Roderick Copper (67), retired Major, and Benny Gold (70), London cabbie, apply on the same morning for residential places with the Rudyard Trust for Retired Officers and Gentlemen. But its eccentric and drunken Director tells them the Trust is technically bankrupt, its multimillion-pound assets about to be divided between the Founder's descendents—a curious, motley crew.Banker and amateur sleuth Mark Treasure is called in when Copper and Gold's bizarre scheme to preserve the charity goes wrong with terrifying consequences—kidnapping, stabbing and sudden death—involving one of the bank's clients, ex-President Cruba of Ngonga, exiled in London with his sensuous third wife, his 15-year-old son, and Gérard Opac, his handsome, ambitious aide. It is up to Mark Treasure to make sense out of all of this, which he does with his customary charm and aplomb.

Could the takeover of Rigley’s Patent Footbalm by the giant American Hutstacker Chemical Corporation really be scuppered by Mrs. Ogmore Davies’s parrot finding a body in Panty Harbour?It looked like it, but banker sleuth Mark Treasure, British banking’s answer to Emma Lathen, took a different view when a second body was discovered the morning after he arrived in the little West Wales sailing village close to St. David’s. By then Treasure had already survived a murderous assault aboard the Fishguard Express, a pitched battle on Whitland Station, and the inexplicable disappearance of a battered Australian clergyman. And that was only the start of his exceedingly unquiet weekend. It was to involve his host, the eccentric Judge Henry Nott-Herbert, a T-shirted detective-inspector, the high-powered, lady-fancying head of Hutstacker’s and his understanding wife, a local schemer with a siren spouse, two children, an immense Irish wolfhound, a tone-deaf Welsh vicar, and a pacifist postman.It also involved the breathtakingly lovely Anna, the young German widow already promised in marriage to someone more than twice her age.As always, it’s a fast-moving, witty and baffling mystery—the first from David Williams set in his native Wales. “He goes on improving steadily,” said the late Edmund Crispin in the Sunday Times of his last novel. He does indeed.

When Roger Rorch, the talented chairman of the London-based advertising agency RTB, supposedly commits suicide, banker and detective Mark Treasure is certain that all is not as it seems.Treasure's search for foul play reveals a tangled web of deals and egos - Rorch was defying his partners by opposing a £2m takeover bid by a huge New York firm; RTB's most powerful client stands to lose a fortune if the sale goes ahead; and the head of the rival Fentley agency is also deeply involved, and not just because his wife has her own key to Rorch's riverside London penthouse...With his own bank interested in the fate of RTB, it's up to Treasure to follow the clues and overturn the coroner's verdict of accidental death - and to substitute one of murder.A classic 'ad-land' mystery, Advertise for Treasure is the seventh installment in David Williams' brilliantly witty Mark Treasure detective series and elicited comparisons to Dorothy L, Sayers' Murder Must Advertise...

It's high summer in Oxford. The university vacation has just begun. The eight governors of the Moneybuckle Endowment (an architectural library) are assembling at All Saints College for the annual dinner before their meeting under chairman Mark Treasure, merchant banker. The talk at the table is of some pricey sketches said to be by Constable, and an offer from a dealer in the town. But the talk turns to shock when murder's done in Walton Street with the sketches as the obvious motive. The police are quick to make an arrest, but Treasure is sure they've got the wrong suspect—even though all other likely culprits are Moneybuckle governors, or Moneybuckle's custodian himself. 'As nifty a puzzle as clever Williams has yet devised, redolent with the reddest of herrings.' Sunday Times 'Elegant, literate, ingenious and a joy to read.' Birmingham Post

Sir Ray Bims is about to be charged as the principal in a Caribbean bank that's laundering international drug money. Lord Grenwood, octogenarian chairman of Grenwood, Phipps, the London merchant bankers, is appalled. Three years ago he sold the Eel Bridge Rovers Football Club – known as the Eels – to Bims. The club was founded by Grenwood's grandfather and is still associated with the Grenwoods in the public's mind. Now his lordship wants to buy it back to avoid the suggestion of family involvement in Bims's disgrace. Only hours after refusing Grenwood's offer for the Eels, Bims commits suicide – except that Detective-Inspector Jeckels of the Fulham CID concludes gradually that it was murder. And he discovers a string of people with motive and opportunity to dispose of Bims – among them the husband of Bims's mistress; the Eels' manager whom Bims had been about to fire; a well-known concert pianist; a curiously religious pest controller;...

A terrifying tidal wave was sweeping across Europe, leaving widespread devastation in its wake. But this was no natural phenomenon; this was a wholly manmade weapon of terror, dubbed by the foreign media as 'the English disease': football hooliganism. In the months leading up to FIFA's decision as to which country would have the prestigious honour of hosting the 2006 World Cup – England or arch-enemies Germany – the level of wanton, indiscriminate violence being perpetrated at overseas match locations in the name of British patriotism was escalating out of control ... but why? Detective Inspector John Milton of the Metropolitan Police and his specially formed anti-hooliganism task force were facing a brick wall. The incidents smacked of highly organised, mafia-style operations carried out with military precision. Something sinister was at play and time was running out to crack the case. England's honour was on the line, and so were their careers.

It's action all the way in this classic and witty whodunit centred round the fate of the 19th century Round House, an ugly building of uncertain origin that could scupper the multi-million pound development planned for a south coast resort. A dozen interested parties are in favour of knocking it down. They include an Arab oil sheikh, a sexy English Literature drop-out from Sussex University, the head of a construction company, and a romantic novelist. And where does Canon Tring's languorous young wife fit in to all this? Only Louella, Lady Brasset, is committed to keeping the Round House standing; she believes it to be the joint creation of two famous architects, Sir John Soane and William Butterfield. But four hours after banker and sleuth, Mark Treasure, promises her a stay of execution on the house, it's Louella who is blown up - and another accident follows. A double accident? Or a double murder?The sixth installment in the Mark Treasure mystery series, Treasure...

When Arthur Moonlight, a financially troubled aristocrat, has second thoughts about selling the family mansion to the fanatical 'Forward Britain' movement he calls in his friend, London financier Mark Treasure, to stop the sale. But the situation is far more complicated than it first seems and when evidence comes to light that a valuable Shakespearean manuscript is hidden at Mitchell Hall, the Moonlight family's former country seat becomes a centre of death and intrigue.In the space of a few short days, an old lady has died of fright, a grave-digger has suffered a fatal fall, and linked to these strange incidents are a menacing American posing as a clergyman, a power-hungry MP, and a famous antiquarian supervising a team of Filipino labourers.This, the first of Mark Treasure's investigations, will lead to even more startling revelations - and unexpected rewards.

This classic, much-loved novel tells the story of Jennie Logan, a woman caught between two worlds, two times, and the two men she loves—one her husband and one an artist who may have died in 1899. David Williams' novel is a thrilling read, part love story, part mystery—a tale of time travel (or is it madness?) that keeps the reader guessing until the very end. Now back in print, this exquisitely written book is not to be missed.