Catherine Aird has 25 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 9 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.4★ across 5 ratings. The most-rated is The Religious Body.
The Religious Body
Summary
Who would want to kill a nun? That was the problem facing Inspector C.D. Sloan of the Berebury CID when the body of Sister Anne was found at the foot of the cellar steps at the Convent of St Anselm. Sloan soon found that interviewing half a hundred black-habited sisters as potential suspects for murder was no easy task - especially when he realised that, to him, one nun looked very much like the next, and every sister had an assumed name - and a past...
©1966 Catherine Aird (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Henrietta Who?
Summary
Life for Henrietta Jenkins was a quiet, well-ordered affair - a home with her widowed mother and degree studies at university. But her life changed dramatically when, just before her 21st birthday, her mother’s body was found in a quiet road, apparently the victim of a hit-and-run driver. For not only did the simple case turn into a murder hunt, but the post mortem also revealed that Grace Jenkins had never had any children. In which case, who was Henrietta?
©1968 Catherine Aird (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
A Late Phoenix
Summary
Decades ago, Germans bombed the village at Lamb Lane. But now redevelopment is under way. Rubble of a bombed building is cleared and, during the excavation, a workman finds the skeleton of a pregnant girl with a bullet lodged in her spine. The trail is definitely stone cold when C. D. Sloan takes on the case....
©1971 Catherine Aird (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Passing Strange
Summary
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.
©1980 Catherine Aird (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
The Complete Steel
Summary
There were two things seriously wrong when someone found Mr Meredith in the library of Ornum House and greeted him with a ‘Good morning’. For one thing, it was five o’clock in the afternoon; and for another, the greeting took the form of a murderous blow to the back of poor Mr Meredith’s head. But Inspector Sloan doesn’t discover any of this until he finds the weapon, a large primitive club, topped with an iron spike. It is hanging in Lord Ornum’s armoury, labelled ‘Godentag’ which, as the Vicar explains, taken literally means good morning.
©1969 Catherine Aird (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Past Tense
Summary
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….
©2010 Catherine Aird (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Harm's Way
Summary
When the Berebury Footpaths Society created their locally infamous motto, "Every walk a challenge," they couldn't have known just how apt it would be. Avid hikers Wendy Lamport and Gordon Briggs suffer from a good walk spoiled when, while reclaiming a public footpath from the greedy barbed-wire fences of encroaching farmers, a crow drops a severed human finger at their feet. And where there's a finger, thinks Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, a body can't be far behind. It would seem that there are a handful of bodies to whom the finger might belong. A suspiciously long list of people have gone missing from Great Rooden's farming country: the tippling son of a local pillar of society, a financier who may have angered the wrong man, and even an old tramp or two who may have thieved one apple too many. Can the old tag team of DI Sloan and Constable Crosby solve the case?
©2019 Catherine Aird (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Learning Curve
Summary
Much-loved Calleshire research chemist Derek Tridgell has been ill for some time. On his deathbed, his incessant but unintelligible mutterings culminate in a cry of murder. Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby are brought in to investigate whether these are just the ramblings of a man at death's door or a real confession at the final hour. Their enquiries uncover three tragic deaths that may be linked to the deceased's last words: an accidental drowning at a rival chemist manufacturer, an old friend of Derek's killed in a caving expedition and his son walking away unscathed from a fatal car accident. It’s a complex case for Sloan and Crosby.
©2016 Catherine Aird (P)2018 Story Sound
Some Die Eloquent
Summary
A deadly mystery by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird: where there’s a will, there’s a way - for murder That Miss Beatrice Wansdyke had died is not particularly surprising. A chemistry mistress at the Girls’ Grammar School in Berebury, she was a longtime sufferer of diabetes who managed to live her modest life to a ripe old age. But one thing is odd - Beatrice Wansdyke died a very wealthy woman. What was an old schoolteacher doing with a small fortune? Meanwhile, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan, Calleshire’s finest investigator, learns he is about to become a father. But with ominous players hell-bent on pursuing Miss Wansdyke’s money, will Sloan live to see his child’s first birthday?
