Abbot Agency Series

Bea Abbot and her husband have been running a highly successful domestic agency for many years, but when he falls ill and dies, she is pressured by her MP son and novelist daughter to retire. Bea is so tired from the long years of nursing her husband that all she wants is peace and quiet, and to have her pretty early Victorian house in Kensington, London, all to herself. What she gets is a couple of young lodgers with troubled backgrounds and an old friend banging on her door, asking for help.

Velma is charm itself, especially when she's being inexact with the truth. Now she wants Bea, widowed owner of the Abbot Agency, to check up on her stepson Philip - he's somehow acquired a valuable picture last seen in the flat of an elderly lady who's been murdered. Maggie, Bea's assistant, moves into a flat in Philip's building, to investigate. However, Rafael a professional art thief who aims never to leave his victims alive, is also after the picture.

Bea Abbot's domestic agency does not investigate murder...that is, until she finds herself in the company of a dead man dressed as a pantomime dame. It looks like suicide, but why don't his red-spangled shoes fit? Matthew Kent was an entertainer known to be a modest man in private, so why had he staged this grotesque charade in death? And why is his daughter so keen to hustle away his remains?

There’s nothing sinister about Zander’s request for Bea Abbott to accompany him on an errand to a grieving widow, but it’s an awkward situation. Zander exposed a scam that his boss Denzil had been running on the Tudor Housing Trust…after which Denzil had, unexpectedly, died. His widow wants to sue the Trust, while the paperwork that could have proved her husband’s guilt has gone missing. Oliver, Bea’s computer geek of an assistant, is delighted to delve into the mysteries left on Denzil’s computer.

Bea Abbott runs a domestic agency which does not “do” murder. But the disappearance of Tomi, the star of an award-winning short film, is a different matter, especially when the charming Chris bribes Bea with a bouquet of flowers. Can Bea find time to help him, when some well-meant advice she’s given to her daughter-in-law has led to a breakdown in family relationships? Bea discovers that Tomi’s circle contains a secret so deadly that they are dying one by one, even though none of them will go to the police.

While Bea Abbot worries that she’s lost control of her domestic agency, she’s asked to find some domestic help for an eccentric little musician falsely accused of murder. She doesn’t realize how dangerous this might be until Jeremy - fleeing from attempts on his life - lands up on her doorstep. Researching the gang who’d used an attractive girl to entrap Jeremy, Bea finds traces of them throughout high society. Can Bea keep Jeremy - and herself - alive, while all he thinks about is composing a song for pretty, dead Josie?

Bea Abbot is asked to find the man or woman who laid a booby trap for Sir Lucas Ossett, the powerful head of an international company. She finds Sir Lucas’ wife in a state of fear, while gossipy elderly ladies cast doubt on their neighbours; these include a "therapist", an ex-employee of Sir Lucas’, and a cross-section of yuppies and oddballs. Call-girl cards have been left in tenants’ letterboxes, a cat has met an untimely end, and snow is forecast.

The fake diamond in Dilys Holland's engagement ring implies that all is not well with her marriage. And Bea Abbot has already clashed with Dilys's husband, the bullying Benton, when she refuses to help him rescue his ailing company. But matters are about to turn a great deal worse when Dilys tries to commit suicide. Or does she?

Bea Abbot's friend, Leon Holland, has asked for her help in establishing an alibi. But why would he need one? First, he tells her, he had a narrow escape from being run down in the road, and then he was lured to a car park to meet someone who didn't turn up. Matters escalate when two bodies are found in the car park stabbed to death. Then everything is thrown into chaos as a devastating virus infects the agency's systems. A hidden camera. Hate mail. A nasty practical joke.

Bea Abbot's plans are disrupted by the unexpected arrival of one of her clients, bearing a brown leather briefcase full of expensive jewellery. Magda Summerleys has been working as a housekeeper for wealthy art expert Lucas Rycroft, who, she says, entrusted her with the briefcase for safekeeping - and who seems to have disappeared without trace.Drawn into the tangled affairs of the dysfunctional Rycrofts, Bea soon discovers that other members of the family are determined to get their hands on the jewels - by whatever means necessary.