David Roberts Books In Order

Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne Books In Publication Order

  1. Sweet Poison (2001)
  2. Hollow Crown (2002)
  3. Bones of the Buried (2002)
  4. Dangerous Sea (2003)
  5. The More Deceived (2004)
  6. A Grave Man (2005)
  7. The Quality of Mercy (2006)
  8. Something Wicked (2007)
  9. No More Dying (2008)
  10. Sweet Sorrow (2009)

Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne Book Covers

David Roberts Books Overview

Sweet Poison

Death comes to dinner at the Duke of Mersham’s, and so does a confidant of the new German chancellor Adolf Hitler, in this ingeniously crafted mystery novel set against the background of Anglo German relations in the summer of 1935. Among the other guests at the duke’s influential table are a pacifist bishop, a womanizing politician, a Canadian press lord and his troublesome daughter, and one of the duke’s oldest friends a man vehemently opposed to any accommodation on the part of the English to Hitler’s regime General Sir Alistair Craig VC. It is over the duke’s excellent port that death strikes first, when the general may have mistaken a cyanide pill for his medication. The mystery behind the general’s unanticipated death intrigues and challenges both Lord Edward Corinth, the duke’s younger brother, and Verity Brown, a resourceful young journalist who has come to interview the duchess supposedly for Country Life but in reality for the communist Daily Worker. An unlikely pair, this scion of the aristocracy and young woman passionately committed to social justice cross their class lines and combine their considerable resources to uncover the cause of Sir Alistair’s death only to discover that virtually every guest, and the duke himself, had reason to want the general dead. Death meanwhile strikes again. And again. And this shrewd whodunit will keep readers guessing to the very end.

Hollow Crown

Having dealt with death in Sweet Poison and The Bones of the Buried, Lord Edward Corinth is invited by his friend Joe Weaver, the press lord and close friend of the British royal family, for the comparatively simpler case of recovering certain letters stolen from the king’s intimate friend Wallis Simpson. There is no mystery about who has taken these letters it is a woman called Mrs. Raymond Harkness, a former mistress of the king and a close friend of Edward s. When Edward goes down to Haling, the country house of conservative M.P. Leo Scannon where Mrs. Harkness is also a house guest, he cannot guess that retrieving stolen goods is to be complicated by a murder. Edward s friend and fellow sleuth, the journalist Verity Browne, returned from the savagery of the Spanish Civil War, welcomes the distraction of helping Edward investigate what suddenly becomes a double murder. Both Edward and Verity are soon involved with political protest and the fight against Fascism the Cable Street riots and the Jarrow March and both battle to find the truth behind the Hollow Crown in what the poet W. H. Auden called ‘a low, dishonest decade.’

Bones of the Buried

She’s a foreign correspondent for a British national newspaper. He’s the scion to an English dukedom. It is 1936, and they’re in Spain, Verity Browne because she is passionately committed to defending the Spanish republic against Franco’s imminent fascist threat and Lord Edward Corinth because she summoned him. She is investigating the killing of a Communist Party worker in the hills outside Madrid, and she desperately needs Edward’s help. The stakes for Verity in this murky murder case surpass the ideological, as the prime suspect David Griffith Jones, a senior figure in the Communist Party also happens to be her lover. Against all odds and his personal inclinations, Edward saves his arch rival for Verity’s affections from a firing squad. This new adventure in David Roberts’s sophisticated mystery series set in the politically turbulent prewar thirties has, however, only just begun. It continues in London, where Edward becomes embroiled in the investigation of a second murder, the victim this time no Communist Party worker but rather a conservative banker. Unlikely though a connection between the two cases may be, Edward does find one. He discovers that both men attended Eton. So, Edward realizes, did another man who has recently died on safari in Kenya, in what appears to be a shooting accident. An Etonian himself, Edward begins to suspect that more than the destiny of nations is determined on the playing fields of Eton. In their politically awkward, romantically charged alliance, the aristocratic Edward and Communist sympathizer Verity together pursue the truth in a mystifying case that could endanger both their lives.

