Catherine Aird Books In Order

Sloan and Crosby Books In Publication Order

  1. The Religious Body (1966)
  2. Henrietta Who? (1968)
  3. The Stately Home Murder / The Complete Steel (1969)
  4. A Late Phoenix (1971)
  5. His Burial Too (1973)
  6. Slight Mourning (1975)
  7. Parting Breath (1977)
  8. Some Die Eloquent (1979)
  9. Passing Strange (1980)
  10. Last Respects (1982)
  11. Harm’s Way (1984)
  12. A Dead Liberty (1986)
  13. The Body Politic (1990)
  14. A Going Concern (1993)
  15. Injury Time (1995)
  16. After Effects (1996)
  17. Stiff News (1999)
  18. Little Knell (2000)
  19. Amendment of Life (2002)
  20. Hole in One (2005)
  21. Losing Ground (2007)
  22. Past Tense (2010)
  23. Dead Heading (2013)
  24. Learning Curve (2016)
  25. Inheritance Tracks (2019)

Sloan and Crosby Collections In Publication Order

  1. Last Writes (2014)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. A Most Contagious Game (1967)

Short Story Collections In Publication Order

  1. Chapter and Hearse (2003)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. 1st Culprit (1992)

Sloan and Crosby Book Covers

Sloan and Crosby Collections Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

Short Story Collections Book Covers

Anthologies Book Covers

Catherine Aird Books Overview

The Religious Body

Sister Anne has been thrown down the cellar stairs, and Inspector Sloan wonders who in God’s name would want to murder a cloistered nun? Sloan’s task is complicated by the unusual witnesses 50 plus discreet, identically dressed nuns, each of whom has an assumed name and a past secular life.

The Stately Home Murder / The Complete Steel

On Sunday the public paid half a crown to view Omum House’s three hundred rooms, its exceptional display of fine china, its authentic Holbein, its dank dungeon complete with suits of armor…
and a dead body. With Burke’s Peerage tucked under one arm and a dictionary under the other, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan tiptoes through the halls of the aristocracy. His impeccable powers of observation might reveal who murdered the family archivist, but the family ghost walks through thee same corridors. SO someone else is going to die.

A Late Phoenix

Dangerous moonlight illuminated the English skies the night a German bomb razed the house in Lamb Lane, Berebury. Then three decades quietly passed before a careless workman’s pickaxe struck an old skeleton buried under the wreckage…
and exhumed a new case of murder for Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan. Time had blackened out the clues. All that remained were a body…
an unborn baby…
and a bullet. COuld the inspector’s uncanny investigative instincts now unearth a killer? Or would the delayed action affair explode and send another victim to moulder in the grave?

Slight Mourning

When Bill Fent dies in a car crash, the post mortem reveals a lethal dose of barbiturate. And the poison must have been administered by either his family or by a fri end at his dinner party. Inspector C.D. Sloan has a murderer to uncover. ‘

Some Die Eloquent

On the pathologist’s cold metal table lay the naked body of Beatrice Gwendoline Wansdyke, spinster…
Dead of perfectly natural causes at age 59. ‘The Problem,’ mused the good doctor, ‘is not so much what she died from as what she died with: a quarter of a million pounds, in a bank account no maiden lady of modest means should have.’ Detective Inspector C.D. SLoan could feel in his bones it was murder. He had guessed at the motive. He would surely uncover the method. But couldn’t he find out where oh where had her little dog gone? And why would looking almost cost him his life?

Passing Strange

Things had gone wrong from the very beginning at the Almstone Flower Show, including, a missing fortune teller. But events take a decidedly macabre turn when the fortune teller is found and Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby arrive to investigate a murder for which there seems no means, no motive, and no opportunity.

Harm’s Way

It was the task of the reconnaissance party of the Berebury Footpaths Society to see that the path was clear. And so it was until a passing crow dropped something exceedingly sinister before their very eyes. From this small beginning developed a murder hunt that cast its net over the trail of a missing financier, someone’s ne’er do well son, and a man whose facial bruises certainly needed accounting for.

After Effects

When D.I. Sloan learns that Mrs. Galloway had been a part of a dangerous drug trial, he assumes that her death may not have been entirely from natural causes, and when he hears of the suicide of a doctor also involved in the trial, Sloan sets out to learn more.

Stiff News

Almstone Manor is a fine old Tudor manor in Calleshire, England, set aside years ago as a rest home for members of a military regiment the Fearnshires and their families. Since most are in poor health during their time at Almstone Manor as Gertrude Powell certainly was it is no surprise when one of the residents dies. But Gertrude Powell is different a letter to her son, mailed by her arrangement after her death, claims that someone is out to kill her. Receiving the letter on the day of her funeral, Gertrude Powell’s son brings it to the attention of Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan. First, Sloan must stop the funeral in progress. Then he has to investigate Powell’s posthumous claims. Is the letter just the ravings of an ill, somewhat melodramatic woman? Or is something very sinister going on at Almstone Manor, whose residents have known each other for more than fifty years and some of whose very old grudges may run very deep indeed…

Little Knell

Colonel Caversham, once prominent in the British colonial service, has died and left his large collection of artifacts to the local Calleshire museum. Included in those artifacts is a 3,000 year old Egyptain mummy and case, now the responsibility of one Mr. Fixby Smith, Curator of the Greatorex Museum. What should be a simple moving job, however, is complicated by the fact that the local coroner, Mr. Granville Locombe Stableford, since no body no matter how ancient can moved without his consent. Which is how Detective Chief Inspector C. D. Sloan is dragged away from his more pressing concern with the burgeoning local drug problem and sent to the museum to sort out egos and red tape. When the lid of the mummy case is raised, however, what greets the Corner, Curator, and Inspector is now what they expect. Instead of the remains of the ancient Rodoheptah, they find the body of an unidentified young woman who has been dead only a matter of days…
AUTHORBIO: Catherine Aird is the author of some eighteen crime novels, most of which feature Detective Chief Inspector C. D. Sloan. She holds an honorary M.A. from the University of Kent and was made an M.B.E. Her more recent works are Stiff News St. Martin’s Press, 1999 and After Effects St. Martin’s Press, 1996. She lives in Sturry, Kent in England.

