Life-long Father Brown fan Ann Widdecombe explores the enduring impact of the shambolic priest, and looks into the life of his creator G.K. Chesterton. 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of 'The Innocence of Father Brown'. Ann Widdecombe goes on the trail of G.K. Chesterton's crime-solving cleric, whose unlikely methods make him on...

Carleton Hobbs stars as Sherlock Holmes in 12 classic full-cast BBC Radio dramas in these twelve classic stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Carleton Hobbs established the 'sound' of Sherlock Holmes, with Norman Shelley as his superb Watson. Now these unique recordings are available together for the first time ever, with specially commissioned introduct...

Two BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisations, starring Brian Cox as McLevy, Siobhan Redmond as Jean Brash and Michael Perceval-Maxwell as Mulholland. Inspired by the real-life memoirs of a Victorian Inspector in Scotland, James McLevy prowls the dark streets of 1860s Edinburgh bringing criminals to justice, with the assistance of Constable Mulholland....

Heralded by an instantly memorable signature tune, the adventures of special agent Dick Barton and his friends, Jock and Snowey, originally ran on the BBC Light Programme between 1946 and 1951. Set in an exciting world of criminal masterminds, espionage and adventure, the series was essential listening for an entire generation. Sadly very few of th...

No Orchids for Miss Blandish was crime author James Hadley Chase's first novel, and an experiment in adapting American hard-boiled crime fiction by a British author. Inspired by James Cain and The Postman Always Rings Twice, it worked so well that it launched the former salesman's writing career. He went on to write over eighty novels sold worldwid...

A foggy night...a lonely country house...and a woman with a gun in her hand quietly surveying the dead body of her husband. It looked like a straightforward case of murder. Or was it? As the ghosts of an old wrong begin to emerge from the past, the case begins to look anything but straightforward... First staged at the Duchess Theatre in London in...

Feisty Chicago private eye Vic 'V. I.' Warshawski is used to getting mixed up in complicated cases. But when three million dollars in share certificates are stolen from a Dominican priory, she really doesn't want to get involved. Because agreeing to investigate would mean doing a favour for Aunt Rosa, the priory's treasurer, and Vic has never forgi...

This collection includes both vintage crime stories such as 'Loopy' by Ruth Rendell; 'Insufficient Evidence' by Frances Hegarty; 'Nine Points of the Law' by E. W Hornung; 'The Case for the Defence' by Graham Greene; 'Bluebeards Bathtub' by Margery Allingham and 'Hunted Down' by Charles Dickens as well the classic crime stories 'The Blue Cross' by G...

The four stories in this collection include Baroness Orczy's 'The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway', Maurice Leblanc's 'The Mysterious Railway Passenger,' Victor Whitechurch and E. Conway's 'A Warning in Red' and Freeman Wills Crofts's 'The Mystery of the Sleeping Car Express'.

When Victor Dean fell to his death on the iron staircase at Pym's Advertising Agency no one was sorry. Nobody had really liked him - and even contributing to his wreath was a bit of an imposition. But when Lord Peter Wimsey (alias Death Bredon) joins the firm and asks some awkward questions it appears that Dean's death was not an accident - it was...

Storm-bound over the New Year at a Fenland rectory, Lord Peter Wimsey willingly lends a hand in the ringing of a New Year's Eve peal of the church bells. Some months later, a handless, disfigured corpse is discovered in a fresh grave in the churchyard. Lord Peter receives a plea for help from the rector and embarks on one of his most complicated in...

Young, beautiful Elinor Carlisle stood serenely in the dock, accused of the murder of Mary Gerrard, her rival in love. The evidence was damning: only Elinor had the motive, the opportunity and the means to administer the fatal poison.

The missing man: Harting, a Junior Something in the British Embassy in Bonn. The missing files: forty-three of them, all confidential. The timing: appalling and probably not accidental. London's security officer Alan Turner is sent to Bonn to find the missing man and files, as Germany's past, present and future threaten to collide in a nightmare of...

The tranquility of a cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot through the head. She was young, stylish and beautiful - a girl who had everything. Hercule Poirot recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger - 'I'd like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger'.

A Radio 2 dramatisation of the Second World War novel. Set during the Second World War over a period of four days in Yugoslavia, this classic thriller tells of the daring efforts made by a small group of specialists to silence the German guns at the Greek fortress of Navarone, to facilitate a planned invasion.

Venetia Aldridge QC is a distinguished barrister. Four weeks after agreeing to defend Gerry Ashe, accused of the brutal murder of his aunt, Miss Aldridge is found dead. Adam Dalgliesh investigates, only to find that her many enemies include colleagues, criminals, family - and even her lover.

A murder in one of England's leading private schools leaves everybody asking, why? One of the school masters finds that his wife has been killed in their home. But before she died, the victim wrote a letter in which she predicts her own murder - at the hand of her husband. George Smiley investigates.

In exchange for himself, his wife and two servants to be kept for life, Gervase Bonel assigned his manor to the abbey of St Peter and St Paul at Shrewsbury. Within a short time however, Bonel is dying, poisoned by one of Brother Cadfael's famous concoctions and the investigation begins. The third Cadfael mystery.

Lord Peter Wimsey arranged a quiet country honeymoon with Harriet Vane, but what should have been an idyllic holiday in an ancient farmhouse takes on a new and unwelcome aspect with the discovery of the previous owner's body in the cellar.

Hercule Poirot joins an international cast of characters on the glamorous Orient Express, and is approached by a wealthy American who offers the detective 'big money' to protect him. The next day the man is found dead in his cabin, stabbed twelve times. There are no lack of clues for Poirot - but which are real and which a clever plant? One thing i...

The Moonstone, a large, beautiful yellow diamond, stolen from an Indian shrine, is given to Rachel Verinder on her 18th birthday and, that same night, stolen again. Sergeant Cuff is employed to find the precious stone and has no shortage of suspects. As each character describes their version of events, layer upon layer of drama and suspense builds...