Curl up with a glass of wine, some mince pies, and enjoy six spanking new Christmas murder mysteries in the Miss Tayke Investigates series. (1)Our intrepid sleuth sleeps through a vicious murder during the television recording of a quiz show pilot, finds herself among the suspects, and digs herself out to expose a sadistic killer. (2)An elderly professor is stabbed to death and a priceless artefact stolen from home. Miss Tayke is called in by the local police to solve the riddle of the murdered professor. She reveals the killer and the reason for the heinous crime: the theft of the first ever printed advent calendar worth millions. (3)Miss Tayke invites a group of friends home for supper after evensong at St Aidan's church on Christmas Eve. Hardly have they settled down in her tiny living room than a group of carol singers arrive at the door. They too are invited in and soon the cottage is overcrowded with guests spilling over into the hallway and kitchen area. In the midst of the festive merriment a guest is poisoned. With twenty-one people assembled in her tiny living room she unmasks the killer and exposes a strange love triangle. (4)Miss Tayke treats herself to an early Christmas present; a five-day festive excursion on the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express. She befriends a professor of archaeology who mysteriously vanishes into thin air after the train leaves France. . Was the professor abducted, was he murdered, and if so, where is the body? In a nail-biting finale she solves the riddle of the missing lecturer and unmasks the sneak thieves as the train hurtles on towards Venice... (5)Canon Southgate, the vicar of St Aidan's Anglican Church throws a Christmas luncheon party for key parishioners t during which Bransby Updike MP is stabbed through the heart with an icicle. The police are summoned and in the frame for murder are three highly respected guests; the lord lieutenant of the county, the mayor, and the local wine merchant. Miss Tayke disagrees with how the investigation is being handled and when the chief CID officer takes ill, she takes over. Sifting through a labyrinth of conflicting strands of evidence, she exposes the killer in a nail biting climax. (6)On Boxing Day a car ferrying Miss Tayke and her friends breaks down in a violent storm. They abandon the vehicle and make their way in the swirling snow up a steep hill to a sinister looking old mansion where they are admitted by a melancholic butler. The kindly owner welcomes them to take shelter and stay for lunch. However the weather deteriorates further and they are obliged to remain and endure a bizarre and terrifying overnight stay among a strange set of guests. At intervals during the night three of the guests are electrocuted by a maniac. It is impossible to contact the police because the storm has wrecked the landline and all mobiles are equally neutralised. Miss Tayke conducts her own investigation and exposes the most unlikely psychopath before dawn - and another brutal slaying...
