Hodgkiss Mysteries

Hodgkiss and The Fatal Map / Hodgkiss and the Telltale Eyes / Hodgkiss and the Unsafe Safe. Hodgkiss is a cranky old sod. The continual sniping and point scoring between him and his son-in-law, Detective Sergeant Donald Burke, drives his daughter Esme to distraction. Hodgkiss compensates for his obnoxious treatment of Donald by helping him to solve a series baffling crimes, thus giving a welcome boost to his son-in-law's career. But it is towards the incompetent and corrupt Kanundda Council that Hodgkiss directs the most venomous products of his bile. Hodgkiss' letter-writing campaigns in the columns of the local newspaper, The Northern Star, create big problems for the dodgy councilors and their corrupt developer mates when details of their venal little schemes start appearing in print. And when disgruntled council employees begin leaking embarrassing information to Hodgkiss, the trouble starts... big-time. Murderous mayors, cowardly councilors and manipulative staff weave their way through plots involving sudden death, blackmail, corruption and, of course, sex. A murdered body in a locked room - but how did the killer escape? How was the invisible body identified? How did the blackmail photos vanish impossibly from a locked and guarded safe? Hodgkiss arrives at the truth through impeccable logic.

Hodgkiss and the Mayoral Stakes / Hodgkiss Hits the Sales / Hodgkiss and the Two Musketeers. Hodgkiss is back. The cranky old sod is still sniping at the conniving, manipulative members of Kanundda Council through his letters to the local paper, The Northern Star. This time he conspires with the council's General Manager, the highly desirable but extremely devious Jan Campbell-Jones, to save the citizens of Kanundda from a disastrous outcome in the mayoral elections. But not before one of the female councilors is found murdered in a love nest at a local motel. Then Hodgkiss and the glamorous widow, Pat Strong, who earlier had helped Hodgkiss solve the mysterious death of a local councilor, join the band of compulsive nomads, which early each Saturday morning hit the local garage sales trail for profit and pleasure. But soon unexpected and unwelcome complications occur and mystery and murder dog their steps. When the Mayor of Kanundda decides to hold a Grand Masked Ball in place of the usual boring mayoral dinner, the local Masonic Hall becomes the venue for jollity, music, jealousy and an impossible murder. Hodgkiss helps his son-in-law, Detective Sergeant Donald Burke, solve the crimes thus giving a welcome boost to his career in the force. In this second volume of The Hodgkiss Mysteries, the sharp 68-year-old retired schoolteacher provides ingenious, workable, logical solutions to three examples of that branch of the genre beloved of mystery aficionados - The Locked Room Murder.

Hodgkiss and the Selwyn Request / Hodgkiss and the Injured Possum / Hodgkiss and the Telescope. Hodgkiss is never wrong... Or hardly ever. He was quite certain that the number thirteen was never used on houses in the streets of Kanundda. That would be so unlucky! But this time he was wrong and his dogged refusal to admit it led to the discovery of an ingenious art theft being carried out under the nose of the local council. Hodgkiss' passion for chess is on the wane and while staring absently between moves from the rear window of his opponent's flat, he notices some unusual goings-on in the carpark below. When the body of a neighbor is found locked in the flat next door, he insists, contrary to appearances, that it was murder and provides an ingenious and logical solution to another locked room mystery. Hodgkiss' daughter, Esme, knows there will be trouble when he arrives home with a telescope after his regular Saturday morning assault on the local garage sales. And she is not wrong. While spying on the neighbors, he makes an acute observation that leads to a brutal murderer being brought to justice. Hodgkiss' talent for solving crime has given a welcome boost to the career of his son-in-law, Detective Sergeant Donald Burke. In spite of this productive partnership, Esme often is hard-pressed to keep the peace between her husband and her father because Hodgkiss exacts a heavy price for his assistance, usually in the hard coin of humiliation.

Hodgkiss and the Ghost of the Capsule / Hodgkiss Loses a Bet / Hodgkiss Takes a Holiday. Hodgkiss returns - sharper and crankier than ever. When he accompanies his daughter, Esme, and her husband, Detective Sergeant Donald Burke, on what he fears will be a boring holiday to a Pacific island paradise, Hodgkiss' instincts soon detect tension among the locals when a time capsule, buried twenty years earlier, is about to be raised prematurely. His investigations among the colorful island characters enable him to solve several mysteries that have puzzled the locals for years, including a twenty-year-old murder. When the homes of a major property developer and the chief town planner of the terminally corrupt Kanundda Council are both burgled on the same night, Hodgkiss' suspicions are aroused and the complications come thick and fast, including anonymous tipoffs to Donald and mysterious pasted-up notes. He and Donald have a bet on who will be the first to identify the burglars and a body found buried in the Kanundda National Park. As a result of this bet, Hodgkiss has arranged for the Burke ménage to spend a week's holiday at a plush resort in the mountains. Unfortunately, the whole of Kanundda Council, a body which is frequently the object of Hodgkiss' scorn in frequent letters to the local paper, is booked into the same resort for a brainstorming session. But when the body of a young woman, whom Hodgkiss had befriended, is found beaten to death, Hodgkiss uses all his wits to expose the killer. In this fourth volume of stories the sharp sixty-eight year-old shows how logic and the ability to observe circumstances and events brings surprising results.

