The Clarice and Cliff Mysteries

A thrilling tale from the author of the popular 'Reverend Shaw' series of Golden Age mysteries! London, 1930: When aspiring film actress Evelyn Parks is found strangled late one night at Hampstead underground station, Scotland Yard detectives begin a desperate manhunt across the fog-shrouded city. Evelyn's neighbour Clarice Thompson begins to suspect that the killer was someone she knew —perhaps even a fellow resident at the Lovell Villa Private Hotel, the down-at-heel boarding house in which Evelyn rented a room.

It is the Whitsun weekend of 1931 in the once-fashionable resort of Frencham-on-Sea. A housewarming party at Seaview One, the thoroughly modern home of Sir James and Lady Theodora Phillips, goes horribly wrong when Lady Theodora is found drowned in the swimming pool. Suspicion falls immediately on one of the servants, but the police are unable to make the charge stick. Two of the house guests, Clarice Thompson and Cliff Thorley, begin to notice the undercurrents of tension and rivalry among the guests, and that one person in particular is acting very suspiciously.

'Your lives are in danger... leave the hotel before it is too late...' When newlyweds Clarice and Cliff Thorley arrive in the little French town of Tourville-sur-Mer for their honeymoon, the last thing they expect to find is the corpse of a wanted jewel thief in their hotel room. Nor do they expect to find a stolen diamond necklace worth over half a million Francs hidden in their luggage. Somebody wants to get hold of that necklace very much. So much, that they are willing to kill for it.