©1980 Catherine Aird (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Hole in One
Summary
Berebury golf course in the county of Calleshire is an unlikely place for a murder. Set in pleasant landscape and boasting a splendid view of the town of Berebury, the golf course is more situated to fun and games than murder and mayhem. So when flirtatious golfing beginner Helen Ewell goes in search of a wayward golf ball in the dreaded "Hell's Bells" bunker she is not prepared for the horrible surprise that lies buried beneath the soft sand.
©2005 Catherine Aird (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
Inheritance Tracks
Summary
Four strangers arrive at the solicitors’ office of Puckle, Puckle, and Nunnery. They have never met and have no idea why they have been invited. But they - along with a missing man - are descendants of the late Algernon George Culver Mayton, the inventor of 'Mayton’s Marvellous Mixture', and each entitled to a portion of the Mayton fortune. But before they can split the money, the missing man must be found. They begin their search, but then Detective Sloan receives a call that one of the legatees has died following an attack of food poisoning. Now detectives Sloan and Crosby must determine whether the deceased merely ingested a noxious substance by accident or if the legatees are being picked off one by one.
©2019 Catherine Aird (P)2019 Soundings
After Effects
Summary
In this mystery by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan investigates a case of medical malpractice that looks a bit too much like foul play Muriel Ethel Galloway passed away at home, twitching and grasping at objects only she could see. Her family mourns, sad but unsurprised that an old woman suffering from heart disease should die suddenly. But when Mrs. Galloway's son receives an anonymous call alerting him that his mother's life was put in jeopardy by her doctors, he demands action from the Calleshire police. As world-weary detective C. D. Sloan learns, Mrs. Galloway's passing was just one in a string of eerily similar deaths. Dozens of elderly patients suffering from heart disease have been "gently pushed" toward taking part in the Cardigan Protocol, a double-blind drug trial from the powerful pharmaceutical company Gilroy's. Something, it seems, is very wrong. But what might have been a simple malpractice case morphs into something much more complex when the doctor in charge of the trials goes missing and the headquarters of Gilroy's is burgled by animal rights activists. As Detective Sloan well knows, murder is never a simple matter.
©1996 Catherine Aird (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
Hole in One
Summary
Berebury golf course in the county of Calleshire is an unlikely place for a murder. Set in pleasant landscape and boasting a splendid view of the town of Berebury, the golf course is more situated to fun and games than murder and mayhem. So when flirtatious golfing beginner Helen Ewell goes in search of a wayward golf ball in the dreaded "Hell's Bells" bunker she is not prepared for the horrible surprise that lies buried beneath the soft sand.
©2005 Catherine Aird (P)2005 AudioGO
Little Knell
Summary
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, will allow no body - no matter how ancient - to be 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 coroner, curator, and inspector is not 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....
©2000 Catherine Aird (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
Last Respects
Summary
In this C. D. Sloan Mystery by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird, a body is found in the river - but the victim didn't drown. When local fisherman Horace Boller decided to row his boat out on the tidal backwash of the river one morning, he couldn't have meant to land a catch like this. What he ended up with was a body floating on the river's surface. And judging by the state of the corpse, the death was not a recent one. The strange thing is, the coroner report indicates that drowning was not the cause of death. It's up to the intrepid C. D. Sloan - and his markedly less intrepid assistant, Constable Crosby - to investigate. Along the way, Calleshire's most successful pair of puzzle-solving policemen will contend with a handful of additional strange deaths, befuddling municipal building codes, an antiquarian with interesting views on local history, and a fisherman who has his own motivation for helping (or perhaps hindering) the investigation. Can C. D. Sloan get to the bottom of this waterlogged killing?
