Everyone has a few ghosts in their lives, especially John Coffin, Chief Commander of the Second City of London's Police. He had thought all his were laid to rest though, and, newly recovered from a gunshot wound, is hoping for a calmer life with his actress wife Stella Pinero.
But he is soon to learn how wrong he is when a parcel containing dismembered limbs is found outside a women's refuge. The Serena Seddon Shelter for battered wives is located in Barrow Street, not far from Coffin's own home in St Luke's Tower. The link to Coffin is more sinister than mere proximity, for the initials J. C. are written on the package, and the shelter is housed in the building where he lived on his arrival in the Second City.
The discovery opens a door, through which troop a succession of horrible and violent events: lies, deception and sudden death.
Thus Coffin's ghost walks...

The dentist was found with a blackened hole below his right temple. A pistol lay on the floor near his out flung right hand. Later, one of his patients was found dead from a lethal dose of local anaesthetic. A clear case of murder and suicide. But why would a dentist commit a crime in the middle of a busy day of appointments?
A shoe buckle holds the key to the mystery. Now - in the words of the rhyme - can Poirot pick up the sticks and lay them straight!

This year may be the 25 th anniversary of Agatha Christie's death, but her fame as the Queen of Crime and the popularity of her work is still very much alive. This November in particular will see her grabbing the limelight.

8th Nov
The opening of the major six-month exhibition, Agatha Christie and Archaeology: Murder in Mesopotamia at the British Museum.

25th Nov
Marks the beginning of the 50th Year of The Mousetrap, - the longest running play in the history of London's West End.

First published in 1941, this crime story finds Tommy and Tuppence Beresford in a prim seaside boarding house, frequented by genteel old ladies and retired army officers. But one of them is a spy, leader of the "fifth column" of highly placed traitors.

Volume 38 in the Agatha Christie Collection (1941) Limited edition of 800 copies worldwide

It is World War II, and while the RAF struggles to keep the Luftwaffe at bay, Britain faces an even more sinister threat from 'the enemy within' -- Nazis posing as ordinary citizens. With pressure mounting, the Intelligence service appoints two unlikely spies, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. Their mission: to seek out a man and a woman from among the colourful guests at Sans Souci, a seaside hotel. But this assignment is no stroll along the promenade. After all, N and M have just murdered Britain's finest agent...

The conservative clergy of the Church of England are under attack from the growing popularity of Darwinism. But was it really such a threat to Reverend Parmenter that he killed his assistant for believing in it? Superintendent Pitt is called in to prevent a scandal. Parmenter was about to be made bishop, and his assistant was an uncommonly beautiful young woman.
What seems to be a tragically cut-and-dried case turns into a series of ugly revelations about the politics of the church, dubious personal lives of its clerics, ambitions thwarted, promises unfulfilled, passions frustrated. As the Parmenter family struggles under the pressures of private grief and public duty, Pitt encounters a figure from his own past who augurs trouble wherever he goes...