The Complete Mitchell and Markby Mystery Collection

Category: Anthology, Detective, Mystery
Language: English
Keywords: English village Mitchell and Markby

Written by Ann Granger
Format: MP3
Unabridged

Originally uploaded on Demonoid by Peterg23. Comment posted by the original uploader follows.

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One of the best modern English village mystery series.

All are unabridged. Most are read by Judith Boyd. (Jonathan Newth reads #10 and Bill Wallis reads #11 and #12)
All are from CD and recorded at 48 kbps / 44 kHz Mono Fraunhofer CBR - except #5 which is 32 kbps / 22 kHz.

#1 *Say It With Poison* [8 hours 2 mins] (1991)
When Meredith Mitchell agreed to stay with her actress cousin Eve in the run-up to Eve’s daughter’s wedding she anticipated a degree of drama. But she hardly expected it to include murder, blackmail and unrequited love. Or to involve a certain Chief Inspector Markby, a middle-aged divorcee with an emotional history as unfortunate as her own. A material witness to the only case of murder the Cotswold village of Westerfield has ever seen, Meredith also finds herself acting as mother-confessor to the bride-to-be, who is clearly not telling the whole truth about her involvement with the dead man.

#2 *A Season For Murder* [10 hours 35 mins] (1991)
The impact of modern life on English villages is vividly captured in Granger’s second murder mystery. British consular officer Meredith Mitchell rents isolated Rose Cottage in Pook’s Common when she is posted back to England. Uneasily resuming her acquaintance with attractive local CID Chief Inspector Alan Markby (begun in Say It with Poison ), Meredith becomes friendly with neighbor equestrienne Harriet Needham. When Harriet dies from a fall during a Boxing Day meet, animal rights activist Simon Pardy is blamed because his banner spooked the steed. The autopsy, however, discloses that Harriet , known to have hated drugs and medicines, died full of tranquilizers and alcohol….

#3 *Cold In The Earth* [10 hours 17 mins] (1992) thanks to phyl
Progress has overtaken the charming English village of Bamford in the Cotswolds–and Chief Inspector Alan Markby resents the heartless desecration of his boyhood home. But when a bulldozer uncovers the corpse of a mystery man buried alive on what was once Lonely Farm, Markby realizes that shopping malls and fast-food may be the least of Bamford’s woes. Having accepted her friend Markby’s invitation to spend some vacation time in the country, consular officer Meredith Mitchell once again finds herself embroiled in a murder investigation.

#4 *Murder Among Us* [9 hours 42 mins] (1992)
When ambitious hotelier Eric Schucmacher announces he is to turn Springwood Hall, near the market town of Bamford, into a smart Cotswold country-house hotel, the news is greeted by a chorus of local disapproval, led by the redoubtable Hope Mapple. So the gala opening, to which all the disaffected parties have been invited, promises to be quite an event - not least because the amply upholstered Hope Mapple is planning a disruptive streak protest. But Hope’s lightning dash is unexpectedly upstaged by a far more shocking event: the discovery of a recently murdered body on the premises. The victim is a local woman, and for Chief Inspectory Markby and his guest Meredith Mitchell what had promised to be a diverting summer treat suddenly turns into a horribly serious affair …

#5 *Where Old Bones Lie* [9 hours 41 min] (1993) thanks to adm
What do you do when you think your ex-lover has murdered his wife? That’s the question Ursula Gretton, an archeologist working on the Saxon burial ground on Bamford Hill, puts to Meredith Mitchell in the hope that Meredith’s friendship with Cotswold Chief Inspector Markby might cast some light on her dilemma. But Markby is dismissive of Ursula’s suspicions concerning the disappearance of Dan Woollard’s wife - until a body is found in the rubbish dump near the site Woollard and Ursula have been excavating.Woollard’s team of archeologists aren’t the only ones to disturb the peace of the windswept hill. Much to the fury of a taciturn pair of local landowners, a band of New Age travellers has set up camp on the hill, only to disappear the day the body’s discovered. Markby is faced with a tangle of conflicting clues, suspects and possible witnesses.

#6 *A Fine Place For Death* [9 hours 27 mins] (1994)
Two teenagers go missing, then dead, in separate incidents in a quiet English village. One is the daughter of the lord of the manor. The other comes from a working class broken home. Is there a serial killer on the loose? Are the girls as innocent as they seem? Are their murders even connected? What about the ensuing deaths? Meredith does some amateur sleuthing, and CID officer Markby, who wants to marry her, wishes she’d just keep out of it. But the evidence she discovers proves invaluable, so much so that she nearly ends up dead as well.

