Thornhill and Francis ~ The Complete Lydmouth Crime Series - Andrew Taylor

Written by Andrew Taylor
Read by Philip Franks
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

[Many thanks to the original uploader]

Audio Books : Mystery and Suspense : MP3/64Kbps : English

All are unabridged and narrated by Philip Franks. All are encoded at 64kbps / 44kHz CBR Mono Fhg MP3.

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Inspector Richard Thornhill and journalist Jill Francis undertake baffling criminal investigations set against the background of the Welsh border town of Lydmouth in the 1950s.

#1. An Air that Kills [1994], 8 hours 55 mins
Workmen in the small market town of Lydmouth are demolishing an old cottage. A sledgehammer smashes into what looks like a solid wall. Instead, layers of wallpaper conceal the door of a locked cupboard which holds a box - and in the box is the skeleton of a young baby. Items within the box suggest that the baby was entombed early in the nineteenth century, but when another man is also found dead, the evidence suggests that the baby’s death is more recent and that a killer is on the loose. For Journalist Jill Francis, newly arrived from London, this looks like her first story to chase…

#2. The Mortal Sickness [1995], 8 hours 35 mins
When a spinster of the parish is found bludgeoned to death in St John’s, and the church’s most valuable possession, the Lydmouth chalice, is missing, the finger of suspicion points at the new vicar, who is already beset with problems. The glare of the police investigation reveals shabby secrets and private griefs. Jill Francis, struggling to find her feet in her new life, stumbles into the case at the beginning. But even a journalist cannot always watch from the sidelines. Soon she is inextricably involved in the Suttons’ affairs. Despite the electric antagonism between her and Inspector Richard Thornhill, she has instincts that she can’t ignore…

#3. The Lover of the Grave [1997], 9 hours 22 mins
After the coldest night of the year, they find the man’s body. He’s dangling from the Hanging Tree on the outskirts of a village near Lydmouth, with his trousers round his ankles. Is it suicide, murder, or accidental death resulting from some bizarre sexual practice? Journalist Jill Francis and Detective Inspector Thornhill become involved in the case in separate ways. Jill is also drawn unwillingly into the affairs of the small public school where the dead man taught. And there are more distractions, on a personal level, for policeman and reporter…

#4. The Suffocating Night [1998], 9 hours 22 mins
The Korean war rumbles in the background throughout this novel as a reporter is found murdered at the Bathurst Arms, squatters are evicted from a military camp and there are new developments in the three-year-old hunt for a missing teenager. And in spite of all that’s going on, Jill Francis, a local journalist, and DI Richard Thornhill find they can no longer resist their feelings for each other…

#5. Where Roses Fade [2000], 10 hours 25 mins
When Mattie Harris’s body is found drowned in the river, one of Lydmouth’s most prominent citizens is anxious to convince everyone that her death was an accident. In this crime-mystery, set in the forgotten decade after WWII, it seems that the living have as many secrets as the dead….

#6. Death’s Own Door [2001], 9 hours 46 mins
When the body of Rufus Moorcroft, a middle-aged widower with a distinguished war record, is found in his summerhouse, the verdict is suicide. But both reporter Jill Francis and her lover, Detective Richard Thornhill, approaching the case from different angles, discover there’s more to it than that. The key to the mystery stetches back to a highly-charged summer before the war, and back to another death. A local asylum plays a part, as do a moderately famous artist and his wife; Superintendent Williamson, now retired and loathing it; Councillor Bernie Broadbent - a man with more pies than fingers to put in them; a Cambridge don; an aristocratic unmarried mother, now gleefully drawing her old-age pension - and to Thornhill’s surprise and growing horror, his own wife Edith.

#7. Call The Dying [2004], 10 hours 51 mins
It’s 1955 and the influx of televisions do nothing to relieve the tensions in the deeply conservative town of Lydmouth. Mr Frederick, a television engineer, arrives to sell and adapt the new sets. He comes for two nights and apparently leaves. On the evening of that same day, eccentric Dr Bayswater, a retired GP, is found dead. A gentleman’s yellow kid glove, slightly gnawed by rats, is found lying next to his body. Detective Chief Inspector Richard Thornhill is drafted in to investigate. It soon becomes apparent that the case is going to be far from straight-forward. Bayswater was not liked, particularly not by his dashing successor, Dr Connolly nor by a local lorry driver with a grudge and a need for money. Meanwhile, Jill Francis has returned after three years to take over as editor of the Gazette. But there is fierce competition from the ruthless Ivor Fuggle’s rival Evening Post and when she is not trying to keep the newspaper afloat she spends her much of her time with Dr Connolly. Nevertheless, despite himself, Thornhill is still in love with her.

#8. Naked to the Hangman [2006], 11 hours 26 mins
As a young police officer in Palestine during the closing months of the Mandate — the cradle of Middle Eastern terrorism — Richard Thornhill saw and did things which still haunt his dreams and make him fear for his sanity. Is he himself a killer? Now, when a retired police officer is found dead in the ruins of Lydmouth Castle, the past has come back to claim Detective Inspector Thornhill, and he is under suspicion of another murder. His wife Edith and former lover Jill Francis join forces in an uneasy alliance to try to help him. But there are many complications — scandalous allegations have been made about Miss Awre’s School of Dancing; the Ruispidge Charity’s annual dance for young people is under threat; teenagers haunt the newly opened Italian coffee bar and yearn for fumbled intimacies in the sheltering darkness of the Rex Cinema; an Oxford don is looking for love; the Angel of Death wears khaki shorts and drives a Ford van. And the Spring floods are rising higher than they have in living memory, drowning a multitude of secrets …

‘The people depicted here are real and believable and the drabness and genteel facade of Fifties England is skilfully brought to life. Taylor is, as always, adept at showing the reality beneath the surface, as the characters interact and the unsavoury truth behind the murder is gradually revealed’ - Sunday Telegraph

‘He writes terribly well’ - Glasgow Evening Times

‘Taylor is an excellent writer’ - The Times

‘Does full justice to Andrew Taylor’s reputation as one of the greatest award winning crime writers of our time’ - Bangor Chronicle

‘What makes these novels transcend the average mystery is the author’s uncanny ability to create another era so comprehensively that the reader is walking along the same pavements and driving the same cars….’ - Independent