The Posie Parker Mystery Series

Posie Parker always dreamt of becoming a Private Detective. So with nothing to lose, and the tiniest scrap of an inheritance and her haughty cat, Mr Minks, in tow, she sets up her own Detective Agency in Bloomsbury. But clients are hard to come by, and all seems in vain, until Posie receives an urgent call from her childhood friend, Lord Rufus Cardigeon, who is up to his neck in bother. He’s been robbed of a family heirloom—the priceless Maharajah diamond—by his showgirl fiancée, Lucky Lucy Gibson.

Invited by society beauty Lady Violet Boynton-Dale to her ancestral home, Boynton Hall, to investigate dangerous threats which are being made against her brother, the dashing Explorer Alaric Boynton-Dale, Posie leaves London for the sun-dappled beauty of the Cotswolds. She finds that Boynton Hall is a place of opulent grandeur, but also of dark secrets, not least that Alaric is a man with jilted lovers and jealous husbands left trailing in his wake.

As her reputation steadily grows, Posie Parker is asked to accompany the utterly charming Inspector Richard Lovelace of Scotland Yard on an undercover mission of entrapment. Their destination is a glittering New Year’s Eve party at the remote Maypole Manor in Kent, the cliff-top home of Lord Robin Glaysayer.

As snow falls silently outside, settling on the spires and turrets of the ancient Cambridge colleges and the dark streets, and the shop windows gleam temptingly with delectable Christmas treats, Posie Parker, Private Detective, has cleared a small space in her hectic schedule to unravel a tragedy which occurred in her very own family.

As England swelters during the hottest summer on record, Posie Parker, Private Detective, is summoned to Worton Hall Film Studios, where she steps into the heart of a sinister new mystery. Silvia Hanro, the blonde movie star du jour, has received death threats and a severed human finger alongside her morning coffee, and it’s all got too, too much.

Posie Parker, now London’s premier female Private Detective, is getting married, and with her wedding dress carefully packed, she’s bubbling over with excitement to arrive in Venice, the most romantic city on earth! But very quickly Posie finds she is walking into an utter nightmare: her lodgings on the Grand Canal have been consumed by fire; the fascist police are in control of the city; her famous fiancé, Alaric Boynton-Dale is moody and preoccupied, and most bizarrely of all, her hostess, the Countess Romagnoli, confesses she has a stalker and fears for her life.

Prepare for tales of unexplained murders, long-concealed mysteries, strange visitors in the night, and a secret in Posie’s own past, about her parents, which haunts her to this very day. But something is afoot. Several of the guests are acting shiftily, and when a sparkling Christmas gift under the tree is revealed to be a ticking time bomb, designed to cause multiple murders and mayhem, Posie and Lovelace have to locate the perpetrator, fast. Who would want to cause such untold misery, and why?

Posie Parker, Private Detective, has been called to her most baffling case yet. Amyas Lyle, London’s top young lawyer, has been found with his head in a box of poisoned saltwater. It’s the perfect murder. Who hated him enough to do such a thing? But Amyas Lyle, youngest ever King’s Counsel and soon-to-be Judge, turns out to have been more complicated than Posie could ever have imagined.

Posie Parker, Private Detective, travels to the south coast to investigate the death of Elsie Moncreiff, a Housekeeper, who has fallen from the White Cliffs of Dover in a gale. But the question is, was it bad luck, or was it murder? Elsie’s place of work was the glamorous cliff-side party house, White Shaw, and her employers were England’s renowned fashion designers, Petronella Douglas and Tony Stone, whose weekly parties - packed full of celebrities - are almost as famous as their clothes.

It’s snowing heavily outside, but in the little white Swiss Church in central London, packed to the rafters with Posie Parker’s beautifully-dressed wedding guests, and half of Scotland Yard, everything is just right. All going to plan. Or is it?

London glitters during a snowstorm, and Posie Parker, Private Detective, and her best friend, Dolly, Countess Cardigeon, enjoy a fashion show hosted by Liberty on Regent Street. Rudolph Valentino, the most famous movie star in the whole world, is also there, incognito, and he seeks Posie’s help: he’s in the country researching for a new film, but he’s also been asked to be this year’s surprise guest who will switch on the Christmas lights at Piccadilly, among crowds of excited shoppers.

Pregnant, bored of London, and longing for an adventure, Posie Parker accepts a last-minute Wedding Invitation from a friend, the renowned clairvoyant Jacinta Glaysayer, who has set up a small Guesthouse in the gorgeous hilltop town of San Gimignano, Tuscany. Jacinta is getting married to the local owner of a Gelateria, ambitious young widower Lorenzo Rosario. Sounds like a dream!

Posie Parker, Private Detective, has been summoned to Chelsea, to the House of Sinne, the London perfume house. Anouk Sinne, the most brilliant perfumier of her age, and famous for her spoiled bald cat, has been receiving blackmail demands, and she asks Posie to investigate. But is blackmail just the tip of the iceberg?

A dark, smog-filled London doesn’t seem very Christmassy, or exciting, but then Posie Parker, London’s premier female Private Detective, receives an urgent call from one of her oldest friends; Rufus, Earl of Cardigeon. Summoned to ‘The Mermaid’, a reputedly haunted hotel in Rye, on the Sussex Coast, in the heart of smuggling country, Posie, together with her husband, Richard, finds her old friend in a real state.

Posie Parker, London’s premier female Private Detective, is only just back in town when she receives an unexpected visitor. The mysterious magician, Count Olli Onneri, pupil of the legendary American magician Harry Houdini, invites Posie to take part in the opening night of his show at the nearby Holborn Empire, helping him with a ‘magic mirror’ trick, the like of which has never been seen before.

Invited aboard the glamourous Night Train to Paris, and tasked with investigating the disappearance of her best friend, Dolly, Countess Cardigeon, Posie Parker suddenly finds herself right in the middle of a murder! Controversial society beauty, Lady Caroline Greenlow, is on her way to Paris Fashion Week. She always has a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way, but things take a dreadful turn when she is poisoned at dinner, and then another murder occurs soon after.

When Posie Parker, Private Detective, accidentally runs into an old family acquaintance in the Temple Church, London, she is persuaded to leave town immediately and return to the place of her childhood roots—the beautiful Norfolk coast—to investigate a closed-room murder mystery which local police believe has a foregone conclusion.

London, 1926. After a short leave of absence, Private Detective Posie Parker is back—and with a bang! Her first assignment? Interview the dazzling Eglantine DuBarry and Jack Smeaton of ‘The Banana Splits’, the most talked-about jazz band in town, who seem to have troubles aplenty. But before the ink is dry, Posie lands an even more notorious client: Lady Hilda Kilcoyne, a scandalous sportswoman convinced her war-hero husband wants her dead.