Download or read book The Complete Benbow Smith Mysteries written by Patricia Wentworth and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 929 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cloak-and-dagger intrigue featuring an eccentric agent for Britain’s Foreign Office from the author of the “timelessly charming” Miss Silver mysteries (Charlotte MacLeod). Named after three naval admirals, the enigmatic gentleman spy Benbow Collingwood Horatio Smith detests the sea and loves to indulge his beloved parrot, Ananias, all while protecting the fate of the Western world. Fool Errant: Smith investigates the case of a young man whose new job with an odd inventor has him mired in governmental intrigue, industrial espionage, and stolen military secrets. Danger Calling: Smith has a proposition for a former British Secret Service agent that launches him into a web of blackmail and murder—and pits him against a master of deceit and manipulation. Walk with Care: Smith must investigate a mysterious letter and the suspicious death of the under secretary for Foreign Affairs. Down Under: The disappearance of a bride-to-be sets her fiancé and agent Benbow Smith on the trail of a notorious madman who’s no stranger to kidnapping—or murder. Every bit as entertaining as Wentworth’s long-running series featuring Maud Silver, these pre–World War II spy thrillers are taut with suspense and livened by the wit of a “first-rate storyteller” (The Daily Telegraph).
Download or read book Fool Errant written by Patricia Wentworth and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political intrigue and industrial espionage are brewing in Britain’s Foreign Office in this thriller from the author of the Miss Silver Mysteries On a dark, foggy night, Hugo Ross encounters a beautiful woman. She claims to be running away and begs Hugo not to tell anyone that he’s seen her. Before boarding her train, she warns him not to take the job he’s applying for: secretary to eccentric inventor Ambrose Minstrel. The train pulls away, and the stunning stranger is gone. Desperate for employment, Hugo ignores her warning and takes the job. He’s barely moved into Meade House when a message from Loveday Leigh is hand-delivered: He must leave immediately and burn the letter. When they finally meet again at Waterloo Station, Loveday is not the mysterious woman Hugo remembers. Odd happenings continue, and he enlists the help of the esteemed Benbow Smith, an enigmatic figure connected to London’s Foreign Office. Soon Hugo is caught up in an undercover plot involving governmental intrigue, industrial espionage, and stolen military secrets. With his own life on the line, how much is he willing to risk for his country? Fool Errant is the 1st book in the Benbow Smith Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Download or read book Walk with Care written by Patricia Wentworth and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Benbow Smith investigates the suspicious death of a prominent political figure and a mysterious letter in this thriller from the author of the Miss Silver Mysteries Rosalind Denny, the American-born widow of the under secretary for Foreign Affairs, is still grieving for her husband. Eighteen months ago, Gilbert Denny threw away a happy marriage and a promising political career by ending his life. But Rosalind doesn’t believe that Gilbert’s drowning was a suicide. In London, Foreign Office agent Benbow Smith is visited by Bernard Mannister, a distinguished member of parliament and president of the British Disarmament League. A confidential letter that could destroy lives and disrupt the precarious balance of Western power is missing. Mannister, like Denny and others before him, is being driven from public service—but why? With an intriguing cast of characters, including a talking parrot, a sleepwalker, and a psychic, Walk with Care is both a top-notch historical thriller and a revelatory glimpse into the inner workings of British intelligence. Walk with Care is the 3rd book in the Benbow Smith Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Download or read book Down Under written by Patricia Wentworth and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreign Office agent Benbow Smith investigates the disappearance of a bride-to-be—the latest in a series of bizarre abductions—in this thriller from the author of the Miss Silver Mysteries Rose Anne Carew is to be married tomorrow. During a last-minute discussion of floral wreathes, a stranger calls, refusing to leave a message for the bride. A few hours later, at half-past six, Rose Anne leaves the vicarage to visit her former nurse’s sick child. It’s the last anyone sees of her. A week after his fiancée vanishes, Capt. Oliver Loddon enlists the help of government operative Benbow Smith to find her. To Loddon’s shock, Smith believes Rose Anne’s disappearance is connected to a notorious defendant’s escape from custody a decade earlier. Several other women have gone missing in the past few years, and Smith is certain they were abducted. But he doesn’t have enough concrete evidence to convince the police. With little to go on and no idea whether the woman he loves is alive or dead, Captain Loddon risks his own life in a case that hangs on a madman’s monstrous scheme. Down Under is the 4th book in the Benbow Smith Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Download or read book Dark Threat written by Patricia Wentworth and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVMiss Silver visits the country to keep an eye on a friend who may be in peril/divDIV/divDIVIt is time for Judy to get out of London. Her sister and brother-in-law have just perished in an air raid, leaving her in charge of their four-year-old daughter, and Judy wants no more to do with death. She arranges for work in a piece of the countryside untouched by the war: a charming manor called Pilgrim’s Rest. But it may be that she has more to fear than the Blitz./divDIV /divDIVWhen she tells Frank Abbott of her plans, he warns her that strange things have been happening at Pilgrim’s Rest. The family patriarch is recently dead of mysterious circumstances, and his heir has just suffered a series of near-fatal accidents. He cannot sway Judy, for she needs the work. But he does convince the governess-turned-detective Maud Silver to follow Judy to the village, to be on hand in case country living turns dangerous./div
Download or read book Grey Mask written by Patricia Wentworth and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governess-turned-detective Miss Silver investigates a deadly conspiratorial ring Charles Moray has come home to England to collect his inheritance. After four years wandering the jungles of India and South America, the hardy young man returns to the manor of his birth, where generations of Morays have lived and died. Strangely, he finds the house unlocked, and sees a light on in one of its abandoned rooms. Eavesdropping, he learns of a conspiracy to commit a fearsome crime. Never one for the heroic, Charles’s first instinct is to let the police settle it. But then he hears her voice. Margaret, his long lost love, is part of the gang. To unravel their diabolical plot, he contacts Miss Maud Silver, a onetime governess who applies reason to solve crimes and face the dangers of London’s underworld.
