Titles by Leo Bruce

Possibly the most unusual mystery ever written. A murder is committed, behind closed doors, in bizarre circumstances. Three amateur detectives take the case: Lord Simon Plimsoll, Monsieur Amer Picon, and Monsignor Smith (in whom discerning readers will note likeness to some familiar literary figures). Each arrives at his own brilliant solution, startling in its originality, ironclad in its logic. Meanwhile Sergean Beef sits contemptuously in the background. "But, " says Sergean Beef, "I know who done it!"

One of the rarest mysteries in the author's Sergeant Beef series, Case with Four Clowns, which has only been published once in the US—more than fifty years ago - is now available in paperback for the first time.

    It is regarded by critics as one of Leo Bruce's most baffling mysteries.  A murder is yet to be committed—that much is certain—but who will be the victim? And who will be the murderer? It is Sgt. Beef's job to discover these facts, if he can, in time to prevent the deed from being done.

       But when he reaches the small traveling circus where the murder is to take place, he finds that practically everyone there is seething with hatred, each has a motive which might make him a killer; and any one of a dozen people could easily be the victim.

        The doughty Sgt. Beef has broken some pretty tough cases, and this one—with mystery entagled within mystery—stirs the bulldog within him. The clues are there, but unless the reader is very astute, he or she will overlook them; but Sgt. Beef misses nothing.

Carolus Deene’s housekeeper, the stoic Mrs. Stick, announces one evening that her husband has seen the body of a youth lying in a ditch with his hair shorn and his wrists slashed. Carolus knows that he has, at last, met a supreme challenge to test his powers of deduction. The redoubtable schoolmaster-turned-detective then becomes involved in a lively series of adventures infiltrating England’s provincial cockney underworld and gaining insight into the dead boy’s unhappy background and surroundings. Realizing that it is all too easy to blame the obvious suspects, skinheads and greasers, Carolus must call upon his ingenuity and determination to persevere. One of Leo Bruce’s most exciting novels, Death of a Bovver Boy gives the reader an insight into the milieu of rebellious 1970s England, a world where prejudice is the order of the day and hostility and violence are the only means of survival.