The Complete Detective Henry Johnstone Historical Mysteries

By Jane A. Adams

Deal Ends: Tue 1st September

‘Excellent . . . Fans of golden age mysteries will be delighted’ Publishers Weekly, Starred ReviewTen historical mysteries. Over 2000 pages. Two chalk-and-cheese detectives. Many hours of high-quality mystery reading.Lincolnshire, England, 1928. Builders lift the flagstones in a narrow yard and uncover three bodies in shallow graves. A woman, a young man and a seven-year-old girl.The local police are out of their depth. Scotland Yard sends Chief Inspector Henry Johnstone and Sergeant Mickey Hitchens north with the famous murder bag.Henry came back from the trenches changed. Precise, contained, hard to read. He works a crime scene like a scientist: fingerprints, photographs, bloodstains, fibres, every detail copied into the black-bound murder book he keeps in his own hand.Mickey is his opposite: a proper East End copper. Henry reads evidence. Mickey reads people. Between them, very little stays buried.But the bodies in the yard are only the beginning.Across ten atmospheric cases, the investigations move from hard-up terraced streets and Lincolnshire market towns to south-coast sands, smoke-blackened factory districts, country houses and the glittering world of the bright young things.This is England between the wars: uneasy, divided, still haunted by the trenches, where the old order and the fast new set both have secrets worth killing for.Classic British detection in the Golden Age tradition. Perfect for readers of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham, and for fans of Charles Todd, Jacqueline Winspear and Frances Brody.THE DETECTIVESHenry JohnstoneA Scotland Yard murder specialist: tall, thin, austere, from his dark broadcloth coat to his cold, watchful gaze. Raised in a loveless household and hardened further by war, Henry is controlled, exact and slow to show warmth, a detective of the new forensic school, in the years when evidence first began to outrank confession.Mickey HitchensHenry’s sergeant. Cheerful, and quick with a broad smile. Where Henry is austere and forensic, Mickey works the people, pubs and streets.THE SETTINGThe cases range across England in the late 1920s and early 1930s: Lincolnshire towns and lonely Wolds, south-coast beaches at Shoreham and Bournemouth, smoke-blackened streets, and country-house drawing rooms where money and reputation are guarded far more carefully than any alibi.WHY READERS LOVE THE HENRY JOHNSTONE MYSTERIES‘Vivid . . . well-constructed . . . will appeal to the Downton Abbey crowd’ Booklist‘Puzzles aplenty for coppers young and old’ Kirkus Reviews⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Tautly written and full of twists and turns . . . a captivating whodunit’ NetGalley reviewer⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Very well plotted and written . . . I highly recommend it to those who enjoy period mysteries such as Agatha Christie or Sherlock Holmes’ NetGalley reviewer⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘Fascinating . . . will keep readers on the edge throughout’ NetGalley reviewerGET ALL TEN MYSTERIES IN ONE AMAZING VALUE BOX SET