Battered to death with a piece of abstract sculpture titled 'Reconciliation, ' Whitehall departmental head Sir Nicholas Clark is claimed by his colleagues to have been a fine and respected public servant cut off in his prime. Bewildered by the labyrinthine bureaucracy of Whitehall, Scotland Yard's Superintendent Jim Milton recognizes a potential ally in Clark's young Private Secretary, Robert Amiss. Milton soon learns from Amiss how Whitehall works: that it can be Machiavellian and potentially homicidal, that Sir Nicholas was obnoxious and widely loathed, that he had spent the weeks before his murder upsetting and antagonizing family and associates, and that his last morning on earth had been spent gleefully observing the success of his plan to embarrass his minister and his department publicly. And they still need to discover who wielded the blunt instrument. This is the first of Ruth Dudley Edwards' witty, iconoclastic but warm-hearted satires about the British Establishment. Dr. Ruth Dudley Edwards was born and brought up in Dublin, Ireland. An historian and prize-winning biographer, she uses her knowledge of the British establishment in her satirical crime novels. She has three times been short-listed for awards from the Crime Writers' Association. www.ruthdudleyedwards.com

The second novel in the crime series featuring Robert Amiss, disaffected Civil Servant. On temporary secondment from Whitehall to a dead-end job in the suburbs, Amiss is not unprepared for malice and envy among the filing cabinets. But pettiness and practical jokes soon lead to murder.

Can anyone British teach English as a foreign language? It's murder.... "Adroit, inspiring, and written with a rare lightness of touch," —The London Times Literary Supplement "Believable plotting, a memorable cast of characters, and three—count 'em—three beguiling sleuths in a warm, gently raunchy, crisp, and literate caper." —Kirkus Reviews "Amiss is bumblingly appealing and howlingly funny." —The Chicago Sun Times He's also a civil servant down on his luck and out of a job—and thus ripe for a post as a police spy at the Knightsbridge School. Robert's cover will be to teach English as a foreign language. His mission soon becomes, well, murder.... "Quirky, highly intelligent, and thoroughly entertaining...." —The Washington Post Book World

The British fondness for tradition is no secret, but some members of London's ffeatherstonehaugh's club (pronounced "Fanshaw," naturally) seem to be taking things a bit too far, bumping off officers of the club who threaten their ordered, if highly eccentric, way of life. After the club secretary allegedly jumps to his death from the club's gallery, Robert Amiss, conveniently unemployed at the moment, agrees to help his friends at the Police Department get to the bottom of things. Hiring on as a club waiter, Amiss finds himself caught up in a bizarre caricature of a club, run by and for debauched geriatrics, with skeletons rattling in every closet. The portraits are of roues, the library houses erotic literature, and the servants are treated like Victorian lackeys - on a good day. Why are there so few members? How are they financed? Will Amiss keep his job - and his cover - despite the enmity of the ferocious, snuff-covered Colonel Flagg? The answers lie in this ingenious, uproarious mystery that will keep you guessing - and laughing - until the very end.

When an enormous bequest is left to St. Martha's College, the dons split into three factions: the Virgins, the Dykes and the Old Women. As the factions fight over how to spend the money, one of the Virgins is found dead. Once again, Robert Amiss finds himself with a murder investigation...

The House of Lords will never be the same.... Disinclined to watch her language or moderate her manners, "Jack" Troutbeck-assisted by her old friend Robert Amiss-plots vigorously with others to scupper an anti-hunting bill of which she violently disapproves. But she hadn't expected the cam-paign of intimidation mounted by the animal activists and the attempt on the life of one of her allies. And now there are scenes of horrifying carnage amongst the peers....

For many years Westonbury Cathedral has been dominated by a clique of High Church gays, so when Norman Cooper, an austere, intolerant, happy-clappy evangelist, is appointed dean, there is shock, outrage and fear. David Elworthy, the gentle and politically innocent new bishop, is distraught at the prospect of warfare between the factions; contentious issues include the camp lady chapel and the gay memorial under construction in the deanery garden. Desperate for help, Elworthy cries on the shoulder of his old friend, the redoubtable Baroness Troutbeck, who forces her unofficial troubleshooter, Robert Amiss, to move into the bishop's palace. Amiss, Troutbeck and the cat Plutarch address themselves in their various ways to the bishop's problems, which very soon include a clerical corpse in the cathedral. Is it suicide? Or is it murder? And who is likely to be next?