Download or read book The Devil s Wind written by Patricia Wentworth and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-11-13 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Devil's Wind" is a historical novel set during the Indian rebellion of 1857 and delves into an exciting and gripping yarn of adventure, betrayal and political intrigue! Excerpt: "In the year 1854 Mrs.Lauriston's London drawing-room was as ugly as contemporary taste could make it. This is saying much, but not too much. The June sunshine slanted in, and rested with unsparing candour upon a cabbage-coloured carpet patterned with monstrous magenta blooms of uncertain family. Gloomy oil-paintings in gorgeous, fog-dimmed frames covered the greater part of the wall space. Helen Wilmot had never been able to decide whether she thought the wall-paper uglier than the portraits, or the portraits more frightful than the wall-paper..."
Download or read book Who Pays the Piper written by Patricia Wentworth and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-04-26 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A blackmailing businessman turns up dead in this mystery featuring Scotland Yard’s Inspector Ernest Lamb, from the creator of the Miss Silver series. Lucas Dale always gets what he wants. And this time he wants another man’s fiancée: Susan Lenox. Never mind that she’s engaged to Bill Carrick, an up-and-coming architect without a farthing to his name. Cathleen O’Hara, Dale’s mousy social secretary, serves as the unwitting instrument of his plan, and a nasty blackmail scheme is set in motion. Soon, Susan has no choice but to break off her engagement and agree to marry Dale—until he’s found in his study with a bullet in his head. Scotland Yard is called in, and before long, Inspector Ernest Lamb and Detective Frank Abbott have a suspect: Carrick. But as Lamb and Abbott dig deeper, they discover others with means, motive, and opportunity, including the victim’s penniless former wife who was handy with a gun, and his American business partner who wanted the money Dale owed him. No one has an alibi for the time of Dale’s demise. And someone else will die before the price of murder is paid. Who Pays the Piper? is the 2nd book in the Ernest Lamb Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Download or read book The Case of William Smith written by Patricia Wentworth and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2005-09-12 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They hoped he would never come back . . . Who was William Smith? And why was Mavis Jones so horrified to see him? For seven years William had worked as a woodcarver for the local toyshop, ignorant of his true identity. The war had robbed him of his memory, and no one expected him to ever find the answer. So when he took his work to Evesleys Ltd, why was his life instantly in danger? When William makes the frightening discovery that there are people determined not to let his memory return whatever the cost, Miss Silver is called in to investigate. But will she uncover their treachery before Mavis strikes again...?
Download or read book Wayfaring Stranger written by James Lee Burke and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his most ambitious work yet, New York Times bestseller James Lee Burke tells a classic American story through one man’s unforgettable life. In 1934, sixteen-year-old Weldon Avery Holland happens upon infamous criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow after one of their notorious armed robberies. A confrontation with the outlaws ends with Weldon firing a gun, unsure whether it hit its mark. Ten years later, Second Lieutenant Weldon Holland barely survives the Battle of the Bulge, in the process saving the lives of his sergeant, Hershel Pine, and a young Spanish prisoner of war, Rosita Lowenstein—a woman who holds the same romantic power over him as the strawberry blonde Bonnie Parker, and is equally mysterious. The three return to Texas where Weldon and Hershel get in on the ground floor of the nascent oil business. In just a few years’ time Weldon will spar with the jackals of the industry, rub shoulders with dangerous men, and win and lose fortunes twice over. But it is the prospect of losing his one true love that will spur his most reckless act yet—one inspired by that encounter long ago with the outlaws of his youth. A tender love story and pulse-pounding thriller, Wayfaring Stranger “is a sprawling historical epic full of courage and loyalty and optimism and good-heartedness that reads like an ode to the American Dream” (Benjamin Percy, Poets & Writers).
