Wonderfully entertaining mystery stories set in the world of the acclaimed ROMA SUB ROSA series. It is the Rome of the Late Republic, and Gordianus the Finder has a knack for finding trouble - and dead bodies.

Pen-Lai District, North East China, AD 663. Newly arrived from the Imperial Capital to take up his first post as Magistrate, Judge Dee is at once confronted with three eerie and baffling mysteries which test his analytical and deductive powers to the limit, drawing him along a trail of blood leading to a criminal of boundless ambition -- and to a plot which will rock the vast bureaucracy of the ..

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At a lakeside town near the Imperial capital T'ang, China's master detective, Judge Dee finds his astounding powers of deduction put to their greatest challenge yet as he battles murder and high treason against the Imperial throne.

It was in the pulp detective magazines of the 1930s that the author's definitive take on the hard-boiled detective story first appeared. This book features eight of his finest stories including The Man Who Liked Dogs , The Lady in the Lake and Bay City Blues .

It began as an entertainment: eight people, many of them enemies, gathered for a winter weekend as guests of a host with a love for theatre. Everybody had an alibi - and most a motive as well. But for Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn the case rested on the dancing footman.