"At Vertigo 42, a bar high above London's financial district, Richard Jury meets Tom Williamson - a friend of a friend who is convinced his wife, Tess, was murdered 17 years ago. Tess's death was ruled accidental - a fall caused by vertigo - but Jury agrees to re-examine the case. A young girl's fatal fall at a children's party 22 years ago at Tom and Tess's home may be connected. After an elegantly dressed woman falls from a tower near a pub that...

When a series of "accidents" befalls both animals and humans in the village of Ashdown Dean, Superintendent Richard Jury, his aristocratic assistant, Melrose Plant, the local police, and a fifteen-year-old animal lover join the search for a killer.

Scotland Yard superintendent, Richard Jury investigates the murder of wealthy bachelor Billy Maples in a shady London motel. He discovers connections between the murder and the distant past through Maples' grandfather, who served as one of Britain's top code breakers during WWII.

"Chew on this," says Melrose Plant to Richard Jury, who's in the hospital being driven crazy by Hannibal, a nurse who likes to speculate on his chances for survival. Jury could use a good story, preferably one not ending with his own demise. Plant tells Jury of something he overheard in The Grave Maurice, a pub near the hospital. A woman told an intriguing story about a girl named Nell Ryder, granddaughter to the owner of the Ryder Stud Farm in Cambridgeshire,...

Jury investigates the death of a young escort who has been murdered behind a local pub. The only witness is the establishment's black cat, who gives neither crook nor clue as to the girl's identity or her killer's.