funeral. Soon other corpses start to turn up, just as Peters's body goes missing. It takes all Campion's coolly incisive powers of detection to unravel the crime.

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation starring June Whitfield as Miss Marple. Recuperating from a flying accident, Jerry Burton needs to take a break somewhere peaceful. He and his sister rent a house in the little village of Lymstock, where they know no-one and hope to be able to relax. Their quiet life is shattered, however, by the arrival of an obscene anonymous letter accusing them of impropriety. Jerry refuses to take it seriously and throws it on the fire.

Jack's a retired ex-cop from New York, seeking the simple life in Cherringham. Sarah's a Web designer who's moved back to the village find herself. But their lives are anything but quiet as the two team up to solve Cherringham's criminal mysteries. This compilation contains episodes 1 - 3: MURDER ON THAMES, MYSTERY AT THE MANOR and MURDER BY MOONLIGHT.

At the end of her first unsuccessful season out in society, Lady Georgiana has all but given up on attracting a suitable man - until she receives an invitation to a masked Halloween ball at Broxley Manor. Georgie is uncertain why she was invited, until she learns that the royal family intends to marry her off to a foreign prince, one reputed to be mad.