Showing results for "Orlando" in Crime Fiction

When chef Paul Delamare agrees to help his old friend Christian by teaching at an exclusive residential cookery school in Belgravia, the only thing he expects his students to murder is his taste buds. But on the first night, the unthinkable happens: someone turns up dead. Could one of his students be the killer? Or Rose - the owner of the school, a woman with secrets and a murky past? The police are convinced Paul is the culprit.

Why does Irene Adler, mistress of newspaper tycoon, Robert Munroe, lock herself into a cupboard several times a day? The antipodean magnate wants to know. And why is former Prime Minister, Charles Sedgefield, causing delays to the publication of a report on a recent Middle East war? As a representative of the British government, Mycroft wants to know.

Holmes is consulted by Mr Devine on an unusual matter. Mr Devine has apprehended two malefactors in a well-watered garden in the Middle East and is unsure what is an appropriate form of retribution to impose. Holmes, Watson, and Mr Devine discuss the problem at length before arriving at a solution which satisfies all of them. Orlando Pearson himself then pens an essay setting out a radical theory about Sherlock Holmes and this theory is given further substance in an extraordinary fragment of Dr Watson’s writing found in the Public Record Office long after Watson’s death.

Mycroft gives Holmes an urgent commission to find documents hidden by Oberstein, although this commission arises out of a diplomatic deal over which Holmes has the gravest misgivings. In a coup de maitre, Holmes finds the documents at the very last point in the time given to him by Mycroft, but Mycroft is totally distracted when he delivers them. Holmes instigates investigations of his own and uncovers a shocking scandal. But will he be able to pursue his investigation to its natural conclusion, or will realpolitik intervene?

In May 1941, Hitler's Deputy, Rudolf Heβ flew solo to Great Britain. The reason for his flight remained a mystery throughout the rest of the War as he brought no new peace proposals, provided no new insight into Hitler's plans, and did not claim political asylum. In May 1945 and with the war almost at an end, the British Government must decide whether to send the frequently overwrought Heβ back to Germany to face trial on war crimes charges.

How can the insurance companies keep on producing record profits when the economic theories of Professor Alfred Marshall and his protégé John Maynard Keynes suggest that this should be impossible when their prices can be easily compared? The Chancellor of the Exchequer would like an answer and commissions Sherlock Holmes to find out.

Holmes meets Joseph Haydn in London and the two form an instant bond. This encounter and a later one with Haydn's young acquaintance, Beethoven, assume a new importance when Holmes and Watson travel to Vienna on a diplomatic mission and are consulted by Constanze Mozart, widow of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Why is Ignatius Foley, member of parliament for Perth, so anxious to retrieve some administrative documents that have fallen out of his pocket at his fiancée’s house? His betrothed, Jean Leckie, wants to find out. And what has happened in Bulgaria that makes Mycroft so anxious to dispatch his brother there with promises of major honors for successful prosecution of the investigation? A case set in 1907 and with no parallels whatsoever to more recent events.

Holmes and Watson are just back at their quarters, having solved the case, when the wrongdoer they have just identified interrupts their breakfast. A fourth student, his main rival in the long jump, is behaving in a very peculiar manner and is carrying all before him in the field. The trail takes Holmes and Watson to a barber’s shop where they acquire a preparation that the barber markets as a performance enhancer, but this is by no means the end of a murky trail to discover how to win Olympic gold.

Watson spends half his wound pension on the turf and his gambling addiction renders him unable even to pay his half share of the rent of the rooms at Baker Street. But when one of his rare bursts of prosperity enables him to buy two strikingly good pictures from a pawnbroker, Mycroft Holmes takes a remarkable interest. And what is the meaning of the little rhyme that runs round the canvas of the painting.

The harrowing sequel to A Case of Identity as Sherlock Holmes uncovers a tale as dark as anything seen on the Ancient Greek stage.

When I first met Susie, she appeared to be a normal, happily-married woman dealing with tragedy. Then I uncovered her secrets. While I could understand everything that she’d done, I could never approve. But, knowing what she was capable of, it became clear that if I was going to survive her, I had to play by her rules. And, the first and most important rule is...leave no singing bones.

It is the last night before Watson’s second wedding. Holmes tells Watson of his utter vanquishment by an adversary he never met in a tale set in 1880s Germany and featuring Goethe, Beethoven, Karl Benz, and Bertha Benz. By the end of this story, the listener would have found out about Holmes’ role in the invention of the motor car, powered flight, and the mobile phone, as well as his involvement in the discovery of a 10th symphony of Beethoven.

Gottlieb von Cramm, a German tennis star of the 1930s, petitions Holmes for help. The sportsman is being blackmailed on a matter of the utmost delicacy, and when the blackmailer reveals all to the National Socialist authorities, it is Holmes who comes to the rescue by asking Reichsmarschall Herman Göring to intervene. But is the better than expected outcome to the case a result of Holmes's intervention, or is Cramm's glamourous mother keeping her own role to herself?

Holmes is charged by the permanent special adviser to the prime minister, his brother Mycroft, to plot a new course for Great Britain following the country's vote in a plebiscite to secede from the Entente Cordiale. Holmes demonstrates that politics truly is an art and that all things are possible as he travels to Washington, Moscow, and Paris meeting statesmen who bear no resemblance at all to the present-day holders of the equivalent posts.

Can you prove anything from statistics on death rates? On the train back to London after solving the case of the stockbroker's clerk, Holmes asks some extremely penetrating questions about Dr. Watson's medical practice in Paddington and that of Dr. Anstruther next door. The questioning is inconclusive, but the questions suddenly become relevant when official investigations are launched into death rates in Paddington and Watson is fortunate that Holmes is on hand.

Louis Westhouse, Windibank's employer, commissions Holmes to investigate Windibank's peculiar behavior in the office. The day after Holmes completes his investigation, Inspector Gregson brings news of three deaths at Windibank's house. Gregson and Holmes investigate but cannot explain the deaths. It is only when the corpses are taken away and the blinds are drawn that Holmes elucidates some truly grotesque events.

Dr. Watson is in his surgery when there is an unexpected knock at the door. It is Sherlock Holmes, who explains that he has arranged a meeting with an Italian musicologist, Alberto Gentili, who has found some long-lost autograph manuscripts of the almost unknown 18th century Venetian composer, Antonio Vivaldi. Gentili explains how the manuscripts represent only half of a larger collection. He wants to find the other half before someone else finds it and disperses the collection.

A must for all lovers of serious sleuthing. In Kafka's The Trial, Josef K (here rendered Joseph Carr) is arrested one morning, although he has not done anything wrong, and is put on trial although no charge is ever disclosed to him. Here, Holmes conducts his own investigation into the arrest and subsequent legal process. His solution has uncanny pre-echoes of the early 21st century banking crisis and, in an extraordinary twist, Watson's text even name-checks some of the people that caused it.

Holmes and Watson are seized by Edward Albert, the Prince of Wales, who wants them to find evidence that his mother is unfit to serve as queen. At Balmoral, Holmes and Watson witness the aged Queen Victoria engage in some highly questionable behavior.