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Series
The Clara Fitzgerald Mysteries follow Brighton’s first female private detective from 1920 into the middle of the decade. Clara works beside her brother Tommy, Annie Fitzgerald and Captain O’Harris, later her husband, investigating murders, disappearances, frauds and conspiracies in a society still marked by the First World War and uneasy about women entering professional life.
The cases move from Brighton and Hove to London, Belgium, Ireland and the sea, using the changing world of the 1920s as more than decoration. Aviation, cinema, beauty products, organised crime, spiritualism, veterans’ trauma and new forms of popular entertainment all create opportunities for deception. Each volume is a self-contained mystery, while Clara’s family life and recurring adversaries provide the continuing series narrative.
Reading order
Bad things happen when you mess around with a mother’s grief. Clara Fitzgerald is struggling to make her name as a private detective in 1920s Brighton, when most people think women cannot solve crimes. Undaunted by the prejudice she faces, she sets out every day to…
This tragic family secret has become a matter of life and death…Captain John O’ Harris is a fearless pilot haunted by a mystery that has shrouded his family in scandal for years. Beneath the carefree, daredevil exterior lurks a deep uncertainty about his past which threatens…
They vowed til death do us part, they just did not expect it so soon…Andrew Campbell is getting married. His family can hardly believe the emotionally scarred former soldier has persuaded the beautiful but flighty Laura to be his wife. It seems the perfect excuse for…
Nobody cared about him, until he turned up dead. Now old secrets are going to be exposed…Everybody knew Mervin Grimes was up to no good. When he vanished, it was considered good riddance – but Mervin had not gone as far away as people had supposed.…
This Christmas, there is a murderer waiting under the mistletoe Miss Sampford is a desperate woman. Someone wants her dead, and she suspects it is someone in her family. Frightened and alone, Miss Sampford reaches out in the hope Clara Fitzgerald can keep her safe from…
They know your every secret. They watch your every move. Mrs Wilton likes to think she has no secrets. She is a self-professed paragon of virtue, but someone is out to strike her from her pedestal. When a letter arrives on her doormat filled with lies…
Hard work can be murder, especially when someone is determined to make you pay for your past sins. No one could seem more respectable than the ladies of the Graves family. People talk sympathetically about the misfortune that has dogged them over two generations, with their…
Mrs Hunt has led a wicked life inflicting her misery on everyone she meets without a care for the consequences. It is remarkable nobody has tried to kill her before. Trapped among a coachload of her enemies, Mrs Hunt finds herself faced on all sides by…
The beauty business just turned ugly. Abigail Sommers has aspirations beyond being a housewife and mother, but her dogged determination is fast making her enemies who will do anything to destroy her. The Albion Industries’ trade fair is meant to be her time to shine, but…
Stolen for greed, hidden by fate, discovered by chance – now dangerous men will do anything to possess it. Some things are better left lost forever. Mr Jacobs thought his home was impregnable. He thought his priceless antiques safe. But someone found a way through his…
Dead men tell no tales – unless you happen to be the Howton family. Harvey Howton died tragically, and his body was laid to rest in his personal crypt. But nothing is ever simple for the troubled Howtons, and now they believe they are stalked nightly…
As the final hours of 1921 tick down, Clara Fitzgerald, Brighton's first female private detective, and Captain O'Harris prepare to celebrate New Year's Eve aboard the liner Mary Jane. Little do they know that the evening is going to be disrupted by the discovery of a…
Blood is thicker than water, but family bonds can sometimes be fatal. Elaine Chase vanished into thin air one quiet Saturday afternoon. The press are blaming her husband. Her family are hoping for the best but secretly fear the worst. The only one prepared to believe…
Father Christian Lound has been missing since 1917, no one knows what became of him, only that before he vanished he was accused of treachery. Emily Priggins can't leave the mystery of her brother's disappearance alone, despite her father's violent warnings not to push for answers.…
The town of Brighton is divided by controversy as an exhibition of fossils arrives at the town hall. The star attraction is an Archaeopteryx skeleton, the supposed missing link, but not everyone likes the idea of the fossil being on display, not least the supporters of…
After a visit to the local picture house, Private Peterson finds himself lying in an alley, a knife in his back, and no memory of what has occurred. Worse, a woman is found stabbed nearby and the police think Peterson might have killed her. Disturbed by…
Winter has its clutches on Brighton and the pantomime has come to town. Clara Fitzgerald, Brighton's first female private detective, is looking forward to an evening of entertainment watching the Stratford Company performing Aladdin. But when Mr Maddock, the company director, hurriedly seeks her out after…
The funfair is in town and for Clara Fitzgerald, Brighton's first female private detective, it is a welcome distraction for one night from the terror that is stalking the town's backstreets. Jao Leong's gang is becoming more powerful by the day and soon something must happen.…