#7 *Flowers For His Funeral* [10 hours 3 mins] (1994)
When Meredith Mitchell bumps into her old schoolfriend Rachel Hunter at the Chelsea Flower Show it doesn’t take Meredith long to realise that she and the effortlessly self-confident blonde have even less in common now than they had as teenagers. Apart from one thing - Meredith’s companion, Chief Inspector Markby. For to the embarrassment of all concerned, except of course the self-possessed Rachel, Meredith’s old schoolfriend turns out to have been Markby’s former wife, from whom he was divorced years before in less than friendly circumstances. The meeting with Rachel is not the only surprise the Flower Show has in store for Markby - before the afternoon is out he has a death on his hands. All too quickly he and Meredith find themselves drawn into the plush, apparently well-run world Rachel and her second husband created for themselves in their Cotswold home, Malefis Abbey, a world which Markby becomes increasingly convinced harbours a highly skilled murderer …

#8 *Candle For A Corpse * [10 hours 44 mins] (1995)
On an unseasonably chilly summer’s day a macabre discovery is made in Bamford’s ancient churchyard. A body, dead some twelve years, is unearthed in the Gresham family plot, too shallowly buried to be a legitimate interment, too recent to be the last Gresham officially laid to rest. Superintendent Alan Markby cannot resist the challenge to solve this twelve-year-old crime and suddenly his long-planned canal-barge holiday with Meredith Mitchell is in serious jeopardy. When the remains are identified as those of a local teenager, Kimberley Oates, reported missing at the time of the mysterious burial, his mind is made up.

#9 *A Touch Of Mortality* [10 hours 51 mins] (1996)
When Sally Caswell persuaded her scientist husband Liam to move from London to Oxfordshire, she hoped they might enjoy a more peaceful existence. But Liam is morose, isolated, and frustrated in his work. When he isn’t arguing with the crotchety pensioner next door about his unruly goats, he’s venting his unhappiness on Sally. Then with the arrival of a mysterious package it seems that Liam is being targeted by animal rights activists for some previous work. But Chief Inspector Markby is not entirely convinced, and the more he investigates, the more his unease grows. Then a body is found . . .

#10 *A Word After Dying* [10 hours 7 min] (1996)
Superintendent Alan Markby and his girlfriend, civil servant Meredith Mitchell, are in desperate need of a holiday - and the Cotswold village of Parsloe St John seems the perfect choice. Their neighbour, retired journalist Wynne Carter, is as convivial as the village itself and, over a glass of blackberry wine, indulges in her latest obsession, Olivia Smeaton, a racy old lady whose life - and death - she is convinced are not all they seem. Markby is more interested in buying Olivia’s house than the circumstances of her vacating it, but Meredith is intrigued: by the old lady, the death of a cherished horse and a dusty junk shop run by a white witch. When another fatality - of a very grisly nature - is discovered, it seems her suspicion is justified.

#11 *Call The Dead Again* [10 hours 15 mins] (1998)
When Meredith Mitchell gives a lone hitchhiker a lift into Bamford one evening, she is left feeling uneasy, for the girl is highly secretive. What business can she have at Tudor Lodge, home of Brussels-based lawyer Andrew Penhallow, where she asks to be dropped? Unusually, Penhallow is at home that night…and the next morning he is found murdered in the garden. His death results in some spectacular revelations about a double life involving his mysterious visitor, Kate Drago.

#12 *Beneath These Stones* [9 hours 27 mins] (1999)
Tammy Franklin has learned too much about death, too quickly. Two years ago she lost her mother to a long, lingering illness and now the body of the woman her father married in an attempt to replace his wife has been found on a railway embankment close to the Franklin farm. And this time the death is murder. As Superintendent Markby knows only too well, Tammy also stands to have her father taken from her. For Hugh Franklin is suspect number one…

#13 *Shades of Murder* [11 hours 56 mins] (2000)
In 1889 Cora Oakley died by inhaling a poisonous gas in her sleep, and her husband William was put on trial for her murder. Over a hundred years later, the only remaining members of the family are two elderly sisters who live in the ancestral home. Unable to maintain the mansion, the sisters decide to sell up and live off the proceeds. Then a young Polish man named Jan appears, claiming to be William Oakley’s great-grandson and threatening to ruin the sisters’ plans. When he is found dead, it seems that the shadow of murder has returned to haunt the Oakley family again, and Superintendent Markby must look back at the events of a century ago to find the killer…

#14 *A Restless Evil* [10 hours 4 mins] (2002)
The officer on duty at Bamford police station is sceptical when he takes a call from Guy Morgan. Morgan claims to have stumbled on human bones in Stovey Woods in the heart of the Cotswolds, but surely animal bones are more likely? Morgan, though, is a doctor as well as a rambler, and he knows exactly what he’s found. It sends a shiver down Detective Superintendent Alan Markby’s spine when he hears the news. Twenty-two years ago, as a fresh-faced young inspector, he had a rare failure, in the hunt for a brutal serial rapist preying on local women. After the third rape, the attacker went to ground, never to be heard of again. Now, with a new investigation prompted by the grisly remains, the trail could be warm once more. But almost at once Markby is confronted with another body and a thoroughly up-to-date murder. Could the two be connected?

#15 *That Way Murder Lies* [9 hours 40 min] (2004) FINAL
When Meredith Mitchell’s old friend Toby Smythe turns up on leave, she is delighted to see him. But Toby has a problem - or rather his relative Alison Jenner has - and he wants to enlist the help of Meredith’s fiance, Detective Superintendent Alan Markby. Alison has been receiving anonymous hate mail which alludes to the murder of her aunt, Freda Kemp, of which Alison was acquitted when she was just twenty. Who is the writer, and how does he or she know about this secret in Alison’s past? Markby is at first reluctant to become involved, especially as he and Meredith are busy planning their wedding, but enquiries into a poison pen campaign soon turn into a murder hunt.