Dangerous Sea

Optioned by Columbia for a major motion picture, this new who dunit continues the popular series. It features one of the most perfectly mismatched pairs of sleuths in British mystery fiction: the aristocratic Lord Edward Corinth and left wing journalist Verity Browne. In a lively new adventure, Verity finds herself, despite her communist sympathies, traveling in a first class cabin of the elegant, luxuriously appointed RMS Queen Mary. And not Edward Corinth but the handsome and charismatic Sam Forrest, an American labor union organizer, occupies the quarters next door. However, Corinth is on board at the behest of the eminent British economist Lord Benyon, who has scheduled a top secret meeting regarding his country’s rearmament with President Roosevelt in the United States. Only the secret is out, and someone wants Lord Benyon out of the way. But it s U.S. Senator George Earle Day who turns up dead. An inflammatory right wing racist, Day has managed to make many enemies among the ship s passengers, most notably the politically controversial black American singer and actor Warren Fairley, his Hollywood starlet wife, a leading German Jewish aeronautical engineer, a charming American socialite of dubious pedigree, and an effete English art dealer whose curiosity is outstripped by his deceit.

The More Deceived

Verity Browne and Lord Edward Corinth are attending a memorial service in Westminster Abbey for Lord Benyon, killed a few months before when the Hindenburg airship burst into flames as it docked in New Jersey. Also present are the distinguished archaeologist Professor Pitt Messanger and his daughter Maud. As the congregation disperses after the service, Edward hears Miss Pitt Messanger cry for help. Her father is slumped in his seat, stabbed to death with an ancient Assyrian dagger.

Soon afterwards Verity is invited to Swifts Hill, the house in Kent belonging to millionaire Sir Simon Castlewood. He and his wife are looking after Maud Pitt Messanger while she recovers from her father’s death. But it transpires that the old man was a selfish bully who made Maud’s life miserable and prevented her from marrying the man she loved.

By coincidence, Winston Churchill has asked Edward to look into the Castlewood Foundation, set up by Sir Simon Castlewood to further medical research. There is a suspicion that Sir Simon’s protege, the eminent surgeon Dominic Montillo, is using the Foundation to fund research into the so called science of eugenics. So when Maud Pitt Messanger is also stabbed, Edward and Verity join forces to find her killer.

A Grave Man

Verity Browne and Lord Edward Corinth are attending a memorial service in Westminster Abbey for Lord Benyon, killed a few months before when the Hindenburg airship burst into flames as it docked in New Jersey. Also present are the distinguished archaeologist Professor Pitt Messanger and his daughter Maud. As the congregation disperses after the service, Edward hears Miss Pitt Messanger cry for help. Her father is slumped in his seat, stabbed to death with an ancient Assyrian dagger.

Soon afterwards Verity is invited to Swifts Hill, the house in Kent belonging to millionaire Sir Simon Castlewood. He and his wife are looking after Maud Pitt Messanger while she recovers from her father’s death. But it transpires that the old man was a selfish bully who made Maud’s life miserable and prevented her from marrying the man she loved.

By coincidence, Winston Churchill has asked Edward to look into the Castlewood Foundation, set up by Sir Simon Castlewood to further medical research. There is a suspicion that Sir Simon’s protege, the eminent surgeon Dominic Montillo, is using the Foundation to fund research into the so called science of eugenics. So when Maud Pitt Messanger is also stabbed, Edward and Verity join forces to find her killer.

