Characters and collections

Follow a detective from case to case, or settle into a collection for the evening.

• Hercule PoirotThe Belgian detective at work across the world between the wars: Carnival in São Paulo, a night train from Madrid, a courtroom in Athens. Order, method, and the little grey cells.159 stories
• Sherlock HolmesBaker Street between 1891 and 1902. Black-edged notes before breakfast, locked studies on the Yorkshire coast, and the science of deduction.16 stories
• Miss MarpleSt Mary Mead and villages like it — flower shows, church fêtes and very long memories. An elderly lady who has seen this exact wickedness before.9 stories
• Captain Hastings & Anne FosterDublin between the wars, where Captain Arthur and Anne Foster run a young detective agency with a spaniel named Pip underfoot. Occasionally as far afield as Chicago and Havana.9 stories
• Inspector MaigretThe Paris commissaire who solves cases by understanding people: their bars, their lodgings, their habits. Method by atmosphere rather than deduction.2 stories
• Veronica LakewoodA nightclub singer who arrived from Paris with false names and no past, and keeps finding bodies in Jazz Age Chicago — often with Captain Hastings beside her.15 stories
• Original StoriesWritten for Nocturnal Tales and heard nowhere else. New cases, new detectives, the same golden-age rules.202 stories
• Lady Molly of Scotland YardOne of fiction's first women detectives, heading the Female Department at Scotland Yard while the men around her underestimate her. Narrated by her devoted assistant Mary.6 stories
• Max CarradosA detective who is completely blind, and better for it: he hears, feels and remembers what sighted men walk past. Unfailingly good company.6 stories
• Violet StrangeA young society woman who solves cases in secret, moving between drawing rooms and problems nobody expects her to touch. She has a private reason for the work.5 stories
• Father BrownA small, unremarkable Catholic priest who understands wickedness because he has spent his life listening to it in confession. He reasons from human nature rather than footprints.4 stories
• A. J. RafflesCricketer, gentleman, and thief. The mirror image of the detective story, told by his uneasy accomplice Bunny — we are on the wrong side of the law throughout.4 stories
• Loveday BrookeA professional woman detective working for a London agency in the 1890s, plainly dressed and easily overlooked, which is exactly how she gets in.4 stories
• Arsène LupinThe gentleman burglar of the Belle Époque: charming, theatrical, and several moves ahead. The pleasure is watching how he does it, not whether he is caught.3 stories
• Dr ThorndykeA doctor and a barrister who solves cases at the laboratory bench, reading dust, pond weed and a smear of paint where others read motive. The first detective to work the way a forensic scientist actually works.3 stories
• Martin HewittA genial London investigator working the ordinary cases of the 1890s — a deliberate answer to Holmes, solving by patience rather than brilliance.1 story
• The Midnight ArchiveOur adaptations of the great out-of-copyright detectives — Raffles the gentleman thief, the blind Max Carrados, Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, Arsène Lupin and Father Brown. Every author credited.46 stories