“The House on Downshire Hill” by Guy Fraser-Sampson

Conrad Taylor is a 60-year-old recluse who lives on Downshire Hill, one of the prettiest (if not the prettiest) streets in Hampstead in north London. A neighbor reports to police that she hasn’t seen him for some weeks, and neither has she seen the younger man who’s been staying with for the past two years, a Tamil simply known as Raj. The police investigate and find Taylor’s body. He’s been dead for some time, but it looks like and is later confirmed as murder. And there is no sign of Raj.

Detective Superintendent Simon Collison and his team at the Hampstead Police Station (just around the corner from the murder scene) set to work. What looks like what should be a fairly straightforward case becomes anything but that. No one knows much about the recluse of the family who lived in the house before him. No one knows how to identify Raj. No one knows of a possible motive.

As Collison’s team gleans what little they can, they learn that Britain’s Special Branch has an interest in Raj, putting Collison in something of an awkward position because, as he knows, he’s under consideration for a position with Special Branch. And then a second body is found, buried on the property line between Taylor’s house and his next-door neighbor. This one, however, is from 20 years before. Collison’s gut tells him the two murders are connected.

The House on Downshire Hill by Guy Fraser-Sampson is the latest novel in the Hampstead Murder series, and it’s a worthy companion to its predecessors. The novel is as much about the characters of its police detective team as it is how they go about their work – the painstaking effort the police have to undertake when the clues are few and the unknowns are many. 

Guy Fraser-Sampson

Fraser-Sampson is perhaps better known as an investment funds manager and business consultant. He’s a member of the teaching staff of the Cass Business School in London, an investment columnist, and the author of four books on finance and investment. In the history and fiction areas, he’s written a history of the Plantagenets, a review of cricket from 1967 to 1977 when the color barriers where breaking down, two successor novels to Mapp and Lucia novels of E.F. Benson, and now this Hampstead Murder series.

The House on Downshire Hill is an excellent example of the police procedural (London style). We know that Collison and his team will find their killer, but they have to sort through old family history, hidden motives, and the complications of a security service keeping an eye on things. It’s no wonder that Special Branch is keen to hire Collison.

Related:

A Whiff of Cyanide by Guy Fraser-Sampson.

My review of Death in Profile by Guy Fraser-Sampson.

My review of Miss Christie Regrets by Guy Fraser-Sampson.

Top Illustration: St. John’s Downshire Hill, Hampstead, oil on canvas (1927-1928) by Sydney Carline.

“A Whiff of Cyanide” by Guy Fraser-Sampson

Peter Collins, a psychologist and profiler who helps the local Hampstead police in London with murder cases, is attending a meeting of the Crime Writers Association. He’s a speaker, and his non-fiction book on poisons used in Golden Age mystery stories (cyanide being a favorite). At the association dinner, which he attends with his girlfriend, Detective Sergeant Karen Willis, he’s suddenly confronted with the real thing – murder, and by cyanide.

The victim is Ann Durham, a towering figure in the association. Her biggest creative successes were in the past, but she still commands – and offends. The police initially believe it might be suicide, but where’s the bottle that held the cyanide? And who handed Durham her last drink?

Detective Superintendent Simon Collison leads the investigation, and he soon learns that his team is traveling down a number of different paths. Suspects abound – the writer seeking to unseat Durham as head of the association; Durham’s daughter and boyfriend; an angry young woman who believes Durham robbed her father and grandfather; and more. One of the suspects is a character actress who has assumed her favorite role so well that it’s rumored she’s even changed her name – to Miss Marple. And like her namesake, she calmly (and accurately) predicts a second murder, “because there always is, isn’t there?”

Guy Fraser-Sampson

A Whiff of Cyanide by Guy Fraser-Sampson is the third in the Hampstead Murder series, and it keeps the reader guessing all the way to the end. And while Fraser-Sampson is telling a good murder story, he’s also developing the side stories of his investigators, with Collison and his wife imminently expecting their first child; Collins and Willis in a rather unusual relationship with Bob Metcalfe, another detective on the investigating team; and Trent Allen, the same rank as Collison but who has to swallow his competitiveness and serve as Collison’s #2.

Fraser-Sampson is perhaps better known as an investment funds manager and business consultant. He’s a member of the teaching staff of the Cass Business School in London, an investment columnist, and the author of four books on finance and investment. In the history and fiction areas, he’s written a history of the Plantagenets, a review of cricket from 1967 to 1977 when the color barriers where breaking down, two successor novels to Mapp and Lucia novels of E.F. Benson, and now this Hampstead Murder series.

