At Leighford High, the ever-resourceful Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell is temporarily promoted to Head of History when his colleague Paul Moss is chosen for an American exchange and heads off to Los Angeles. Paul's counterpart is Hector Gold, who is accompanied to Leighford by his eccentric family including his wife Camille and her parents, Jeff and Alana O'Malley. Clearly Jeff O'Malley is quite a character - with money to burn he has been gate-crashing the local poker school, much to the dismay of its members. When events take a sinister turn and Sarah Gregson, one of the poker school's members, is found murdered, newly-promoted Inspector Jacquie Carpenter Maxwell and Henry Hall investigate, with the assistance of Maxwell. As it becomes apparent Sarah suspected Jeff of cheating and Jeff was sacked in LA for being a crooked cop, is this simply a case of murder as revenge for name-calling? Being quite the expert in solving murders, Maxwell believes there is more to it.

Having had his retirement snatched from him by malfunctioning technology, Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell finds himself facing yet another year at Leighford High School. Jacquie's hopes of a dedicated house husband are dashed and she is annoyed further when a family holiday becomes an impromptu school trip, families welcome. Less than a week into their trip to the Isle of Wight the situation takes another turn for the worse when the wife of Tom Medlicott, the new Head of Art, goes missing, forcing Jacquie to play the role of woman policeman. Back in Hampshire, when Medlicott himself is found dead at the bottom of the stairs Henry Hall is also drawn into the investigation, but with the man's entire family lying at the bottom of the morgue, his suspect list is non-existent. Then Maxwell stumbles by accident on the linchpin to the whole case. He knows the reason, all he has to find is the murderer. And to find him - or her - he will have to cross more than the Solent. With the answer lying in a missing piece of paper, divorces and deceit, will Maxwell survive to apply for retirement again?

When Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell took his kids from Leighford High on an archaelogical dig, all should have been learning and fun. The professionals were very excited - was the grave they had found that of Alfred the Great? No, because the corpse was not Saxon and it wasn't a king, but an altogether more recent murder. No sooner has the first body been found than another, a policeman on the case, is found dead at the wheel of his car. What knowledge did he possess that led to his death? And does his colleague, Maxwell's partner Jacquie Carpenter, unwittingly have the same information? Maxwell locks horns with the great and not so good in a vicious world of skulduggery, academic back-biting and religious mania which can only end in murder.

With girlfriend DS Jacquie Carpenter back at work and little baby Nolan rapidly growing into a feisty toddler, Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell, Head of Sixth Form at Leighford High, decides to hire an au pair. The exotic Juanita Reyes hails from the sun-drenched isle of Menorca, and whilst the good old British weather can't hold a candle to the Menorcan sun, Juanita doesn't appear to mind a bit. She seems perfectly happy in the sleepy little seaside town, doting on baby Nolan and working hard to improve her English. Then one afternoon Max returns home to find Nolan gurgling happily in his cot, but sees no sign of his au pair; the lovely Juanita has disappeared into thin air. Meanwhile, two ramblers are surprised and more than a little disturbed when Patches the border Collie digs up an arm, which presumably belongs to a body, on Dead Man's Point - the lonely cliff top rising high over the sea. Mad Max is no stranger to murder inquiries and, as always when violent death's in the vicinity, his nose starts a-twitching, just itching to be poked into all the places it shouldn't. And, much to DCI Henry Hall's annoyance, the past has proved more than once that Max has a talent for sniffing out killers. But with a missing au pair to search for, and a creepy gardener, troublesome teenagers and reports of a randy rambler to investigate - not to mention a young baby to look after - has Max taken on more than he can handle this time?

The life and accomplishments of an influential leader in the desegregated South This biography of educational activist and Black studies forerunner Bertha Maxwell-Roddey examines a life of remarkable achievements and leadership in the desegregated South. Sonya Ramsey modernizes the nineteenth-century term “race woman” to describe how Maxwell-Roddey and her peers turned hard-won civil rights and feminist milestones into tangible accomplishments in North Carolina and nationwide from the late 1960s to the 1990s.  Born in 1930, Maxwell-Roddey became one of Charlotte’s first Black women principals of a white elementary school; she was the founding director of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s Africana Studies Department; and she cofounded the Afro-American Cultural and Service Center, now the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Art + Culture. Maxwell-Roddey founded the National Council for Black Studies, helping institutionalize the field with what is still its premier professional organization, and served as the 20th National President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., one of the most influential Black women’s organizations in the United States.  Using oral histories and primary sources that include private records from numerous Black women’s home archives, Ramsey illuminates the intersectional leadership strategies used by Maxwell-Roddey and other modern race women to dismantle discriminatory barriers in the classroom and the boardroom. Bertha Maxwell-Roddey offers new insights into desegregation, urban renewal, and the rise of the Black middle class through the lens of a powerful leader’s life story. Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell is a very busy man; resisting Ofsted imperatives and marking GCSE coursework on time, as well as cramming as much History as possible into the reluctant heads of Nine Eff Gee. And at home, baby Nolan claims a lot of attention, as does Nolan's rather surprising friend and protector, the black and white mouse-tormentor Metternich the cat. Despite this, Max still finds time for some amateur sleuthing when the terminally nervous school photographer asks for his help after accidentally photographing a murder on the beach. Their discovery of a body buried in the sand dunes sets in motion a chain of events that only the redoubtable Mad Max can break, but one thing is certain: life in Leighford will never be the same again.

There comes a time in every teacher's life when he must face his Nemesis - the four-yearly Ofsted inspection. The team arrives at Leighford High one glorious summer and proceeds to stick its collective nose into classrooms various, including that of Head of Sixth Form, Peter Maxwell. Just when the atmosphere at the High School has become decidedly fraught, one of the inspectors is found stabbed to death and the shadow of suspicion falls upon Headteacher, James Diamond. Aided by his inside informant, lover DS Jacquie Carpenter, Maxwell sets out to prove that his colleague is innocent. And the only way to do it is to take on the inspectors one by one...