British satirist Edwards continues to skewer the Establishment with the misadventures of civil servant Robert Amiss and the keen deductions of his sleuthing partner, the irrepressible, irreverent Baroness "Jack" Troutbeck. Edwards, who's filleted the Foreign Office, clobbered a Cambridge college, jeered at gentlemen in their clubs, and defrocked the clergy in past books, now pulverizes the world of magazine publishing where to uphold traditions runs fatal risks. Fictionalizing some of her own experiences as a journalist, Edwards creates the revered political rag The Wrangler, then sends in Amiss to sort out a hemorraghing cash flow, the succession plans of its most noble patron, a takeover bid from a strong-minded Australian woman (who has her eye on Jack), antiquated procedures that will have you rolling on the floor, preservation of a beautiful and historic London town house as company headquarters, and the inevitable little murder.... Amiss, long mired in inertia, is encouraged to break out of the civil service mentality, sort out his own emotional life, and Get On With It. Truly a lovely, very funny, and provocative book that asks how we can balance what's worth keeping from our past with where we need to go to survive the future?

The British and Irish governments have chosen Baroness Troutbeck to chair a conference on Anglo-Irish cultural sensitivities. She instantly press-gangs her friend Robert Amiss into becoming a conference organizer. When a delegate plummets off the battlements, no one can decide whether it was by accident or design. And the next death causes warring factions to accuse each other of murder...

As the judges of a literary prize chip away at the author list, someone else is chipping away at them.... When the chairperson of the prestigious Knapper-Warburton Literary Prize dies in suspicious circumstances, Robert Amiss (the token sane member of the judging panel) wastes no time in summoning Baroness "Jack" Troutbeck to step into the chair. Speculation that a killer may be targeting the judges worries the baroness not in the slightest - it's the prospect of immersing herself in modern literature that fills her with dread. But noblesse must oblige, even when it means joining the ranks of the superciliati sitting in judgement of the literati. With the baroness at the helm, the judges resume the task of whittling away at the short-list. But the killer, too, has resumed work and is whittling away at the judges one by one.

"Academia (n.): a profession filled with bad food, knee-jerk liberalism, and murder... Being a member of the House of Lords and Mistress of St Marthas College in Cambridge might seem enough to keep anyone busy, but Baroness (Jack) Troutbeck likes new challenges. When a combination of weddings, work, and spookery deprives her of five of her closest allies, she leaps at an invitation to become a Distinguished Visiting Professor on an American campus. With her head full of romantic fantasies inspired by 1950s Hollywood, and accompanied by Horace, her loquacious and disconcerting parrot, this intellectually-rigorous right-winger sets off from England blissfully unaware that academia in the United States is dominated by knee-jerk liberalism, contempt for Western civilization, and the institutionalisation of a form of insane political-correctness. Will the bonne viveuse Baroness Troutbeck be able to cope with the culinary and vinous desert that is New Paddington, Indiana? Can this insensitive and tactless human battering-ram defeat the thought-police who run Freeman State University like a gulag? Does she believe the late Provost was murdered? If so, what should she do about it? And will she manage to persuade Robert Amisswho describes himself bitterly as Watson to her Holmes and Goodwin to her Nero Wolfeto abandon his honeymoon and fly to her side?

"A raucous send-up of the art world's collectors, critics, curators and especially those postmodernists who call themselves artists."― Kirkus Reviews Lady (Jack) Troutbeck is missing. So is celebrity curator Sir Henry Fortune and his partner in love and money, louche art dealer Jason Pringle. But panic doesn't begin in the London art world until no one can locate Anastasia Holliday, sensational abject artist; Jake Thorogood, the critic who catapulted her into stardom; or Dr. Hortense Wilde, notorious for having influenced generations of art students to despise craftsmanship. Are these fashionable adopters of conceptual art hostages? If so, why? Ransom? Revenge? Who will be next? Will it be Sir Nicholas Serota, mighty overlord of British temples of the avant garde? The internationally renowned Young British Artist Damien Hirst, whose dross became platinum? Is Charles Saatchi, mega-rich husband of a TV cook and the genius who took talentless young people and turned them into a winning brand, in danger? When news comes of a New York disappearance, the fears of the art establishment go transatlantic. But why is Baroness Troutbeck a target? After all, Jack is a standard bearer of conservative values in education and art who recently publicly described admirers of conceptual art as knaves and fools. Can Jack's friends rescue her before her own worst fantasies are turned into reality and she becomes the next horrifying "hommage murder" satirizing notorious works of art?