Mystery Master Catherine Aird's Riveting Books, In Order

When a nun is murdered at the Convent of St. Anselm, Inspector C.D. Sloan of the Calleshire C.I.D. is called in to investigate.

Sister Anne fell down a set of stairs and died. It seems like an accident.

But when Sloan examines the body and discovers an obvious blow to the back of her head, he knows she was murdered. And the more he investigates, the more motives appear.

At first, when body of Mrs. Jenkins is found in the road in the quiet English village of Larking, it appears that she’s the victim of a terrible car accident.

Her daughter, Henrietta, gets the bad news while she’s working in the University library. But when an autopsy reveals that not only was she murdered, but she never had a child, Henrietta’s world is torn apart.

Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan is called to bring a murderer to justice and perhaps, help restore some order into Henrietta’s life.

Times are tough in the late 1960s and early 1970s for the upper crust of British society. To survive, the Earl of Ornum does the unthinkable—he opens his estate to tourists.

But when a family with a particularly hyperactive boy come through, the boy opens the mask to a standing full set of armor.

The last thing they expect is to see a dead staring back. D.I. Sloan and his sidekick, Detective Constable Crosby, are called to investigate.

The Second World War was particularly hard on Berebury, England. After three decades of disarray from the bomb that destroyed it, the town is finally reconstructing what it lost.

But when a skeleton is found in a crater, all work stops. D.I. Sloan and D.C. Crosby are called in because it’s very obvious this pregnant woman wasn’t killed by a bomb, but a bullet to the spine.

Richard Mallory Tindall is last seen going home on the hottest day in living memory. Only the owner of the patent firm never makes it.

When a man is found crushed to death under the marble and iron of the old Saxon church tower, he goes from missing to murdered. 

But with rubble making it impossible for anyone to inspect the crime scene and limited available evidence, D.I. Sloan faces one of the trickiest cases yet.

After throwing a dinner party with eleven other guests, William Fent offers to drive one of them home. But then he dies in a violent accident.

The autopsy reveals that he had enough barbiturates in his system to kill a horse. D.I. Sloan is called in to investigate.

All of the guests are suspects. They all had access to Fent. But who wanted him dead?

A little bit of trouble is expected when the students plan a sit-in at the University of Calleshire’s Almstone Hall. But a theft and a dead body shake the college to the core. D.I. Sloan sees nothing but clues in the ivied halls.

Still, a plethora of clues doesn’t always make a murderer easy to find. And if he doesn’t hurry, another student may find death becomes their new alma mater.

Miss Beatrice Wansdyke lived well into old age. A long-time sufferer of diabetes, it was no surprise when she died. But how did she manage to accumulate so much wealth on a teacher’s salary?

When ominous individuals all come out of the woodwork to come after her money, D.I. Sloan is on the case to find out why. 

Nurse Joyce Cooper is a steady presence at her local church. She plays the organ every Sunday, and has never missed a day.

So, when she disappears from the fortune-telling booth at the flower fair, her friends know something is wrong. D.I. Sloan is called in when they find her strangled body under a tarp.

But as he investigates who might want to kill this little old lady, what he uncovers shocks the entire village.

The last thing Horace Boller expects to catch when he rows on the tidal backwash of the river is a dead body. And judging by its condition, whoever it is has been dead awhile.

But when the coroner declares that drowning wasn’t the cause of death, D.I. Sloan is brought in to investigate. 

While walking along a public footpath, avid hikers Wendy Lamport and Gordon Briggs are shocked when a crow drops a severed human finger right at their feet.

D.I. Sloan knows that where there’s a finger, a body has to be nearby. But there’s a long list of people who have gone missing off the nearby farm, making this case tougher than he ever imagined.

Lucy Durmast is charged with murder when an employee of her father’s was found murdered to death after eating a meal she prepared. But when the primary detective on the case suffers permanent brain damage, D.I. Sloan inherits the case.

What was once an open and shut case starts falling apart with Sloan’s investigation. And when someone connected to the case dies and another goes missing, Sloan realizes he has to find the truth before more people get hurt.

Alan Ottershaw is an engineer for the British-based Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company who finds himself in a bit of trouble when he accidentally kills a pedestrian in a foreign country.

He rushes back to Calleshire before he can be thrown in jail, but the government is threatening to remove the company’s mining contract if he isn’t returned.

And when he dies, it seems like a tidy solution to everyone’s problem. A little too tidy for D.I. Sloan.

