Arbuthnot is paying for a rash decision - he recently married a beautiful but slightly amoral girl whose crazy antics caught his rather cynical professional interest. His wife has taken a lover, Rupert Slade, and Arbuthnot wants nothing more than to see him dead - but then it happens!

This year Steven Appleby guarantees to cure Western civilisation of its discontents in the comfort of your own home. No more tiring weekly trips across town to see a therapist - simply sit back, open the book and let Mr Concerned help you get in touch with your feelings. Suitable for all levels of neurosis from the compulsion to be late to the recurring fantasy of killing your partner.

Fifty years after Ralph Dangerfield's death, a collector of literary curiosities claims to have his diary and threatens to blackmail fashionable London with belated secrets about people now in respectable old age. Sir John Appleby reveals how he uncovered this unscrupulous crime, along with seventeen more intriguing cases.

As far as he could tell, he was the only human being for miles - but it turns out that he was the only living human being for miles. At least, that is what he presumed when he found a dead man on top of the tor.

Appleby's End was where Detective Inspector John Appleby got off the train from Scotland Yard. But that was not the only coincidence. Why did Ranulph Raven's mysterious descendants make such a point of inviting Appleby to spend the night at their house?

Author of detective novels, Priscilla Pringle, is pleased to find that she is sharing a railway compartment with a gentleman who happens to be reading one of her books - Murder in the Cathedral. He offers her œ500 to collaborate on a detective novel.

During a walk to Elvedon House, palatial home of the Tythertons, Sir John Appleby and Chief Constable Colonel Pride are stunned to find a police van and two cars parked outside. Wealthy Maurice Tytherton has been found shot dead, and Appleby is faced with a number of suspects.