Showing results by author "Andrea Frazer" in All Categories

When Marcus Willoughby is found dead at his desk in his new home, no crocodile tears are shed. His demise is even presented on air, during his pre-recorded radio show Marcus having been 'choked off' for good while in full flow. His arrival in the village had obviously caused a few already guilty hearts to beat faster, and precipitates the hasty confessions of dark deeds thought long since buried.

The Falconer Files Brief Cases follows DI Harry Falconer and DS Carmichael solving murders in and around Market Darley. Each story presents a unique murder mystery with a seasonal or thematic twist.

Follow the exploits of the eccentric Lady Amanda Golightly and her loyal friend Hugo as they stumble upon murder and mayhem whilst navigating English country life. In Strangeways to Oldham, Amanda discovers a long-lost friend in a nursing home and promptly falls into a murder mystery. Refusing to be seen as a "silly old biddy," Amanda and Hugo dust off their sleuthing skills to outwit the police.

In the village of Castle Farthing a mean-spirited, spiteful, curmudgeonly old man is found drugged and strangled in the kitchen of his cottage, with no obvious clues to the perpetrator of the crime. DI Falconer and Acting DS Carmichael are summoned from the police headquarters in the nearby town of Market Darley and begin to uncover a web of grudges against the old man and a sea of familial connections between those who knew him.

Lady Amanda Golightly of Belchester Towers is a person in complete contrast to the stereotypical image of one of her breeding. She is short, portly, and embarrassingly forthright. If she wasn't calling a spade a shovel, it was only because she was calling it 'trumps'! On a visit to a local nursing home where an old business partner of her father's is residing, she unexpectedly discovers a long-lost friend, Hugo Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump—and stumbles upon murder as well.

DS Carmichael is accompanying his step-sons on their 'trick or treat' rounds in Castle Farthing, while DI Falconer holds the fort at Market Darley police station this Hallowe'en. In fact, it is DC Roberts who has drawn the evening's short straw and has been dispatched to the small town of Carsfold, to the south of the market town, for a second interview with a householder, without a clue that an unexplained explosion will not only land him in hospital yet again, but kick off another case of murder for his two colleagues.

It's nearly Christmas in Belchester and the carol singers are out in full swing. So too are the thieves! A spate of burglaries is under way and the police are baffled. When Belchester Towers becomes a target, Lady Amanda Golightly is determined to get to the bottom of it all. None of the usual criminal types in the city seem to be involved, but after a bit of lateral thinking and old chum Hugo's help, Lady Amanda is off, sniffing after a totally unsuspected scent ...

On Christmas Day the two detectives are summoned to a block of apartments in Market Darley, to investigate the unexplained death of a young woman whose fiancé was due to move in with her on New Year's Day. At first, her death seems a complete mystery, then, something that Dr. Christmas discovers on the internet indicates that her death could just have been a tragic accident, or was it?

Book 5: Driven To It Abigail Wentworth's reunion lunch with old friend Alison Fairweather takes a dark turn when she spots a familiar face, sending her life into chaos. Book 6: All Hallows While DS Carmichael takes his stepsons trick-or-treating and DI Falconer mans the station, DC Roberts' routine interview in Carsfold is interrupted by an explosion, leading to a murder investigation.

The town has recently opened it's new theatre and the Town's Women's Guild is to present it's first live performances of the pantomime 'Jack and the Beanstalk' - over Christmas. DI Harry Falconer has managed to duck two days spent over the festive season in the Carmichael household by pleading other commitments, but treating the whole family, himself included, to tickets to the first performance, on Boxing Day.

A young man and his girlfriend decide to celebrate their first St Valentine's Day together, with a cosy evening of cocktails at her house. But as the evening progresses, events don't go quite as Malcolm Standing planned. The next morning, DI Falconer and DS Carmichael are called in to try to sort out what really happened.

On Christmas Day DI Harry Falconer and DS Davy Carmichael are summoned to a block of apartments in Market Darley, to investigate the unexplained death of a young woman whose fiancé was due to move in with her on New Year's Day.

In the quiet village of Steynham St Michael there is an anonymous letter writer at work, jabbing and stabbing at the past's Achilles' heels of many of the upright citizens living there. After one resident is driven to extreme measures to escape exposure, another is driven to murder. In the village cards club, which meets once a week, tongues begin to wag, not only about the identities of the murderer and the poison pen letter-writer, but also about who exactly has received a letter.

Virginia and Richard Grainger, new members of the Standchester Choral Society, are looking forward, nervously, to their first public performance with the choir, in a production of Berlioz's 'Romeo and Juliet'. As the performance opens, however, tragedy strikes in the form of a very public death. Whilst coping with the repercussions of this, Virginia also has to tussle with the personal problems of her next-door neighbour, Caroline.

Tongue firmly in cheek, and sprinkling spilt salt over her left shoulder to ward off evil, Andrea Frazer takes us on a trip to Hell, where the daily grind (and groan) is about to be interrupted by a very rare event. A pebble plinks on the vast black glass dome that serves Hell and it's environs as a sky, a precursor that there is trouble in the earthly realm.

Cringe with embarrassment, as Lady Amanda Golightly acts like a bad-tempered five-year-old in the face of a family crisis. Cheer her on, as she and her live-in friend at Belchester Towers, Hugo Cholmondley-Crichton Crump, plan a new business venture for the old place. Join them for Christmas, then wish them luck as they embark on a trial run of their new enterprise. Then gasp at Lady Amanda's reaction (delight!) at the discovery of the body of a dead guest, found slumped on the library table, murdered FIVE TIMES!

Abigail Wentworth is looking forward to her reunion lunch with Alison Fairweather. They are old schoolfriends who met twice a year, usually for Alison to dish the dirt on the others they had known when they were younger—and for Abigail to gloat over their 'inferior' circumstances, in comparison to her own respectable existence.

DI Falconer becomes involved in a gossip-fueled hate crime, only to find himself questioning his own judgement when it comes to protecting Miriam Darling from her anonymous persecutors...

DI Falconer and DS Carmichael are both enjoying a well-earned rest day, when they are summoned to a most distressing incident that has occurred at a chip shop on the parade of shops in Upper Darley. It was obviously murder, but was it something to do with the robust behaviour of some of the more aggressive customers from the night before or was it closer to home?

A regional television programme, Get One Over, where amateurs search for and discover antiques and valuable objects in junk shops, has captured the nation’s zeitgeist and gone nationwide. The Christmas episode is to be filmed in Market Darley, and being antiques fans, Miss Emily Jarvis, and DI Falconer and DS Carmichael plan to be in town to bump into the stars of the programme. Carmichael loves the programme for its jokey narrator, but Falconer, along with a host of other viewers, hates the man’s rude and condescending commentary.