Requiring the police to attend your funeral as a stipulation in your will is an odd request. Even more odd that Octavia Garamond also emphasized that the coroner should be extra thorough.

But when someone breaks into her empty home and trashes it, and the local parson doesn’t want to conduct her service, D.I. Sloan is called in to investigate.

In this collection of sixteen stories, D.I. Sloan and his enthusiastic, but not always helpful, partner D.C. Crosby investigate a poisoned woman, a set of missing pearls, the sauna that cooked its sole occupant, and more. 

When Muriel Ethel Galloway passes away, no one in her family is surprised. After all, she was older and had heart disease. But when her son receives a phone call accusing her doctor of ending her life, he calls in D.I. Sloan.

It turns out she was persuaded to participate in a double-blind study for a powerful pharmaceutical company where strange things keep happening.

An old woman dying in a nursing home shouldn’t be alarming. But when her son receives a letter, he contacts D.I. Sloan. Her death isn’t the only suspicious thing happening in the nursing home that caters to a former WWII regiment.

And Sloan is going to get to the bottom of it.

After Colonel Caversham dies, he leaves his large collection of artifacts to the Calleshire museum. It should be easy to transfer the items, but the local coroner insists that not a single body—even a thousand-year-old dead one—can be moved without his inspection.

D.I. Sloan is called away from more urgent matters to intervene. But when they raise the lid they don’t find a mummy, but a recently murdered woman. 

D.C.I. Sloan has lived a quiet life in the English countryside.

But lately, strange things are happening. When a body is found at the center of the showpiece maze at a local estate, he’s called in to investigate.

Meanwhile, a few miles away, a rabbi is murdered on the steps of the Bishop’s house. Are the murders related? And if so, how?

In this delightful collection of stories, D.C.I. Sloan and his venerable sidekick D.C. Crosby investigate a Christmas holiday that goes terribly wrong, a hospital accused of killing a grandmother, a wealthy businessman who dies under suspicious circumstances, and more. 

The last thing Helen Ewell expects to find when she goes to the dreaded ‘Hells Bells’ bunker to find a stray golf ball is a dead body. D.C.I. Sloan and D.C. Crosby are called in and soon realize this may be one of their most challenging cases yet.

Moments after an 18th-century painting is found stolen, the manor it was in is burned to the ground. But when a pile of bones is discovered in the ashes, D.C.I. Sloan and D.C. Crosby are brought in.

The clues stretch back as far as the roots of the manor with various factions fighting for control.

Janet Wakefield is surprised when her estranged husband’s aunt dies and she’s the person the nursing home calls.

She’s even more surprised when a mysterious young man goes to the funeral and claims he’s Josephine’s grandson. D.C.I. Sloan finds himself at the nursing home when someone breaks into Josephine’s room.

Nothing is missing, but is it connected to the woman’s body found in the nearby river? And if so, how?

Jack Haines can’t figure out why anyone would break into his greenhouse. The only thing in there are his expensive orchids. But D.C.I. Sloan and D.C. Crosby suspect something else is at play.

Their attention is quickly diverted when Miss Erin Maude Osgathorp goes missing and her house is raided. It becomes clear that the cases are linked, but are there enough clues to uncover the perpetrator?

In this collection of twenty-two short stories, D.C.I. Sloan and D.C. Crosby investigate a whole slew of new cases.

There’s also an array of new characters added to the mix, including the mysterious Malcolm Veneables of the Secret Service.

On his deathbed, research chemist Derek Tridgell cries murder, D.C.I. Sloan and D.C. Crosby are brought in.

Was this just the rambling of a dying man or an actual confession?

Their investigation uncovers three tragic deaths at a rival chemist manufacturer. Derek’s son won’t cooperate, leaving the two detectives to untangle the clues on their own.

Four strangers are called to the solicitor’s office. They’ve never met before and have no idea why they are there. Each of them discovers they are in line for a portion of the Mayton Fortune, along with a missing man.

But before they can split the money, the missing man must be found. Two months later, D.C.I. Sloan and D.C. Crosby are called when one of the men is poisoned.

Is someone picking off the men off so that they can take the fortune for themselves?

After Mike Wakefield’s business partner stole their printing firm’s money, he and his wife face bankruptcy. D.C.I. Sloan is called in for what looks like a straightforward case of embezzlement.

But when someone slashes his tires and smashes his windows, he realizes there’s more to the case than appears.

And when one of Mike’s employees is found dead after a print job, Sloan has to work to untangle the complicated motives in order to find a killer.