The Quality of Mercy

When the Na*zis seize Austria in March 1938, Verity Browne the New Gazette’s correspondent in Vienna is one of the first to be deported as a well known anti Fascist. Before she leaves she is able to arrange for a young Jew, Georg Dreiser, to escape to England, but where he expects to find safety, he finds danger and sudden death. Lord Edward Corinth also finds death where it is least expected, in the grounds of Lord Montbatten’s country house, Broadlands. There to meet his friend the Maharaja of Batiala, Edward’s nephew Frank stumbles on a corpse. The police are satisfied that the man, identified as Peter Gray, a painter of some repute, died of natural cause; but his niece, Vera, persuades Edward that all is not as it seems. Between them, Edward and Verity investigate two murders and Verity’s eyes are opened to what has been obvious to all their friends, that Edward is the man she loves and that her destiny is to be his partner in life as well as in crime.

Something Wicked

Lord Edward Corinth’s fiance, Verity Browne, returns from Prague with suspected tuberculosis. The only cure for TB in 1938 is rest and a healthy diet so she goes to a private clinic in Henley on Thames run by a Cambridge friend of Edward’s. Meanwhile, Edward investigates a series of murders with a Henley connection. His dentist, Eric Silver, has been murdered shortly after sharing with Edward, his final patient, his suspicions about the deaths of three of his elderly patients. Silver had identified an entomological connection between the deaths. General Lowther had had a heart attack drinking a wine called Clos des Mouches, Hermione Totteridge, a well known gardener, had been poisoned by the new insecticide with which she had been experimenting, and James Herold had been stung to death by his bees. Edward goes to stay with his old friend Harry Makin inherited a title and a property in Henley. His investigation comes to a thrilling climax during what many believe will be the last Henley Royal Regatta before a new European war. Both Edward and Verity face death from someone, or something, wicked. ‘A classic murder mystery with as complex a plot as one could hope for and a most engaging pair of amateur sleuths’ ‘Sweet Poison’, Charles Osborne, author of ‘The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie’. ‘This is a witty and meticulous recreation of the class ridden middle England of the 1930s…
a perfect example of golden age mystery traditions with the cobwebs swept away’ ‘Bones of the Buried’ ‘Guardian’. ‘The plot is both intricate and enthralling, like Poirot on the high seas, and lovingly recorded by an author with a meticulous eye and a huge sense of fun’ Michael Dobbs.

No More Dying

Praise for David Roberts:

‘This is first rate fun, informed by telling period detail.’ Publishers Weekly

‘I recommend this one heartily for history mystery devotees.’ Booklist

February, 1939. Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne are invited to Clivenden in Buckinghamshire, renowned as the headquarters for those prepared to go to any lengths to avert war. Murder stalks the formal gardens as private and public passions come to a climax.

David Roberts is the author of eight mysteries featuring Lord Corinth and Verity Browne. He is married and divides his time between London and Wiltshire, England.

Sweet Sorrow

Praise for the Lord Edward Corinth Verity Browne series:

Roberts just keeps getting better with each book. Publishers Weekly

Recommend ed heartily for history mystery devotees. Booklist

The political context keeps the stakes high enough to satisfy fans of international thrillers and historical romances alike. Kirkus Reviews

A witty and meticulous recreation of the class ridden middle England of the 1930s…
a perfect example of golden age mystery traditions with the cobwebs swept away. Guardian

At the outset of World War II, Byron Gates, a self absorbed poet, moves out of London together with his young daughter and stepdaughter to avoid the anticipated bombing. His wife, an actress, is in the States. His acquaintance, Virginia Woolf, has found him a little cottage in the village of Rodmell where she and her husband, Leonard, are living. Coincidentally, newlyweds Verity Browne and Lord Edward Corinth are setting up their first home in the Old Vicarage. Gates is anxious to curry favor with the Woolves and their set. His children put on a pageant for the neighbors based on the beheading of King Charles I, and then Gates is found dead as if executed for treason. Verity and Lord Edward investigate this gruesome murder.

David Roberts worked in publishing for over thirty years before turning to writing full time. He has written ten mysteries featuring Lord Edward Corinth and Verity Browne. He divides his time between London and Wiltshire.

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