{"title":"Felony \u0026 Mayhem","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781631942525","title":"The Crime and the Crystal","description":"In this, his third adventure, Professor Andrew Basnett takes a brief break from his usual stomping grounds in the Little English Village, opting to spend Christmas in a Small Australian City instead. He’s visiting Tony, an old colleague with a newish wife, and he’s barely had a post-flight snack before he’s made aware of a cloud hanging over the marriage. Jan, Tony’s bride, is widely believed to have bashed her first husband over the head, and though she was acquitted of the murder, Tony himself is starting to have uncomfortable second thoughts. Things don’t get any more comfortable when, at a family dinner, one of the guests is done in, killed with a chunk of the same crystal that put paid to Jan’s first husband. And Jan herself? She’s disappeared. Only the Professor, it would seem, can banish the clouds of distrust and reveal the truth, clear as crystal.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56302099136885,"sku":"9781631942525","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781631942525_af86f64b-9559-4464-876a-c80b68e13540.jpg?v=1786023433"},{"product_id":"9781631943263","title":"The Benson Murder Case","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eNew York in the 1920s is the world’s most glamorous city, and drinking it in like the finest champagne is Philo Vance, an expert in art with the deepest pockets, the brainiest brains, and the most gloriously ludicrous pretensions in the history of crime fiction.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen a scheming young stockbroker is murdered—in a delicious locked-room scenario based on a real case of the day—Vance steps in to solve the puzzle not merely because he is bored and seeking new entertainment, but also because honor compels him to point out all the ways in which the police are getting it wrong. The cops of course are profoundly grateful, like all members of the lower orders when their mistakes are pointed out. Peter Wimsey would be appalled, but the reader will be delighted. Philo Vance (here in his first outing) is the sleuth you love to hate.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56304482025845,"sku":"9781631943263","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781631943263_f23041da-5288-4800-9434-f3afaf9edec8.jpg?v=1786023434"},{"product_id":"9781631943348","title":"Dolly Is Dead\/The Garden Plot","description":"\u003cb\u003eSarah Deane may be a newly minted college professor, but whether she's on the rocky coast of Maine or an elegant English estate, her real calling is as \"the Nancy Drew of the 1980s\" (\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003eEverybody loves Dolly! At least, that's what Sarah Deane's sister says. But Sarah's siblings aren't so sure, and when Dolly turns up drowned, they ask Sarah to start asking questions. After all, in the finest cozy-mystery tradition, the police may not be up to the task. And while Sarah may be more PhD than PD, she has a well-known knack for nosing around and uncovering secrets like the ones that may have killed Dolly.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNot long thereafter, Sarah is bamboozled into shepherding tiresome Aunt Julia around the great gardens of Europe. It helps that her old friend Ellen Trevino is the expert leading the tour, but when Ellen misses the plane, Sarah's oh-so-sensitive nose starts twitching. When you've solved as many murders as she has, you get a sense about these things, and before the group sits down to its first cream tea, Sarah's nose is jumping like it has springs attached.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305028989301,"sku":"9781631943348","price":20.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781631943348_055708d0-3d5b-450d-aa36-1836c2bc5ef6.jpg?v=1786023438"},{"product_id":"9781631943300","title":"Miss Melville Returns","description":"\u003cb\u003eManhattan’s art scene in the 1980s is full of backstabbers, but Miss Melville regards this as needlessly messy. She prefers to use a gun—and she uses it well, in this darkly funny series perfect for fans of Richard Osman’s \u003ci\u003eThursday Murder Club\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003eLife is full of surprises. 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A shining, law-abiding life will be hers, she is certain—until another artist drops dead, the police get the story wrong, and Miss Melville is forced, yet again, to step in and tidy things up.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56312682086773,"sku":"9781631943300","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781631943300_eef318af-159d-4674-99e7-1dcdbd525485.jpg?v=1786023436"},{"product_id":"9781631943409","title":"The Canary Murder Case","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe sleuth we love to hate is back, as Philo Vance investigates the murder of a \"fast and easy showgirl\" known as the Canary.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003eLet us begin by promising that no actual birds are harmed in this story. The \u003ci\u003eCanary\u003c\/i\u003e of the title is Margaret Odell, once a showgirl in the Ziegfeld Follies, more recently an occasional nightclub singer and professional good time. When she is murdered, there are any number of suspects, all of the male variety. The police, of course, are baffled—it was ever thus—but happily, Philo Vance is on the scene, ready to apply his brilliance, his erudition, his astonishingly nuanced grasp of human nature to the solving of the crime. British crime writer and critic Julian Symons once noted that “It is difficult to grasp the extent of Van Dine’s success,” but a success he surely was: \u003ci\u003eCanary\u003c\/i\u003e stayed on bestseller lists for months and was filmed with William Powell and Louise Brooks. Will you cozy up to Philo Vance? Unlikely. 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At his side is the dangerously beautiful Mountain of Virtue (don't play poker with her), and rounding out the list is a collection of international characters: a hard-drinking English journalist, an American cowboy as handy with a six-shooter as he is inept at romance, a young Chinese soldier weighed down with worries for his country and the Brooklyn Dodgers, and a host of others. Any of them could have killed Harrow, an ambulance driver who appears to have died three different times.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56369053237621,"sku":"9781631943447","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781631943447_4aa24bca-3f41-4bc7-bef3-a8f48cc87547.jpg?v=1786023441"},{"product_id":"9781631943416","title":"The Greene Murder Case","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe sleuth we love to loathe is back! 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All things considered, Sukie's husband might reasonably be excused for giving her a certain side-eye, when nice Mr. Bentley turns up dead. Sukie, after all, while a lovely person with a charming smile, is known to lie with quite breathtaking regularity.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57504825114997,"sku":"9781631943720","price":16.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781631943720.jpg?v=1786953742"},{"product_id":"murders-little-sister","title":"Murder's Little Sister","description":"\u003cb\u003eBad advice can be fatal.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003eAs the advice columnist at \u003ci\u003eYou\u003c\/i\u003e magazine, Enid Marley is everyone's favorite agony aunt, doling out prescriptions to the lovelorn and the weeping, to those consumed with jealousy and those crippled by bad breath.  When it comes to her own problems, though, Enid's suggestions may be somewhat less helpful: Deal with a straying husband, she counsels herself, by faking your own suicide.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHer efforts are not entirely successful, and in her absence, an unemployed ballet dancer is hired to fill her shoes. His notion of advice, however, does not sit well with the magazine's readership, and soon Enid's fans (long accustomed to her admonishment that they kick passivity in the teeth and rise against their oppressors) are threatening to storm the magazine and wreak vengeance. In the meantime, a notorious killer has gone walkabout, and a drunken reporter has taken up residence in the elevator. 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