It is 1936 and Spain is about to erupt into civil war. Verity Brown, now a correspondent for a national newspaper, insists Corinth help her investigate a murder in Madrid to clear the name of her lover, a senior figure in the Communist Party, who has been convicted of the crime.

Verity Browne and Lord Edward Corinth are attending a memorial service in Westminster Abbey for Lord Benyon, killed a few months before when the Hindenburg airship burst into flames as it docked in New Jersey. Also present are the distinguished archaeologist Professor Pitt-Messanger and his daughter Maud. As the congregation disperses after the service, Edward hears Miss Pitt-Messanger cry for help. Her father is slumped in his seat, stabbed to death with an ancient Assyrian dagger. Soon afterwards Verity is invited to Swifts Hill, the house in Kent belonging to millionaire Sir Simon Castlewood. He and his wife are looking after Maud Pitt-Messanger while she recovers from her father's...

February, 1939. Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne are invited to Clivenden in Buckinghamshire, renowned as the headquarters for those prepared to go to any lengths to avert war. Murder stalks the formal gardens as private and public passions come to a climax.

Verity Browne returns from Prague with tuberculosis and is sent to a private clinic — a place with a connection to the recent murder of a dentist. Lord Edward Corinth and Verity become involved in an investigation into the mysterious deaths of three of the dentist's elderly patients — and soon come face-to-face with something wicked.

It is 1937; Winston Churchill is receiving unauthorized information on Britain's rearmament program, and Lord Edward Corinth is brought in by the Foreign Office to investigate the leaks. Edward rapidly falls under Churchill's spell and quickly abandons his investigation to concentrate instead on finding the murderer of a Foreign Office official who may have been one of Churchill's sources. He soon finds himself trying to untangle a web of deception that threatens the security of the state. There is a second murder within the Foreign Office, and Edward sets out for Spain to find the murdered man's son, though his real objective is to satisfy the gnawing fear that his friend Verity Browne,...

It is the Spring of 1937, and a British economist is bound for New York on the "Queen Mary" to enlist President Roosevelt's aid for Britain in the event of war with Germany. Lord Edward Corinth has been asked to keep a discreet eye on him, but then a racist American senator is murdered.

When the Nazis seize Austria in March 1938, Verity Browne — the New Gazette's correspondent in Vienna — is one of the first to be deported as a well-known anti-Fascist. Before she leaves she is able to arrange for a young Jew, Georg Dreiser, to escape to England, but where he expects to find safety, he finds danger and sudden death. Lord Edward Corinth also finds death where it is least expected, in the grounds of Lord Montbatten's country house, Broadlands. There to meet his friend the Maharaja of Batiala, Edward's nephew Frank stumbles on a corpse. The police are satisfied that the man, identified as Peter Gray, a painter of some repute, died of natural cause; but his niece, Vera,...

At the outset of World War II, Byron Gates, a self-absorbed poet, moves out of London together with his young daughter and stepdaughter to avoid the anticipated bombing. His wife, an actress, is in the States. His acquaintance, Virginia Woolf, has found him a little cottage in the village of Rodmell where she and her husband, Leonard, are living. Coincidentally, newlyweds Verity Browne and Lord Edward Corinth are setting up their first home in the Old Vicarage. Gates is anxious to curry favor with the 'Woolves' and their set. His children put on a pageant for the neighbors based on the beheading of King Charles I, and then Gates is found dead as if executed for treason. Verity and Lord...

It is 1935 and the Duke of Mersham is hosting a party at his country house, when one of the guests is poisoned. Was it an accident or something more sinister? The Duke's younger brother, Lord Edward Corinth, and journalist Verity Browne, set out to investigate.

The Floating Admiral was the first of the Detection Club's collaborative novels, in which 12 of its members wrote a single novel. Eighty-five years later, 14 members of the club have once again collaborated to produce The Sinking Admiral. The Admiral is a pub in the Suffolk seaside village of Crabwell, the Admiral Byng. The Admiral is also the nickname of its landlord, Geoffrey Horatio Fitzsimmons, as well as the name of the landlord's dinghy. None of them are as buoyant as they should be, for the pub is threatened with closure due to falling takings. Tempers are already frayed due to the arrival of a television documentary team when Fitzsimmons is found dead in his tethered boat. The...