Peregrine Jay, owner of the Dolphin Theatre, is putting on a magnificent production of "Macbeth", the play that, superstition says, always brings bad luck. One night, the claymore swings and the dummy's head is more than real. Luckily, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn is in the audience.

Fact catches up with fiction when the secret of telepathic communication is discovered. But the device at the centre of the mystery is in the possession of two schoolboys and whether they stole it or invented it, there are powerful interests who will kill to get hold of it. Albert Campion faces as deadly a challenge as any in his career.

Detective, Albert Campion goes into the eccentric Palinode household, where there have been two suspicious deaths. And, if poisoning were not enough, there are also anonymous letters, sudden violence and a vanishing coffin. Meanwhile, the Palinodes go about their nocturnal business and Campion dices with danger in his efforts to find the truth.

Campion is welcomed back from his three-year stint with the war office by a suspicious suicide case -- classic British crime writing at its best.

A British claim to a tiny Balkan state leads Campion on a race against time in the village of Pontisbright -- classic British crime writing at its best.

There is a curse on the Benevents ... classic crime in stunning new packaging