The Hodgkiss Mysteries: Hodgkiss and the Second Staircase and other Mysteries (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780645383430)

Mrs Bigelow has no trouble finding someone to kill her ghastly husband. But not wishing to pay blackmail to the killer for the rest of her life she now must dispose of him. She finds a most ingenious way of doing it and looks like getting away with it ... until Hodgkiss gets on the job.

A man held prisoner in an unfinished building desperately draws what he can see from his window, hoping that someone will work out where he is being held. That someone is Hodgkiss who helps Sergeant Sanderson find the captive in spite of some fast footwork from workmen who use an ingenious method to confuse which floor is which.

When a family moves house the wife accidentally leaves behind some valuable jewellery behind. But the new owners don't know anything about the missing jewels, or so it seems until Hodgkiss gets involved.

The Mayor of Kanundda plans to blackmail a government minister with naughty photos of his wife. He locked them in his safe but when he went to take them out later they had disappeared. He was the only one with a key and the only one who knew the combination. How did it happen. It took Hodgkiss to uncover the extraordinary method devised by the council's general manager, the devious but desirable Jan Campbell-Jones.