Arthur Brownjohn has never quite got anything right. Take the murder of his wife – a bungled, inferior affair despite his having consulting all the experts in the field of killings, executions and dastardly deeds. Resolving never to repeat the same mistakes, he enlists the help of Major Easonby Mellon – a man who really knows what he’s doing...

Featuring Tom Smith, Clare Corbett, Lydia Leonard & Don McCorkindale.

The Tell-Tale Heart strips away myths that have grown up around the life of Edgar Allen Poe, providing a fresh assessment of the man and his work. Symons reveals Poe as his contemporaries saw him – a man struggling to make a living and whose life was beset by tragedy, such that he was driven to excessive drinking and unhealthy relationships.

In 1972, in an attempt to elevate the stature of the "crime novel," influential crime writer and critic Julian Symons cast numerous Golden Age detective fiction writers into literary perdition as "Humdrums," condemning their focus on puzzle plots over stylish writing and explorations of character, setting and theme. This volume explores the works of three prominent British "Humdrums"--Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, and Alfred Walter Stewart--revealing their work to be more complex, as puzzles and as social documents, than Symons allowed. By championing the intrinsic merit of these mystery writers, the study demonstrates that reintegrating the "Humdrums" into mystery genre studies provides a fuller understanding of the Golden Age of detective fiction and its aftermath.

Anderson was a bored, unhappy sales executive longing for something to liven up his monotonous life. But perhaps he wished too hard because not long later he found his wife lying dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs. An accident of course – so why wouldn’t the police believe him?

Bill Hunter, TV personality, made a living by asking the rich and famous difficult and highly personal questions. But when the tables were turned and he found himself being asked about his own rather murky past, he wasn’t quite so sure of himself. Out of a job he embarks upon a dangerous and deadly plan that was to have murderous consequences.