Recommendations based on "The Cross-Legged Knight"

A Gripping Historical Crime Novel, Perfect For Fans Of C. J. Sansom ’crackles With Energy And Wit’ The Times

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time with her works outsold only by Shakespeare and the Bible. She is regarded by generations of fans as the greatest mystery writer ever, and her novels are read and cherished the world over.Clarissa, the young wife of a Foreign Office Diplomat, delights in tweaking the sensibilities of her more serious friends and for playing a game she calls "supposing" - imagining a difficult situation and figuring out how people would respond. But Clarissa's lighthearted game becomes deadly serious when she discovers the dead body of an unknown person in her own drawing room. If that wasn't bad enough, her husband is on the way home with an important foreign politician and the attendant scandal of the dead body would irrevocably damage his career at the very least. Therefore, Clarissa decides to dispose of the body and persuades her three houseguests to help.But before she can get the body off the premises, a policeman arrives at her front door. The police received an anonymous tip about a murder in the house and have shown up to investigate. Now Clarissa must keep the body hidden, convince the skeptical police inspector that there has been no murder, and, in the meantime, find out who has been murdered, why, and what the body is doing in her house.

Deep in London’s dangerous slums, Victorians transact their most secret and shameful business. For a price, a man can procure whatever he wants. But for one such man, the price he pays is his life. In sunless Water Lane, respected solicitor Leighton Duff lies dead, kicked and beaten to death. Beside him is the barely living body of his son, Rhys. The police cannot fathom these brutal assaults until shrewd investigator William Monk, aided by nurse-turned-sleuth Hester Latterly, uncovers a connection between them and a series of rapes and beatings of local prostitutes. But then the case takes an even more shocking turn.

Val McDermid, creator of TV's Wire in the Blood, mixes fact with fiction, dealing with one of the most important and symbolic moments in recent history. Twenty-five years ago, the daughter of the richest man in Scotland and her baby son were kidnapped and held to ransom. But Catriona Grant ended up dead and little Adam's fate has remained a mystery ever since. When a new clue is discovered in a deserted Tuscan villa - along with grisly evidence of a recent murder - cold case expert DI Karen Pirie is assigned to follow the trail. She's already working a case from the same year. During the Miners' Strike of 1984, pit worker Mick Prentice vanished. He was presumed to have broken ranks and fled south with other 'scabs'... but Karen finds that the reported events of that night don't add up. Where did he really go? And is there a link to the Grant mystery? The truth is stranger - and far darker - than fiction.

"Diabolically clever."--New York Times "Horowitz dazzles with the brilliant third entry in his Susan Ryeland series . . . . [He is] is at the top of his game here, linking past and present in a virtuoso finale worthy of Agatha Christie."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) Murder links past and present once again in this mind-boggling metafictional mystery from Anthony Horowitz featuring detective Atticus Pünd and editor Susan Ryeland, stars of the New York Times bestsellers Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders. Editor Susan Ryeland has left her Greek island, her hotel and her Greek boyfriend, Andreas, in search of a new life back in England. Freelancing for a London publisher, she's given the last job she wants: working on an Atticus Pünd continuation novel called Pünd's Last Case. Worse still, she knows the new writer. Eliot Crace is the troubled grandson of legendary children's author Miriam Crace who died twenty years ago. Eliot is convinced she was murdered--by poison. To her surprise, Susan enjoys reading the manuscript which is set in the South of France and revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont, days before she was about to change her will. But when it is revealed that Lady Margaret was also poisoned, alarm bells begin to ring. The more Susan reads, the clearer it becomes that Eliot has deliberately concealed clues about his grandmother's death inside the book. Desperately, Susan tries to prevent Eliot from putting himself in harm's way--but his behaviour is becoming increasingly erratic. Another murder follows . . . and suddenly Susan finds herself to be the number one suspect. Once again, the real and the fictional worlds have become dangerously entangled. And if Susan doesn't solve the mystery of Pünd's Last Case, she could well be its next victim.

When ad man Victor Dean falls down the stairs in the offices of Pym's Publicity, a respectable London advertising agency, it looks like an accident. Then Lord Peter Wimsey is called in, and he soon discovers there's more to copywriting than meets the eye. A bit of cocaine, a hint of blackmail, and some wanton women can be read between the lines. And then there is the brutal succession of murders -- 5 of them -- each one a fixed fee for advertising a deadly secret.

THE REMORSEFUL DAY'"Where does this leave us, sir?""Things are moving fast.""We're getting near the end, you mean?""We were always near the end."'The murder of Yvonne Harrison had left the Thames Valley CID baffled. A year after the dreadful crime they are still no nearer to making an arrest. But one man has yet to tackle the case - and it is just the sort of puzzle at which Chief Inspector Morse excels.So why is he adamant that he will not lead the re-investigation, despite the entreaties of Chief Superintendent Strange and dark hints of some new evidence? And why, if he refuses to take on the case officially, does he seem to be carrying out his own private enquiries?For Sergeant Lewis this is yet another example of the unsettling behaviour his chief has been displaying of late...THE WENCH IS DEAD'That night he dreamed in Technicolor. He saw the ochre-skinned, scantily clad siren in her black, arrowed stockings. And in Morse's muddled computer of a mind, that siren took the name of Joanna Franks...'The body of Joanna Franks was found at Duke's Cut on the Oxford Canal at about 5.30 a.m. on Wednesday, 22 June 1859.At around 10.15 a.m. on a Saturday morning in 1989 the body of Chief Inspector Morse - though very much alive - was removed to Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital. Treatment for a perforated ulcer was later pronounced successful.As Morse begins his recovery he comes across an account of the investigation an trial the followed Joanna Franks death... and becomes convinced that the two men hanged for her murder were innocent...

Two years after the Black Death has decimated the population of England, a new killer is stalking the streets of Cambridge: a serial murderer preying on the women of the small town. Matthew Bartholomew, a physician with ideas ahead of his time, and his companion, the portly monk Brother Michael, must uncover the identity of the killer before he strikes again. Martin's Press.

Steeplechase jockey Christmas "Kit" Fielding has had more than his share of close calls both on and off the course. But trouble hits close to home when a grudge between his family and his sister's in-laws turns into a blood feud.

Kick Keswick, once a jewel thief living an exciting double life, has now retired in simple luxury to the south of France. But when an old enemy resurfaces, threatening to expose the countless fake jewels Kick had carefully substituted during her years of secret theft, she is ready to act. Back in London, Kick finds herself with more employment than she bargained for at a company whose status is much more precarious than she'd thought. Her enemy, in disguise, circles ever closer. And a young nun comes to Kick with a mysterious jewel-encrusted figurine, and a story of greed and murder. To balance on this high wire, Kick must sneak into an upper-crust wedding in the Italian Alps, break into an ancient castle owned by a very modern murderer, and do it all with her customary panache, style, and grace. Can she keep one step ahead of the most seductively ruthless foe she's ever encountered?