Download or read book Down Under written by Dora Amy Turnbull and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-04 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Benbow Smith is a spymaster with the British Foreign Office. His full name is a mouthful - Benbow Collingwood Horation Smith. It is such an interesting name that someone, likely Smith but possibly someone else, taught Ananais a pithy little jingle to recite with little or no provocation: "Three jolly admirals all in a row; Collingwood, Nelson, and bold Benbow". [It sounds like it was taken from a naval drinking song or poem but I could find no similar reference on the web.] Ananais, by the way since I knew you were wondering, is a very, very talkative parrot that Smith owns and for whom he has considerable affection. Ananais is frequenly spouting off about this or that, often lacing his statements with Spanish racy language. Since Smith does a lot of his meetings with people in the study of his home, the same study where Ananais rules, the chatty bird hears a considerable amount and loves to recite some of it back. Described as "a very tall, thin man, with the forward stoop and slightly peering gaxe of a scholar", Smith wears large horn-rimmed glasses which he often pushes up on to his forehead when not reading. Though he is named after three admirals, it is written that "a less nautical figure could hardly have been imagined" but when it came to using his mind, he was every bit as leader-qualified as any naval officer who ever earned a star. Interestingly, it is said that though he distinguished himself at college, he then "passed into obscurity" and largely vanished. It was a few years later than he was again noticed by the world, or at least a small part of it, when after publishing a monograph on Russian ikons and another on early German woodcuts, neither of which got any attention from anyone, he came out with a book entitled The European Problem which was not only a treatise on how things stood in the years before WWI but also keenly predicted what would certainly transpire as a result. He was amazingly and chillingly accurate. When the Great War did come, Smith was in constant demand because of his "intimate knowledge of almost every European country". Virtually every governmental department that Britain had made a call to his door at one time or another and he helped as best he could, the results of which made his voice very much something to listen to. Despite his resultant power and prestige, the man changed little. He was still a bachelor and decidedly considered an eccentric. One young bride having received as a wedding gift an expensive string of pearls lovingly but accurately referred to him as "a dinky old duck". Which very well describes Benbow Smith. What is not so easily described is his amazing and very hush-hush connection to the cloak and dagger world, mostly handled from the study where his talkative parrot holds reign.Dora Amy Elles (November 10, 1878 - January 28, 1961) wrote under the pen name of Patricia Wentworth. She was a British crime writer, best known for her Miss Silver Mysteries, though she also wrote romantic novels. Miss Silver is frequently compared to Agatha Christie's Jane Marple, though Patricia Wentworth's first Miss Silver novel pre-dated Agatha Christie's first Miss Marple novel by two years, and may well have inspired Agatha Christie.The day before she was to be married, a woman said she was going to visit a sick relative and was not seen again. Her fiancée asks Benbow Smith for help finding what happened to her. Smith is certain her disappearance is connected to several other vanishings over the past few years. The betrothed must put his life in danger to stop a madman's evil plot.In Marion Shaw & Sabine Vanacker's book Reflecting on Miss Marple, they said: "while Miss Marple may receive ten times the attention as Miss Silver, ... the woefully neglected Miss Silver is the real deal - a professional investigator and a stand-up woman, a true forerunner of all future female private eyes."
Download or read book Wicked Uncle written by Patricia Wentworth and published by HarperTorch. This book was released on 1996-05-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Gregory Porlock invites a group of unacquainted friends to his house party, the blackmailing host is found dead from a stab wound in the back, and Miss Silver must discover which guest made certain the party was over. Reissue.
Download or read book Vanishing Point written by Patricia Wentworth and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2011-08-23 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The “marvelous” British-governess-turned-sleuth investigates a disappearance in a village near a top-secret government research facility (Daily Mail). Jenny Maxwell is a bright young child. After an automobile accident leaves her barely able to walk, she retreats into a world of fantasy, devouring novel after novel of steamy romance. Now she has begun to write, and for a twelve-year-old she shows great promise. After she sends her work off to a publisher, the house sends a representative to meet the young woman and guide her. But the stories she tells him are hardly fictional. Trapped in her room for hours at a time, Jenny hears all. She knows about the young woman who disappeared from town, and about the strange young man who works at the nearby military research center. What sounds like harmless gossip could actually be a grave threat to national security—one which only private investigator Miss Silver is capable of unearthing.
