Peter Lovesey

The Detection Club has always counted the crème de la crème of crime fiction within its ranks; previous presidents have included Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, GK Chesterton and, of course, the venerable HRF Keating. Now, in honour of his eightieth birthday, Keating's fellow Detection Club members and the leading lights of contemporary crime fiction serve up a selection of tantalising conundrums.

Take the phone off the hook, draw the curtains closed and snuggle up on the sofa, ready to enjoy the wickedly wonderful short-story birthday presents on offer from some of Britain's best loved crime writers. The contributing authors include Len Deighton, Reginald Hill, Colin Dexter, PD James, Simon Brett and Liza Cody, and with Dick Francis penning the foreword and Peter Lovesey putting the collection together, there is sure to be something to delight all crime fans. -- Inside Flap of book

Encouraged by his fourteen-year-old-daughter who recognizes his lonely widowhood, Bob Naylor decides to join a writers' circle, believing he might gain some expert help with the poetry which keeps spilling out of his imagination. He discovers a motley collection of wannabe authors who he doubts he has anything in common with, but just as he is deciding not to formally join the group he learns that a publisher who addressed their last meeting has been killed and he stays to see what might develop. The Senior Investigating Officer, Henrietta Mallin, soon has all the members of the group under suspicion and under pressure from her superiors arrests their Chairman. Bob, the only writer who had not met the dead man, is persuaded by some other members of the group to do some investigating of his own. And that is when the trouble really starts, because another death turns the spotlight of suspicion on to him.