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Museum Mysteries

MURDER AT THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT MUSEUM

London 1899. Queen Victoria lays the foundation stone on the site of the new museum being built, which she names as The Victoria and Albert Museum. Shortly after Daniel and Abigail are called to the site because the dead body of museum curator Andrew Page has been found there.

The Queen is determined that nothing must sully the new museum, and by association her beloved Albert’s legacy. The more Daniel and Abigail dig, the more they uncover motives for the murder, some with explosive implications for the Royal family and the Government. They will have to tread carefully as someone is determined they will not uncover further.

MURDER AT MADAME TUSSAUDS

London 1896. A nightwatchman is found decapitated at Madame Tussauds waxwork museum, and his fellow watchman vanished. The police think the watchman who’s disappeared killed the other watchman; but when the missing man’s dead body is found encased in wax, it becomes a grisly (and dangerous) case for Daniel and Abigail.

MURDER AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY

London 1897. Has Jack the Ripper returned to haunt the streets of London? The artist Walter Sickert was once a suspect in the original Ripper enquiry. Now he’s been arrested after the bodies of women are found, eviscerated, on the steps of the National Gallery. Sickert protests his innocence, and calls in Daniel and Abigail to clear his name.

MURDER AT THE MANCHESTER MUSEUM

A young woman is found murdered in the Manchester Museum, but no-one seems to know who she is. Then the body of a second dead woman, brutally killed and disfigured, is discovered at the Museum. Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton believe that the reason for these crimes may lie in Manchester’s murderous past, but getting to the truth becomes dangerous for both of them.

MURDER AT THE FITZWILLIAM

1894. After rising to prominence investigating the case of Jack the Ripper alongside Inspector Abberline, Daniel Wilson has retired from the police force and now works as a private enquiry agent. Having built a reputation for intelligence and integrity, Wilson is asked to investigate a mysterious murder at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. A dead body has been discovered in a previously empty sarcophagus in the museum’s Egyptian rooms. Then other deaths occur, and there are suggestions of supernatural forces at work. Working with the Fitzwilliam’s curator and archaeologist, Abigail Fenton, Wilson has to solve the mystery and at the same time preserve the museum’s reputation. His problems are compounded by the reluctance of the local police force to work with him, and initially by the attitude of Abigail Fenton, an independent-minded woman with a First Class Degree in History from Girton College and a track record of archaeological digs in Egypt, who resents Wilson’s presence. Until she gets to know him. And even then the path to them having a relationship is rocky and unpredictable.

MURDER AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM

1894. A well-respected academic is found dead in a gentleman’s convenience cubicle at the British Museum, the stall locked from the inside. Professor Lance Pickering was due to give a talk promoting the museum’s new “Age of King Arthur” exhibition when he was stabbed repeatedly in the chest. Having forged a strong reputation working alongside the inimitable Inspector Abberline on the Jack the Ripper investigation when he was a Scotland Yard detective, private investigator Daniel Wilson is called in to solve the mystery of the locked cubic murder, and he brings his expertise and his partner, archaeologist Abigail Fenton with him. It isn’t long before the museum becomes the site of another violent death and Daniel and Abigail face mounting pressure to deliver results. With their enquiries compounded by persistent journalists, local vandals, and a fanatical society, the pair find they must race against time to salvage the reputation of the museum, and catch a murderer.

MURDER AT THE ASHMOLEAN

1895. A manager at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford is found in his office with a bullet hole between his eyes, a pistol close by. The death has officially been ruled as suicide by the local police, but with an apparent lack of motive for such an act, the museum suspects foul play and has called in former Scotland Yard detective Daniel Wilson and his partner, archaeologist Abigail Fenton to investigate. Their enquiries are hindered from the start by a lane Special Branch agent, secretive and intimidating in his methods. With rumours of a political motive for the murder involving South Africa, along with artefacts missing from the museum, and suggestions of a lost play by Shakespeare at the centre of it all, Daniel and Abigail find themselves caught up in a tangled web of blackmail, jealousy, deceit and murder.

Murder at the Natural History Museum

An attendant is found dead at the Natural History Museum by the famous theatre manager, Bram Stoker. Have the infamous Bone Wars – the bitter and deadly rivalry over dinosaur skeletons – brought their activities to Britain? Blackmail, betrayal, revenge all figure as Daniel Wilson and Abigail Fenton look into the mystery, with more deaths, and ultimately a serious murderous threat to Daniel and Abigail themselves.

Praise from the critics for the Museum Mystery novels.

Marni Graff (best-selling, award-winning American crime novelist) on “Murder at the Fitzwilliam”:

“Abigail Fenton and Daniel Wilson are an engaging pair of sleuths. With accurate period details, Eldridge perfectly recreates the Cambridge of the Victorian era. A highly successful start to a captivating new series”.

Publishers Weekly on “Murder at the British Museum”:

“Fascinating period details and stalwart British characters lift Eldridge’s sequel to 2018’s “Murder at the Fitzwilliam”..

The Museum Mysteries are published by Allison & Busby.

To get any of Jim’s books, order through the publishers at their websites, or your bookshop, or www.amazon.co.uk

You can also read reviews of Jim’s books at:

//www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/author/1497/Jim-Eldridge.html

To get in touch with Jim, e-mail him at: jimeldridge@jimeldridge.force9.co.uk