Showing results by author "John Rhode" in All Categories

The murder of old Mr Fransham while washing his hands in his niece's cloakroom was one of the most astounding problems that ever confronted Scotland Yard. Not only was there a policeman in the house at the time, but there was an ugly wound in the victim's forehead and nothing in the locked room that could have inflicted it.

When Harold Merefield returned home in the early hours of a winter morning from a festive little party at that popular nightclub, the Naxos, he was startled by a gruesome discovery. On his bed was a corpse. There was nothing to show the identity of the dead man or the cause of his death. At the inquest, the jury found a verdict of ‘death from natural causes’ - perhaps they were right, but yet?

A classic winter's crime novel by one of the most highly regarded exponents of the genre. Victor Harleston awoke with uncharacteristic optimism. Today he would be rich at last. Half an hour later, he gulped down his breakfast coffee and pitched to the floor, gasping and twitching. When the doctor arrived, he recognised instantly that it was a fatal case of poisoning and called in Scotland Yard.

1940, World War II. The Nazis have crushed Europe, and Hitler launches a massive aerial assault with the Luftwaffe against the heavily outnumbered British RAF. The fate of civilization teeters in the balance. Johnnie Shaux, a Spitfire fighter pilot, must summon up the fortitude to fly into a battle where death is all but inevitable, and continue to do so until the inevitable occurs. Eleanor Rand, a brilliant fighter command mathematician, studies the control room map constantly tracking the ebbs and flows of the conflict, and sees the glimmerings of a radical breakthrough.

The war in the Mediterranean, 1942: The outcome of World War II hangs, as Churchill says, by “a slender thread”. Erwin Rommel, Hitler’s “Desert Fox”, is poised to defeat the reeling British army in Egypt and thwart America’s first operation in Europe. Only the tiny, embattled, half-starved Mediterranean island of Malta stands in Rommel’s way. Will heroism and devotion be enough to stave off the implacable forces of Hitler’s all-conquering Third Reich and Mussolini’s new Roman Empire?

Infinite Stakes—picking up where Breaking Point left off—puts you both inside the cockpit as the pilots duel and at RAF headquarters with Winston Churchill on that fateful day and through the year that follows, when Britain must fight on alone. Johnnie Shaux, a battle-hardened fighter pilot, now leads a squadron of brave American volunteers against superior forces until he is forced down and imprisoned as a POW. Meanwhile, Eleanor Rand, a brilliant mathematician, is tasked to predict Hitler’s plans and to help persuade America to join the war.

It is 1943. In the skies above war-torn Europe a savage battle continues as Allied bomber crews rain down fire and destruction on Hitlers cities and Luftwaffe fighters tear the bombers to pieces. Faced with the destruction, Churchill asks, Are we barbarians? Back in England, after the Siege of Malta and continents away from her estranged husband, fighter pilot Johnnie Shaux, strategic military analyst Eleanor Shaux is ordered to develop plans for the systematic destruction of Hitler's wartime economy.

John Wilson (acclaimed arts and culture reporter and journalist, and presenter of Front Row, Newsnight Review and Pick of the Week) meets up with a variety of public figures from such diverse fields as food, mathematics, politics, writing and music, and takes them back to the influential schools, teachers and early workplaces they may have forgotten, but which have not forgotten them.

The next time you visit Olympia, take a good look around and see if you think it would be possible to murder someone in the middle of the crowd there without being seen. The new Comet was fully expected to be the sensation of the annual Motor Show at Olympia. Suddenly, in the middle of the dense crowd of eager spectators, an elderly man lurched forward and collapsed in a dead faint. But Nahum Pershore had not fainted. He was dead, and it was his death that was to provide the real sensation of the show.

A young hippie couple reach both enlightenment and social fame via their "material pragmatism", supported by both Western and Eastern religion - and with some help from an American Indian named "Little Bird".