When insurance assessor John Piper calls at the Daveys' flat in Hampstead, he has no idea that his visit will turn out to be anything but an ordinary professional appointment. But it would seem that someone else had already visited Flat 2A that Saturday afternoon...Shortly after Piper's arrival, Pauline Davey is found brutally stabbed, apparently during her afternoon nap. The bloody scissors on her pillow hint at what has happened even before the covers are pulled back to reveal the once lovely body, horribly mutilated. All the evidence points to murder and the police are looking hard at Julian Davey. Piper and his friend, crime reporter Quinn, begin poking around, and in the process Davey's alibi is shot full of holes. Persisting in their inquiries, the two men soon uncover an adulterous love triangle among neighbors, a group of Pauline's wealthy friends with a penchant for gambling, and a general unwillingness by all concerned to answer any questions. The actions of...

The Quiet Woman begins when two people conspire to steal a fortune in cash. It ends in double murder. The payroll of the Jauncey Engineering plant is missing. According to the guard, found bound and gagged at the scene, two trusted employees, Harold Graham and Yvonne Marshall, are responsible for the crime, and the police proceed as if this were just another payroll theft. To crime reporter Quinn it sounds like the usual story of a married man and a younger woman who plot to steal the money in order to finance a new life together. He and his friend, insurance assessor Piper, question the missing woman's husband and the missing man's wife and her sister. Soon they are patching scattered clues together, and Quinn sets out to investigate the possibility that Yvonne may have already double-crossed Harold. Then the first corpse is discovered. All clues point in the same direction, but when the second body is found in a watery ditch, that theory must also be...

John Piper's diary for Saturday December 7th read: Fritz Haupmann. Call 2.30 re factory insurance cover with Cresset. When Piper arrived at the house and saw his client lounging in an armchair listening to Mozart, he had no reason to think that this was one day he would never forget. It was not Haupmann's premonitions of disaster that so impressed themselves on Piper, nor even the startling beauty of Gizelle Haupmann. . . . Disregarding the warnings Haupmann had been given at seances held by a London spiritualist association, Piper endorsed the additional insurance that Haupmann asked for. No sooner were the policies issued than it became ap¬parent that something more tangible than ghostly spirits was bent on injuring Fritz Haupmann. Somebody hated him: somebody was prepared to conduct a ruthless vendetta against him and all he held dear. Harry Carmichael's latest novel builds up by way of numerous adroit twists, shifts of suspicion and rising...

On the night that Quinn of the Morning Post began his holiday, he strayed into a late party. When he got drunk, a girl called Carole made herself responsible for him. Next day, she took him off for a quiet weekend with friends in Dorset. But within a few hours, death had joined the guests at Elm Lodge... Inevitably, Quinn gets caught up in the smouldering passions that govern the house of secrets.