The Christmas Egg: A Seasonal Mystery (British Library Crime Classics)

In a gloomy flat off Islington High Street, Chief Inspector Brett Nightingale and Sergeant Beddoes find an old woman dead. The Princess Olga Karukhin, who fled from Russia at the time of the Revolution, has lived in terror of being discovered ever since.

Olga's grandson, Ivan, appears to have run from the scene, but is later seen returning to the flat as though oblivious to the terrible crime. Taking place between 22nd and 24th December, Nightingale's enquiry takes him across London, culminating in the wrapping of the mystery on Christmas Eve.

This never-before-republished novel from 1958 has a noticeably different feel to the neat puzzles and country house mysteries of crime fiction's golden age, revealing the darker side of police detection in an evocative urban setting.

• Death in Fancy Dress (British Library Crime Classics)
• The Measure of Malice: Scientific Mysteries (British Library Crime Classics)
• It Walks by Night (British Library Crime Classics)
• Fell Murder
• Deep Waters: Mysteries on the Waves (British Library Crime Classics)
• The Body in the Dumb River: A Yorkshire Mystery (British Library Crime Classics)
• Surfeit of Suspects (British Library Crime Classics)
• Murder in the Mill-Race (British Library Crime Classics)
• Smallbone Deceased: A London Mystery (British Library Crime Classics)
• The Black Cat Murders: A Cotswolds Country House Murder (Heathcliff Lennox)