Peter Lovesey

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Professor Patrick Storm and Bishop Ben Tattersall receive a call out of the blue from their Cambridge university chum Cape Brown. He is honouring the pact they made 40 years previously – to...

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Some might think that Bertie, Prince of Wales’ first case was the suspicious death of jockey Fred Archer in 1886, but here the self-important amateur sleuth recalls how his talent for...

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Bertie, Prince of Wales must combine his detective skills with that as a firefighter when he attends a fire in Villiers Street. With no apparent cause of the fire, Bertie soon find himself on...

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Does your wife give you grief? Mr Cronk’s does. But how far would you go for a peaceful life? Mr Cronk has heard about the “Fixer” – he can make people disappear, for a price… Author - Peter...

Beware of long-lost friends, sleepy cats, and Santa’s grotto. Think twice about gypsy curses, squawking parrots, and peach-coloured thermal underwear – for any one of them can confound your expectations and shatter a cosy world. In this addictive...

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. It’s Christmas week and there’s been a grisly discovery in Santa’s Grotto: the head of the toy department has been murdered, a crossbow arrow through his chest. But when the store manager...

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Albert and Rose have been married for 47 years. To everyone else they’re the perfect couple, but Albert has reached breaking point. He’s tired of the same routine every night, the same...

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. When Gloria’s mother seemingly has a new fancy-man, she decides to humiliate them both by planting evidence of the affair in his car for his wife to find. But has she got the wrong end of the...

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Albert and Karen don’t have much. They live in a bedsit in Reading and Karen spends her evenings mending clothes. So when a chance to win £10,000 from a video clip submitted to a TV programme...

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Whilst John and Olga Hitchman are at the Theatre Royal enjoying their usual box, they become the victims of a professional thief who has his eye on their Fabergé egg as an Easter gift for his...

Forbidden in Victorian England, the grim and violent world of bare-knuckle fighting has gone underground. So when a headless body is found floating in the Thames, his hands “pickled” for fighting, Sergeant Cribb knows he is facing a challenge....

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. When widower George Blackitt falls in love with Edith Plumley, there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her – including murder… Edith keeps pedigree mice, and with just one more win, she’ll be...

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. It’s Halloween and thunder cracks overhead in the village of Odstock. Dr Tom Staniforth is giving a lecture on the legend of Tom Scamp, who was wrongly hung for a crime he didn’t commit, and...

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. It’s 1946 and tensions are running high in the Morris household. It’s no secret that Frank is handy with his fists, but what will finally tip him over the edge as they all sit round the table...

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Six months after the funeral of Danny Fox, his friend of more than 30 years, the narrator of this story takes a holiday in Florida, and is shocked to bump into Danny’s widow, who has seemingly...

A story from the collection Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose. Trish Noble, a nurse and devotee of her local church, walks into a Bath police station and confesses to killing her husband. She found him drunk again, saw red and hit him in the side of the...

In Victorian London, race-walking, or “wobbles”, are all the rage. So on a Monday morning in November 1879 the crowds gather for Islington's bizarre six-day endurance walking race. By Tuesday, one of the contestants is dead. Tetanus from a blister is...