Deena Harrison was one of Leighford High School's 'characters'. She set fire to the toilet block when she was eleven, and threw Ollie Wendell down the science lab stairs soon after her twelfth birthday. But she had the voice of an angel and could act the skin off a rice pudding, so Mr Diamond, the headteacher, invoked all sorts of inclusion clauses and EU Equal Opportunities initiatives to keep her on. The autumn she came down from Oxford, there was something of a crisis in the drama department at Leighford High. Mrs Carmichael was in danger of losing her baby and the Little Shop of Horrors was in danger of closing down. So Deena came back - just to help out. And people started dying. Oh, just tragic accidents of course - loose cables, carelessly placed ladders. Just minor health and safety issues, really. Somebody was killing the company, and it wasn't Audrey II, the man-eating plant. DCI Henry Hall got to know the Arquebus Theatre quite well that summer. With his favourite DS, Jacquie Carpenter, expecting her own baby, and with murder treading the boards, Hall had his hands full. Especially when Deena's old Head of Sixth Form stumbled into the spotlight. You see, Deena's old Head of Sixth Form had a habit of solving murders...Mad Max is once again on his bike.

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?

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...

The first full-length study of its type highlighting over 400 British literary detectives, many famous through their film and TV adaptations. Using essays to highlight different types of detectives and focusing on some of the more famous such as Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Morse, popular crime fiction writer and former President of Britain's Crime Writers Association, Russell James celebrates the role of the detective in British fiction. Illustrations include original film posters and first edition covers from classic detective fiction. Future books by Russell James in this series will include Great British Fictional Villains and US Fictional Detectives and Villains.

The theatre of Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players has received significant international recognition over the past ten years. The company has received three OBIEs, for House (1999), Drummer Wanted (2002) and Good Samaritans (2005). Maxwell received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010 and has been commissioned by venues in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Ireland. Although his productions generate a plethora of reviews, there is a deficit of material providing a critical and sustained engagement with his work. The aim of this book is to provide a critical survey of Maxwell’s work since 1992, including his early participation in Cook County Theater Department. Touching upon the acting, production and rehearsal processes of NYC Player’s work, and Maxwell's representations of space, community, race, and gender, this volume provides scholars with an important overview of a key figure in contemporary drama.

Max Clever is a gritty, yet stylish teen, living in rural Nebraska who possesses special skills and a mysterious connection to the CIA. Oddly, his only human interaction had been with his father and his nanny, Vicky. Following the untimely death of his father, Max and Vicky move from his ranch to the tiny town where he starts school and meets Chris. Adversity leads them to cement a solid friendship. But shortly after meeting Chris, Vicky puts a twist in things and leaves Max to live alone. That abandonment flings wide a doorway to wild adventures for Max and his new friends: a story best told by Chris. Can their friendship endure Max's furtive and dangerous search for truth?

Originally published as The New People, this classic volume examines the great changes in popular culture that unfolded in the 1960s with major steps toward political, racial, gender, and social empowerment. The popular culture of the time expressed a series of themes that have become, if not more significant, then certainly more visible in the 1990s. We are now entering the third generation of Americans who are living out the themes that are traced in this book. The author sees a depolarization, a neutering in content and key people in the popular arts. Some of these trends result from technological changes and others reflect what is happening in the psychosocial interior of the family as well as larger economic movements. Winick believes that in such wide-ranging features of our society as sports, furniture, and architecture, the expression of an epoch can be identified. Clothing conveys the imbalance and ambiguity that reflect larger social forces and that have been identified more recently by Jacques Lacan as so important in modern life. Desexualization in American Life is remarkably prescient and accurate in identifying key trends that affect us today and will continue to do so for the remainder of the decade.