"Let's say, a man's presumed innocent-""A very proper attitude," Denning applauded. "But don't you think you're carrying it a little too far?"Antony and Jenny Maitland's stage actress friend Meg Hamilton (see Bloody Instructions) tells them that her lover Roger Farrell is the prime police suspect in the fatal shooting of the man who had been blackmailing his late mother. Worse yet, from the Maitlands' perspective, it appears that the police also believe that Meg may have been Roger's accessory in the crime. Can Antony save Meg and Roger from the police-as well as from themselves? It seems that the bumped-off blackmailer may have other victims as well. Could the culprit have been another blackmailee who decided to "put paid" to the dead man's criminal schemes? How will Antony fare when he is pitted against a ruthless individual who is determined that murder-not to mention assorted other ill deeds done-will never out?"Taut suspense thriller ......

And then he received the small note in a laboured, childish scrawl:"She didn't...she didn't...she didn't!"Is beautiful Barbara Wentworth, on trial for the fatal poisoning of her wealthy sister, Laura Canning, whose heir she was, telling the truth-or is she deceitfully spinning a web of lies? Antony Maitland, brought in by Barbara's barrister, his eminent uncle, Sir Nicholas Harding, Q. C., to investigate the case, believes his uncle's lovely client is innocent of the crime, though he also feels certain as well that she has been telling him lies. Determining what it is that Barbara is lying about-and just whom she would tell lies for-is essential if Antony is to find his way out of this baffling murder maze. Also essential is getting to the truth of the dead Laura Canning's character. Was she the saint many around her believed, or something altogether more complex?"Further proof that Sara Woods is one of the best mystery writers in the field."...

" 'To my son Andrew,' it said, 'I leave the problem of the Velasquez.' " He leaned forward and added eagerly, "The thing is, you see, there wasn't any Velasquez... there never had been."The Gaskells, wealthy owners of a family shipping line, were a querulous mix of self-righteous puritans and rascally pirates, so it when it came to light that one of them might have purloined a museum's priceless Velasquez, it was only natural that another of them would sternly demand its return. Soon that particular Gaskell winds up dead as an old master, with yet another Gaskell on trial for the murder. Antony Maitland becomes involved in the case-his wife Jenny has a cousin who, perhaps rashly, is rather smitten with the defendant-and with Antony comes the reluctant participation of his acid-tongued uncle, Sir Nicholas Harding, the eminent Q. C. While Sir Nicholas duels with the opposition in court, Antony tries to fill in the missing portions in the Gaskell clan's weird...

"It had sometimes seemed to Maitland, in the course of his researches, that there was nothing original left to be done when it came to extracting poisonous substances from the hedgerow; they were all there, foxglove and monkshood and deadly nightshade, and man's ingenuity more than sufficient to exploit their murderous qualities, even if he had been a little slow to split the atom or find a cure for the common cold."Antony Maitland has just concluded a case in the West Midlands town of Chedcombe when he is implored by gruff local lady barrister Vera Langhorne to lead the defense of Fran Gifford, a pretty legal secretary charged with the poisoning murder of her wealthy, elderly godmother, Alice Randall. Initially skeptical-"Miss Langhorne's a genuine dragon," he tells his wife Jenny on the phone, "I don't want to get to get scorched."-Antony decides to get involved after talking in prison to Fran and believing against the evidence in the young woman's innocence....

"He didn't know where he was......and hard on that realization the further thought came with the force of a blow. He didn't know who he was."Antony and Jenny Maitland's old friend Peter Hammond didn't think he had smuggled heroin into the country when he alighted in London from an engineering job overseas-but he just couldn't remember! And he was certain he didn't murder that man in the hotel. But the police investigating the case investigating the case are convinced otherwise. Can Antony discover the truth behind the diabolical machinations of a seeming criminal conspiracy to frame an innocent man, or this time is his client really cooked? Before it's all over not only the liberty and life of Peter will be put gravely in peril, but that of Antony as well!"Plenty of crisp action" Francis Goff, Sunday Telegraph"Delightfully complicated story of drugs and thugs and amnesia," Virginia Pagley,...