Amendment of Life

For decades, Catherine Aird’s crime novels featuring C.D. Sloan have been beloved by fans and lauded by critics for their adroit plotting, playful wit, and literate charm. With Amendment of Life, Aird delivers the lively and engrossing novel that readers have come to rely upon. Detective Chief Inspector C.D. Sloan of the Calleshire CID is used to the occasional oddity in his relatively quiet part of the English countryside. But lately things have taken a strange turn. First, in the center of a yew maze that is the showpiece of the Tudor era house, Aumerle Court, a body is spotted by Miss Daphne Pedlinge, the elderly chatelaine of the Court. By the time the groundskeeper actually makes it to the center, he, too, spies the body, and it is indeed dead. Meanwhile, a few miles away, a slaughtered rabbit is left on the Bishop s doorstep in nearby Calleford, an omen as portentous as the body in the maze. Now Inspector Sloan, with the somewhat trying personage of Constable Crosby in tow, must uncover what precisely is going on as they launch an investigation with more twists and turns than the maze itself.

Hole in One

Detective Chief Inspector D.C.I. C. D. Sloan works in the deceptively quiet town and county of Calleshire, where for many years he’s endured the pressures of his demanding, unreasonable boss and the company of Constable Crosby, Sloan’s all too constant but not very helpful sidekick. He’s also solved a series of complex murders in Aird’s long running series long praised for it’s literate wit, style and charm. In her first new novel in almost two years, Hole in One, a death occurs on the links, a death that is nearly impossible and is, quite improbably, is murder. But improbable is a Calleshire specialty and as far as D. C. I. Sloan is concerned, impossible is merely par for the course.

Losing Ground

‘Fans have waited two years for another of Aird’s Calleshire County police procedurals, and if you like golf, this well crafted whodunit was especially worth the wait . Full of poetical, biblical and Shakespearian references, this fun read delivers a denouement that finishes the game well under par. Nicely played.’
Publishers Weekly on Hole in One

‘Trust mystery writer Catherine Aird to add her own special twists and lots of biting wit to murder the settings are classic, the characters delightfully quirky, and the words of wisdom many.’ Boston Herald on Amendment of Life

The dramatic theft of an 18th Century painting is discovered just moments before the old manor house from which it was stolen and is uniquely depicted in the background of the portrait is set on fire. Making matters more grisly even is the pile of bones that is sighted in the blazing inferno moments before the roof collapses. What started as simple, if surprising, theft has quickly escalated to arson and, possibly murder, and now Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby have to piece together, a puzzle which has its roots deep in Berebury’s history. Although Tolmie Park, the property on which the manor house sits, has had a somewhat checkered and mysterious past there are those in the community who would fight to preserve it. There are also a number of factions within the area who have differing plans to develop the property, shrouding the fire in further suspicion. It is up D.C.I. C.D. Sloan to sift through this assortment of characters and, finally, illuminate the truth.

Past Tense

Josephine Short was clearly a very practical woman but it also appears she was a woman with a secret or two. When her great nephew’s wife, Janet Wakefield, gets a call from the Berebury Nursing Home, she’s somewhat taken aback. Not only does it come as a surprise to hear that her husband’s estranged great aunt has passed away, but more surprising is the fact she had been living locally for some years. Janet is sure that her husband Bill was the last of Josephine’s close family, so imagine her surprise when a handsome young man approaches her at the funeral and introduces himself as Josephine’s grandson. Janet has never even heard of a child, never mind a grandchild. Detectives Sloan and Crosby find themselves assigned two rather puzzling cases. First, there’s the young woman’s body which has been discovered in the River Alm. And then there’s the mysterious break in at Berebury Nursing Home. To be precise, it’s Josephine Short’s room at the Nursing Home that’s been entered, although nothing seems to be missing. What could the intruder have been after? It becomes apparent to Sloan and Crosby that the two cases are connected but who can the killer be?

A Most Contagious Game

Mystery Trade Paperbacks Mystery Clerical/Religious

Chapter and Hearse

Here are seventeen new short stories which are guaranteed to delight Catherine Aird’s already established fans and win her many more. For those who have come to love Aird’s novels, such as ‘Stiff News’ and ‘Little Knell’, ‘Chapter and Hearse‘ is a gift. For the indefatigable detective Inspector Sloan reappears in many of these stories with his sidekick Crosby. But there are also new characters to be met, such as the mysterious Malcolm Venables of the Secret Service. Full of delicious twists and turns, ‘Chapter and Hearse‘ is a collection to curl up with and savour. ‘Catherine Aird is as clever a detective writer as Margery Allingham’ ‘Times Literary Supplement’.

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