Download or read book The Blind Side written by Patricia Wentworth and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-04-26 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who killed Ross Craddock? Inspector Ernest Lamb will sift through multiple clues and suspects to find out in this golden age mystery from the author of the acclaimed Miss Silver Mysteries Lucy Craddock has lived at No. 7 Craddock House for years. But now she’s about to be turned out of her home—by her own nephew. She was at his christening, for mercy’s sake! Greed is what drives Ross Craddock, who inherited the once-magnificent family home built ninety years earlier and has since divided it into flats rented by quarreling, passionate tenants. But none is more wicked than Ross himself, his handsome visage concealing an evil heart. He gets his comeuppance when he’s found sprawled on the hearthrug in a pool of blood—shot to death with his own revolver. Who had a motive to kill him? Who didn’t? Is the murderer Peter Renshaw, a soldier with His Majesty’s Army, who may have been protecting pretty young Mavis Grey from Ross’s unwanted advances? Bobby Foster, Mavis’s jealous suitor? Or Lucy’s niece, Lee Fenton, who walks in her sleep? Then there’s Miss Lucy herself. They’re all concealing secrets. But one is worth killing for, as Inspector Ernest Lamb and Detective Frank Abbott of Scotland Yard discover in this classic British puzzler that will keep readers guessing until the shocking denouement. The Blind Side is the 1st book in the Ernest Lamb Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Download or read book The Benevent Treasure written by Patricia Wentworth and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2011-08-23 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An orphaned young woman discovers some long-lost relatives—and a murder—in this mystery from “a first-rate storyteller” (The Daily Telegraph). An orphan of the Second World War, Candida Sayle has gotten so used to life with her guardian that she never considered that she might have a family somewhere. When her guardian dies, a letter appears from an unheard-of aunt, informing Candida that it is time for her to return to the Benevent family fold. The young woman ventures to the country, and finds a strange pair of spinsters who spend their days obsessing over family lore and its rumors of a long-lost Italian treasure. Bizarre though it is, the environment comforts Candida—as do the attentions of her aunt’s handsome young secretary. But her vacation goes off the rails when death strikes the house, and the brilliant detective Maud Silver joins the party to investigate the possible murder. The Benevent family history is about to get a dark new chapter.
Download or read book Danger Calling written by Patricia Wentworth and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clandestine operative Benbow Smith recruits a former Secret Service agent to bring down an enemy of the free world in this thriller from the author of the Miss Silver Mysteries Lindsay Trevor, a junior partner in a publishing firm, boards a train headed for Waterloo Station. He is contemplating his future as a soon-to-be-married man when the stranger seated across from him asks if he’s willing to die for his country. Trevor was taken prisoner during World War I, and after his escape, he was recruited by Britain’s Secret Service. But that was twelve years ago. The last thing he wants now is to risk his life again—or is it? Operative Benbow Smith is betting that Trevor wants back in the game. And when an unfortunate series of events changes the direction of his life, the former Secret Service agent signs on. With Lindsay Trevor declared officially dead, the victim of a fatal accident, he’s free to impersonate another man. Soon the agents are enmeshed in a spiraling web of blackmail, intrigue, and murder, fighting a predatory criminal who is a master of deceit and manipulation. Danger Calling is the 2nd book in the Benbow Smith Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Download or read book In the Balance written by Patricia Wentworth and published by Miss Silver Mysteries. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: His first wife died suddenly--and his wealthy new bride may be about to meet a similar fate . . . Former schoolteacher Miss Maud Silver is making her way back to London when, with a violent shudder of the train, a young woman is thrust into her compartment. She is beautiful, well dressed, newly married, and wealthy--which may be about to get her killed. In a state of shock, Lisle Jerningham explains that she fled her home in a hurry when she overheard a sinister conversation through the bushes. Her new husband's first wife died in an apparent accident, and the resultant infusion of cash saved his family home. Now, he is broke again--and trying to engineer a second convenient mishap. Miss Silver is unsure whether the drama is real or a figment of Lisle's imagination--but if this frightened young lady is a target for murder, the killer will have to deal with the governess-turned-sleuth first. Starring a mature sleuth who "has her place in detective fiction as surely as Lord Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot", In the Balance is a classic British mystery (Manchester Evening News). "Miss Wentworth is a first-rate storyteller." --The Daily Telegraph "Miss Silver has her place in detective fiction as surely as Lord Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot." --Manchester Evening News "You can't go wrong with Miss Maud Silver." --The Observer Patricia Wentworth (1878-1961) was one of the masters of classic English mystery writing. Born in India as Dora Amy Elles, she began writing after the death of her first husband, publishing her first novel in 1910. In the 1920s, she introduced the character who would make her famous: Miss Maud Silver, the former governess whose stout figure, fondness for Tennyson, and passion for knitting served to disguise a keen intellect. Along with Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, Miss Silver is the definitive embodiment of the English style of cozy mysteries.
