L. C Tyler

From the author of Ten Little Herrings, murder is on the menu when a two-bit British crime writer and his sub-par agent dine at a country estate. Ethelred and Elsie are an unlikely duo: he's a deeply mediocre mystery writer, and she's his deeply nosy, chocolate-chomping agent. And yet they are stuck with one another, if only because their combined sleuthing abilities are much more impressive than anything either one of them can come up with alone....

"You don't believe me, do you?" asked Henry. "That I might have killed somebody." Well, really. The genuine murderer--the real pro--tends to keep track of that sort of thing. And he wasn't dressed for murder. The tweed jacket, the checked waistcoat, and above all the yellow bow tie they would have enabled Henry to audition as an extra in a 50s costume drama--a dodgy bookmaker, say, or a ne'er-do-well younger brother destined for exile to one of the...

It's the Autumn of 1666, and the Great Fire is still burning, the ashes of hundreds of houses and shops and St. Paul's Cathedral choking the air. The people, too, are choking, raging at the French, the Dutch, at the foreigners who-they are certain-lit the torch. Lord Arlington, the Secretary of State, might conceivably be interested in harnessing this anger; it can be so useful, at times, to have the population united in loathing of a common enemy....

In this mystery by the author of Crooked Herring, a lawyer in Cromwell's England receives dangerous info that could stop a murder-or get him killed. John Grey is a newly minted lawyer and would-be ladies' man with a bad habit of poking his nose into other people's business and getting tangled up in intrigue. That's unfortunate, because a mis-delivered letter from royalists has left Grey with more information about a murderous plot than it's entirely...