Badger's Drift is an ideal English village, complete with vicar, bumbling local doctor, and kindly spinster with a nice line in homemade cookies. But when the spinster dies suddenly, her best friend kicks up an unseemly fuss, loud enough to attract the attention of Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby. And when Barnaby and his eager-beaver deputy start poking around, they uncover a swamp of ugly scandals and long-suppressed resentments seething below the picture-postcard prettiness. In the grand tradition of the quietly intelligent copper, Barnaby has both an irresistibly dry sense of humor and a keen insight into what makes people tick.

Actors do love their dramas, and the members of the Causton Amateur Dramatic Society are no exception. Passionate love scenes, jealous rages'they're better than a paycheck (not that anyone one in this production of Amadeus is getting one). But even the most theatrically minded must admit that murdering the leading man in full view of the audience is a bit over the top. Luckily, Inspector Tom Barnaby is in that audience, and he's just the man to find the killer. With so many dramas playing out, there's no shortage of suspects, including secret lovers and jealous understudies galore.

The Lodge of the Golden Windhorse has provided the citizens of Compton Dando with splendid fodder for gossip, prompting speculation of arcane rituals and bizarre sexual practices. But with the murder of the commune's leaders, the rumor-mill goes into overdrive. It's the most exciting thing to happen in Compton Dando since three boys burned down the bus shelter. In trying to solve those murders, Chief Inspector Barnaby is less excited than exasperated. The residents of the Windhorse commune may have been seeking the simple life, but they're all concealing complicated pasts - or past lives. As in Death of a Hollow Man, Graham is at her most gleeful when skewering the eccentricities of a closed community, and no one survives unscathed. Wonderfully funny . . . good plotting, judiciously dropped clues, and a luminescent turn of phrase - Kirkus Lively, shrewdly plotted, and wickedly funny . . . evokes the golden age of the traditional detective story - Orlando Sentinel

Investigating the brutal murder of a Midsomer Worthy Writers' Circle club member, Chief Inspector Barnaby and his colorful sidekick, Sergeant Troy, delve into the secret passions of the eccentric club to find a killer.

When bored young housewife Simone Hollingsworth misses bell-ringing practice-her latest effort to find something to do-no one is surprised. In fact, if old Mrs. Molfrey, her neighbor, didn't report it to Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby, Simone's disappearance might have gone unrecorded in Fawcett Green. But even Barnaby isn't concerned-until a body is found. Soon Barnaby is uncovering the passionate entanglements beneath the placid surface of Fawcett Green-and perhaps jeopardizing his career. Now, if he misconstrues the clue buried in Simone's garden-and a subtlety of human behavior his experienced eye should spot-a brutal killer may go free...

Charlie Leathers was not the most popular man in the charming English village of Ferne Basset, but few people seemed to hate him enough to murder him. Still, that was his fate one night, and it brings Inspector Barnaby to the scene to investigate. What Barnaby doesn't know is that before his death, Charlie witnessed what might have been the suicide—or murder—of a young woman whose troubles with the law have landed her in the home of a local retired minister and his none-too-pleased wife. Now a man is dead, a girl is missing, and a town is in chaos as long-kept secrets begin to unravel, with deadly repercussions.

When a bloody, pulverized body is found lying beneath the rustic timbers of an authentic torture device so vicious and complicated as to be blood-curdling, there's sufficient unrest in tiny Forbes Abbot to call in Chief Inspector Barnaby. Was Dennis Brinkley done in by crooked business partners, a teenage seductress, a couple of would-be publishers who've just inherited—and then lost—millions, or perhaps by tired, timid little Benny Fraye, who wouldn't hurt a fly—would she? Barnaby will soon find out just who set in motion the gruesome machine that crushed the unfortunate victim. Caroline Graham's delightful cozy village mysteries, which inspired the continuing Midsommer Murders series starring Inspector Barnaby on A&E Television, have long been fan-favorites; A Ghost in the Machine is sure to cement her reputation as one of the best crime writers in the mystery business today.