©1982 Catherine Aird (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Parting Breath
Summary
Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan knew there would be trouble when he was called in to the student sit-in at Calleshire University. The dons were nervous, the students excited - a clash of some kind seemed inevitable. But what did happen was totally unexpected. First was a most peculiar theft from a dormitory room and then the discovery of a man found clutching at one of the columns of the Tarsus cloister - bleeding slowly to death and able with his parting breath only to utter one enigmatic phrase? To solve the mystery of the cloister murder, Sloan’s only clues are the dying man’s words. But what significance can ‘Twenty-six minutes’ really have?
©1977 Catherine Aird (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
A Most Contagious Game
Summary
When a London businessman retires early and buys a Tudor mansion, he’s quite surprised - and perhaps even a little pleased (retirement being pretty boring) - to find a skeleton hidden in a secret room in the house. The skeleton appears to be more than 150 years old, so the local police leave it to the homeowner to solve the mystery. The police are much more interested in solving a local, modern murder. Somehow the two deaths are connected. First published in 1967, this is Aird’s only non-Inspector Sloan mystery, and a complete triumph.
©1967 Catherine Aird (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
A Dead Liberty
Summary
A crime of passion, a jealous admirer, a woman who would kill before she would be spurned - it might all fit if only the primary suspect would talk in CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird's A Dead Liberty. Lucy Durmast waits patiently in front of the judge at her own murder trial, refusing to utter a single word. Kenneth Carline, an employee of her father's, was found poisoned to death after eating a meal that Lucy herself had prepared. Kenneth was set to marry another, and Lucy, it seems, was jealous. But what should have been an open-and-shut case of envy-driven murder becomes complicated when primary detective Trevor Porritt suffers permanent brain damage. C. D. Sloan inherits the file - and immediately begins poking holes in what looked like an airtight case. Why has the primary suspect gone mute? What was the victim doing with antinuclear pamphlets in his car? Was Detective Porritt's run-in with the burglar an unhappy coincidence? And what part does the king of the African nation of Dlasa, a client of Lucy's father, play in all this? When someone connected to the case dies and the son of the king of Dlasa goes missing, panic begins to spread. Can Inspector Sloan and his hapless assistant, Constable Crosby, untangle this knotted web?
©2015 Catherine Aird (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Stiff News
Summary
In Catherine Aird’s Stiff News, a letter received by an old woman’s son after her death alerts Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan that one woman’s death by natural causes in a local nursing home may actually be murder. But that is just the beginning of the odd goings-on in this nursing home catering to former members of a WWII regiment.
©2014 Catherine Aird (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing
The Body Politic
Summary
From CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird: Caught between an angry government and his employer's profits, an engineer conveniently dies.... Can Calleshire's greatest detective bring the guilty to justice? What's the value of one British engineer when stacked against the exclusive mining rights to a rare, strategically important, and extremely valuable mineral? The British-based Anglo-Lassertan Mineral Company finds itself in hot water when one of its engineers, Alan Ottershaw, hits and kills a pedestrian while driving in a foreign country - a nation that happens to be "on the sunny side of the Iron Curtain," with thick veins of the strategically important mineral querremitte. This particular country has draconian laws about killings, so Ottershaw is relieved when he's whisked back to Calleshire before the foreign police can throw him in jail. But now that the Lassertan government is threatening to strip the mining company of its most valuable contract, poor Mr. Ottershaw begins to worry about his safety - and when he dies suddenly in a war reenactment, it looks like a very convenient solution to everyone's problem. A little too convenient, if you ask Calleshire detective C. D. Sloan, who, along with his bumbling sidekick, Constable Crosby, must investigate the death. It seems that nearly everyone in town would prefer to forget that the Lassertan debacle ever happened - but why has a man been following around the Calleshire MP dressed as the Grim Reaper? Who has been sending death threats and live scorpions via post? Detective Sloan is on the case.
©1990 Catherine Aird (P)2019 Blackstone Audio, Inc.