Hodgkiss and the Second Bullet / Hodgkiss and the Stolen Memory / Hodgkiss and the Blonde Visitor. Hodgkiss is a suspicious old sod. When he hears of a dead body found in a locked room and the police have written it off as suicide, his suspicions are seriously aroused. He wins no accolades when he tells his son-in-law, Detective Sergeant Donald Burke, who has to investigate these crimes, 'The very fact that the body is found in such obviously improbable and contrived circumstances should, of itself, be sufficient to raise the gravest suspicions in the mind of any intelligent investigator.' This fifth volume of 'The Hodgkiss Mysteries' contains three such cases, which present ingenious variations on the locked room murder theme. In the first story a particularly obnoxious member of Kanundda Council, a body notorious for its venal conduct, is found shot dead in his study. In spite of the barred windows and bolted door Hodgkiss soon demonstrates how the man was murdered and his killer managed to escape the scene of the crime. The second case is a new variation on the theme where the body is discovered in a flat with all the windows and doors locked and the safety chain on the door in place. The third case offers an entirely new approach to solving the problem of the locked room murder. The solution is complicated when a water main bursts in the street outside the murder house, creating a huge hole in the roadway, which attracts emergency services and news crews. Hodgkiss is baffled until he re-reads a children's book, which unexpectedly presents him with an unlikely solution. A must for lovers of locked room murders and impossible crimes.

Hodgkiss and the Mobile Phones / Hodgkiss and the Twelve Jurors / Hodgkiss and the Vanishing Waiter. Hodgkiss can't resist a challenge. When he receives a threatening message on his mobile phone, although it is a wrong number, he sets out to track down the caller in spite of his daughter, Esme's, misgivings. When it turns out the call was from an employee of the terminally compromised Kanundda Council he knows he must have stumbled on some form of corrupt behavior. Then he overhears other calls which, taken separately seem harmless enough, but soon they form a sinister pattern which results in Hodgkiss uncovering a murder and a devious plot to swindle council. After an evening out at an art show, Hodgkiss and his friend Pat Strong return to Pat's town house to discover it has been burgled, but apparently nothing is missing. Then the complications begin, involving some very incompetent burglars who had misunderstood the last words of a convicted murderer. Kanundda Council plans to form a sister city relationship with Havana, Cuba. But of course, the whole arrangement is just another scam, which comes unstuck when the representative of Havana is poisoned at the official dinner to mark the occasion. Hodgkiss' son-in-law, Detective Sergeant Donald Burke, is called in to investigate and the last thing Donald wants is his father-in-law interfering in his inquiry. But Hodgkiss' special knowledge of the skullduggery that is behind all of council's decisions enables him to demonstrate motive, means and opportunity in this most ingenious murder plot. Hodgkiss at his most imaginative, observant and obnoxious.

Hodgkiss Does His Duty / Hodgkiss and the Skeptical Scientist / Hodgkiss and the Ornamental Lion. When he is called up for jury duty the experience is not at all what Hodgkiss had expected. One of his fellow jurors, a former tennis professional, insists upon discussing the case with Hodgkiss during breaks in the trial in spite of the judge's directions to the contrary. Gradually it dawns on Hodgkiss that the circumstances of the case are not as they appear and he is forced to take rather unconventional action resulting in the trial being dramatically aborted.

Hodgkiss and the Word Game / Hodgkiss and the Moving Picture / Hodgkiss and the GO Players. Observant, imaginative, creative, aggressive... offensive, all terms that could be readily and fairly applied to Edgar Hodgkiss as he goes about the delicate business of assisting his son-in-law, Detective Sergeant Burke, solve crimes without humiliating him.

Hodgkiss and the Treasures of Kanundda / Hodgkiss and the Two Ladies / Hodgkiss and the Deadly Ciphers. A young woman turns up at the Burkes' home to enlist Hodgkiss' aid in finding her missing grandmother. Donald becomes an unwilling assistant as they attempt to retrace the elderly woman's steps. During the course of their investigation, Hodgkiss finds himself once again in conflict with the bullyboys of Kanundda council and uncovers a particularly nasty, opportunistic murder.

Hodgkiss and the Deadly Seance Hodgkiss and the Meaningful Message Hodgkiss and the Old Flame Hodgkiss doesn't miss a trick. Three new adventures of that cranky, obnoxious, insufferable but remarkably observant and astute senior citizen. A man who has accumulated incriminating information about members of the notoriously corrupt Kanundda Council dies in mysterious circumstances. Local legend had it that the man kept this information in a black box hidden in his house. Then his wife, who attends a seance to contact her newly departed husband, also dies mysteriously and the contents of the black box disappear. When Hodgkiss becomes involved he soon locates the contents of the box in a most unlikely place. When Kanundda Council's newly-elected mayor is found murdered at his desk there is an apparently meaningless jumble of letters left on the screen of his computer. But when Hodgkiss and his companion, Pat Strong, look into the matter Pat, quite by accident stumbles on the surprising solution that enables them to reveal a killer from the dead mayor's last desperate message. Travelling in the train one day Hodgkiss notices a young girl who bears an uncanny resemblance to a girl he knew years ago. After an awkward meeting they soon realise that there are dark secrets in the girl's family that must be explored and brought into the light no matter what the cost.

Hodgkiss and the Shack in the Woods Hodgkiss and the Wrong Rifle Hodgkiss and the Open Door In this, the eleventh volume of the Hodgkiss Mysteries, Edgar Hodgkiss is confronted with three examples of that most baffling of all forensic challenges ... a body found in a locked room with no way in or out. How can the killer leave the scene of the crime without a trace? These three cases demonstrate three different ways in which such a crime can be committed and they demonstrate, too, Hodgkiss' genius for unravelling the most complicated crimes in his usual aggressive and uncompromising manner. These three cases, The Shack in the Woods, The Wrong Rifle, and The Open Door, provide three different solutions for what looks at first sight to be three insoluble problems.