Abbot Agency mysteries

An English widow turns amateur sleuth when she matches wits with a killer in the first book in an "ingenious series" of cozy suspense (Publishers Weekly).

After the death of her husband, all Bea Abbot wants is a little quiet time to collect herself in her pretty Victorian home in Kensington, London. Despite the pressure from her well-intentioned son, the one thing Bea isn't ready to do is to sell the domestic agency she...

Bea Abbot's domestic agency does not, repeat not, investigate murder . . . that is, until she finds herself in the company of a dead man dressed as a pantomime dame. It looks like suicide, but why don't his red-spangled shoes fit? Why is the mans daughter so keen to hustle his mortal remains away without publicity? Then again, which of the women around him--two surviving wives and a daughter--really cared about him, rather than his money?

Bea Abbot's asked to find the man or woman who laid a booby trap for Sir Lucas Ossett, the powerful head of an international company, in his own block of flats. She finds Sir Lucas's wife in a state of fear, while gossiping elderly ladies cast doubt on the probity of their eclectic neighbors. Soon it's clear that Sir Lucas's influence reaches out to touch and perhaps corrupt even those nearest to Bea, while trivial incidents escalate into violence--and...

"Bea Abbot's friend Leon Holland has asked for her help in establishing an alibi. But why would he need one? First, he tells her, he had a narrow escape from being run down in the road, and then he was lured with a mysterious message to a car park to meet someone who didn't turn up. Matters escalate when two bodies are found in the car park, slumped over their steering wheels, stabbed to death. Then everything is thrown into chaos as a devastating...

Attending a birthday celebration for two young girls, Bea Abbot tries not to let superstition get the better of her when she realizes that there are thirteen people at dinner. What she doesn't anticipate is that the evening will end in sudden, violent death. Chaos descends when a fire breaks out. While two memebers of the host family are rushed to the hospital, Bea and a fellow guest search for the birthday girls in a house which has been plunged...