Christmas is just around the corner, but private detective Clara Fitzgerald is not feeling very festive. She has a troubling case to solve - the mystery of who really shot Jao Leong. Was she a victim of a police raid? Or did someone assassinate her? Jao's…
January 1923 had been rather uneventful, until a gruesome murder in the town of Hove has everyone asking difficult questions. An unassuming old man has been brutally slain while working in the fields, and some are saying that it could be an act of witchcraft. Clara…
Clara travels to Ireland with her Campbell cousins, where Susan is helping to excavate an ancient bog. The nearby village is divided over the work, and conversation repeatedly returns to a celebrated poet who disappeared more than a decade earlier from the house where the family…
Tommy enters his Labrador puppy Pip in a summer dog show, accompanied by Clara and Captain O’Harris. The outing changes when a contestant dies and the organisers quietly ask Clara to investigate so that the event can continue without public scandal. The victim had accumulated more…
A wedding brings together relatives, old friends and people who would not normally choose to share the same room. Clara’s place among the guests becomes professional rather than social when one attendee dies in circumstances that cannot be dismissed as an ordinary accident. The celebration has…
In August 1923, Clara is called away from a Brighton cricket match to a luxury liner halted off the coast after the death of Alf Matlock. Passengers want to disembark, the crew resist questions and the ship’s captain needs an answer before the inquiry becomes a…
Brighton in 1924 is captivated by Pink’s Pills, promoted as a simple route to a thinner and more fashionable body. Clara becomes suspicious when her former school friend Abigail Sommers arrives without explanation just as Albion Industries launches the product. People who take the pills begin…
Clara finds her criminal adversary Brilliant Chang waiting in her garden with an unexpected request for help. A pregnant woman has disappeared, and despite her distrust of Chang, Clara refuses to ignore a person who may be in danger. The search takes Clara to London and…
A violent winter storm strikes Brighton, destroying Annie’s chicken house and sending Clara, Tommy and Captain O’Harris to help people caught in the damage. What begins as an almost comic rescue turns serious when they discover a body among the wreckage. A second death links the…
In Brighton in 1924, Clara witnesses a dog being stolen from two children and soon learns that several pets have disappeared through an organised dognapping operation. At the same time, Mrs Trelawney asks her to protect valuable objects at an exhibition by the sculptor Toltz. The…
A Zeppelin crashes on a Brighton school field, creating fears of renewed war with Germany. Clara finds the only person aboard dead from a gunshot and suspects that the airship’s arrival reflects a local crime rather than an international attack. Reporter Gilbert McMillan pursues the story…
A dispute over a crossword book turns dangerous when accusations of cheating lead to threats. Clara is already deciding whether exposing a fraud will protect an innocent man when James Clapton arrives with a stranger claim: someone believed dead has been seen walking around Brighton. The…
Daisy Belle has escaped a controlling and abusive lover and founded the Sun Club as a place where people can live more freely. Her naturist resort has provoked hostility from neighbouring residents, and an influential visitor’s death gives its opponents an opportunity to force the club’s…
Mrs Wellington asks Clara to document her husband’s infidelity so that she can finally leave him. Clara discovers that his gambling, theft and affairs are only the surface of a life built on contradictions and lies. When Emily Potter disappears, the investigation becomes a search for…
Mrs Pembroke wants to spend her final days quietly, but the young neighbours beside her house hold noisy parties night after night. She asks Clara Fitzgerald to intervene, only to discover that the fashionable Bright Young Things next door are unwilling to moderate either their behaviour…
Winston Keats returned from the First World War psychologically damaged and unable to defend himself against accusations of crime. His former comrade Joseph Nunn tried to save him but instead sacrificed his own future and has lived ever since under a private sentence of guilt. Clara…
Film star Violet Starling arrives in Clara’s world surrounded by success, glamour and repeated attempts on her life. Three attacks have been dismissed as nervous imagination, but Clara believes the actress and agrees to protect her during a production in Brighton. The film company contains jealous…
Nearly seven years after the First World War, Clara helps at the home for former servicemen run by her husband. The residents remain unable to return to ordinary life, and their suffering makes Clara alert to the political men who are willing to sacrifice another generation…
Mr Phillips has avoided conflict since returning from the war, but his quiet life ends when his closest friend is murdered and suspicion falls on him. With his own safety and freedom threatened, he asks Clara and Tommy to prove that the evidence against him is…
Miss Delamere disappeared during the First World War, when absence and death were common enough that few people questioned what had happened to her. Ten years later, Colonel Bradley asks Clara to discover whether she was murdered, captured by the enemy or chose to vanish. Witnesses…