A Whiff of Cyanide is another solid, enjoyable entry in the Hampstead series.

Related:

My review of Death in Profile by Guy Fraser-Sampson.

My review of Miss Christie Regretsby Guy Fraser-Sampson.

"Miss Christie Regrets" by Guy Fraser-Sampson

Detective Superintendent Simon Collison of Scotland Yard is a bit at loose ends. He’s been lauded by the media for solving his first case (although it was a very near thing), the Yard’s higher-ups want to fast-track him, and he’s not currently assigned to a police unit or station. And all Collison wants to do is gain experience in detective work.

He’s allowed to help at the Hampstead Police Station, and “help” means to wait while the detectives there deal with a recent murder of Peter Howse, who lived in a flat above an art gallery and exhibition house, which used to belong to his family. Someone has struck Howse as he was seated at his desk. Suspects abound, and the police soon discover there are almost too many suspects with too many motives.

Collison doesn’t stay idle for long. A skeleton is found in a suitcase, hidden behind a brick basement wall of the Isokon building. A block of apartments built in the 1930s (and actually a real place)., the building’s most famous tenants were the Soviet agent who recruited the “Cambridge Five” and Agatha Christie. A connection between the skeleton and the murder is made – Peter Howse had been assembling research on the Isokon building for an exhibition shortly to begin. The two cases are consolidated, and Collison takes charge.

Miss Christie Regrets by Guy Fraser-Sampson is the second in the Hampstead Murder series.

Guy Fraser-Sampson

Fraser-Sampson is perhaps better known as an investment funds manager and business consultant. He’s a member of the teaching staff of the Cass Business School in London, an investment columnist, and the author of four books on finance and investment. In the history and fiction areas, he’s written a history of the Plantagenets, a review of cricket from 1967 to 1977 when the color barriers where breaking down, two successor novels to Mapp and Lucia novels of E.F. Benson, and now this Hampstead Murder series.

The story artfully blends the historic of a notable building and the account of the old Soviet spies, swirled together with a contemporary mystery. And Miss Christie posthumously plays a critical role in the investigation.

Miss Christie Regrets, like its predecessor Death in Profile, tells a fast-paced, interesting story and pays tribute to one of the great mystery writers (in the first book, it was Dorothy Sayers and her detective Lord Peter Wimsey). Kudos to Mr. Fraser-Sampson for a second mystery every bit as good as the first.

Related:

My review of Death in Profile by Guy Fraser-Sampson.

Top photograph of the Isokon Building via Wikimedia. Used with permission.

“Death in Profile” by Guy Fraser-Sampson

Detective Chief Inspector Tom Allen of the Hampstead Police Station has been investigating four serial killings of women in the area. Now there’s a fifth, and Allen finds himself replaced by the much younger Detective Superintendent Simon Collison of Scotland Yard. Allen is old school, slogging through solid police work, while Collison is new school, willing to try new approaches to break the clearly dead-ended case.

The MO in each of the killings has been the same. The victims are chloroformed, then raped, then killed with a hammer blow to the head. The fifth killing differs from the first four in the location – the victim was killed where she was found, while the other four had been killed somewhere else and their bodies moved. Other than the manner of death, the victims had nothing in common.

Collison and his team bring in a profiler, and that’s where things become really interesting. The profiler is the live-in partner of a member of the police team, Karen Willis, and he also enjoys acting out – as Lord Peter Wimsey, the Golden Age amateur detective created by Dorothy Sayers.

In Death in Profile, novelist Guy Fraser-Sampson has written an entertaining mystery with more plot twists that you can usually find in police procedural novels. 

Guy Fraser-Sampson

Allen, the displaced chief inspector, quietly continues his own investigation, and makes connections the official inquiry miss. The competition between Collison and Allen could have been keener, but it happens mostly off-narrative.

Fraser-Sampson is perhaps better known as an investment funds manager and business consultant. He’s a member of the teaching staff of the Cass Business School in London, an investment columnist, and the author of four books on finance and investment. In the history and fiction areas, he’s written a history of the Plantagents, a review of cricket from 1967 to 1977 when the color barriers where breaking down, two successor novels to Mapp and Lucia novels of E.F. Benson, and now this mystery novel.

Death in Profile is the first of what’s envisioned as a “Murder in Hampstead” series. I’m looking forward to reading the next installment.

Top photograph: the police station in Hampstead in north London.