The Vinyl Detective Series

The Vinyl Detective plunges into the world of Italian movie soundtrack music in his eighth adventure that is sure to delight those who love whimsical British cosy crime. Expect laughs, LPs, cats and the return of fan favourites, Nevada, Tinkler, Stinky Stanmer and more.

Some of the greatest (and grooviest) music ever committed to vinyl has come out of Italy. 

And some of the greatest music to come out of Italy is the rich diversity of soundtracks composed for the indigenous film industry – particularly for gruesome thrillers known as ‘gialli’. The maestros who composed for these include Ennio Morricone, Piero Piccioni, Armand Trovajoli…

And Valerius Passeri.

He was one of the finest composers of this genre and his original LPs from his 1960s heyday fetch a fortune from collectors. 

No one disputes that Passeri was a genius…

The argument is whether or not he was a murderer. 

Passeri’s mistress was killed in London in the 1960s while he was here on location for a film shoot. There was never enough hard evidence to lead to a prosecution but the stink of scandal has never gone away. 

Passeri’s granddaughter Chloe has come to England to hire the Vinyl Detective. She wants him to negotiate for a collection of her father’s LPs. The mastertapes of the albums have been destroyed and she needs immaculate vinyl copies to provide the source for a series of reissues – Chloe’s mission is to preserve her grandfather’s heritage.
And also, it transpires, to clear his name.

So it turns out that the Vinyl Detective’s real job will be to find out who actually committed a murder – over half a century ago, in Swinging London.

But the real killer is not enchanted with the notion of being exposed. And, having killed once before, they see no problem in doing so again.

The Vinyl Detective plunges into the world of electronic dance music in his seventh adventure. Expect laughs, LPs, cats and the return of fan favourites, Nevada, Tinkler, Stinky Stanmer and more.

The Vinyl Detective enters the fraught and frenzied realm of electronic dance music. 
Lambert Ramkin aka Imperium Dart, techno trickster and ambient music wizard of the 1990s, has gone walkabout, disappearing from his rather palatial home in Kent. 
This isn’t the first time he’s pulled a vanishing act, but he’s never been gone so long before and his wife — wives, actually; it’s complicated — are worried and hire the Vinyl Detective to find the old rascal. 
They theorise that wherever the missing man is, he won’t be able to resist turning up at a record fair somewhere in search of 12-inch white label acid house singles, which he collects compulsively. 
And no one knows the world of record fairs better than the Vinyl Detective.
They’re not wrong…
But once our hero finds the wandering Lamb the trouble really begins — including terrifying mind-fucks with a side order of, if things break the wrong way, mass murder.

The Vinyl Detective plunges into the world of death metal in his sixth adventure. Expect laughs, LPs, cats and the return of fan favourites, Nevada, Tinkler, Stinky Stanmer and more.

It starts with a perfectly normal evening in, except for the corpse-faced gentleman dressed all in black, with a crow on his shoulder, staring into the house, of course. And the visit from Owyn Wynter, head of Whyte Ravyn Records, who needs the Detective’s unique skills.
 
So begins an all-expenses-paid trip to Trollesko, Sweden for the Detective, Nevada, Tinkler and Agatha to track down a copy of the debut album from demonic metal legends, Storm Dream Troopers. Condemned by the church and banned on release, Attack and Decay is a legendary record.
 
But their trip to the homelands of Nordic noir is quickly thrust into a world of intrigue as the Detective closes in on the deal, the band unexpectedly converge on the peaceful town, And worse, their trip somehow coincides with a visit from Stinky Stanmer… Soon the bodies start piling up, and the Vinyl Detective is the only one who can solve the case.

The Vinyl Detective goes punk in his fifth hilarious adventure. “Like an old 45rpm record, this book crackles with brilliance.” David Quantick on Written in Dead Wax.

Semi-retired god of rock guitar and local poseur Erik Make Loud has got himself a new girlfriend. Helene Hilditch – formerly known as Howlin’ Hellbitch – of all-girl punk outfit Blue Tits is a mean guitarist, someone is trying to kill her.

With a rare pressing of their first album to find, the Vinyl Detecive and Nevada are soon called into to help but this time the question is who isn’t a suspect. With a trail of grudges behind her, the list of people who could want Helene dead includes her ex-bandmates, their former producer turned record label mogul, the TV presenter that Helene got fired – even their old roadie could be in on it. The only person who isn’t a suspect is Delia Lispector, the Blue Tit’s bass player who has already been murdered…

The fourth book in the hilarious and enthralling Vinyl Detective mystery series. “Like an old 45rpm record, this book crackles with brilliance.” David Quantick on Written in Dead Wax

At the height of their success, the electric folk band Black Dog invited journalists to a desolate island for an infamous publicity stunt: the burning of a million dollars. But the stunt backfired and the band split up, increasing the value of their final album vastly. It’s this album that Tinkler’s got his eye on, and he hires none other than the Vinyl Detective and Nevada to hunt a copy down.

Narrowly avoiding a killing spree, negotiating deranged Black Dog fans, and being pursued by hack celebrity Stinky Stamner and his camera crew, the Vinyl Detective and Nevada discover that perhaps all was not as it seemed on the island–and that in the embers of that fire are clues to a motive for murder…

The third book in the hilarious and enthralling Vinyl Detective mystery series. “Like an old 45rpm record, this book crackles with brilliance.” David Quantick on Written in Dead Wax

When one of his cats accidentally discovers a rare Victory Disc, the Vinyl Detective and his girlfriend Nevada are whisked into the world of big band swing music, and a mystery that began during the Second World War.

Hired to track down the rest of the highly sought-after recordings of the Flare Path Orchestra, our hero will discover that the battles of the last world war aren’t over yet. And if all this sounds simple, it’s only because we haven’t mentioned drive-by shootings, murderous neo-Nazis, or that slight case of being buried alive…

His first adventure consisted of the search for a rare record; his second the search for a lost child. Specifically the child of Valerian, lead singer of a great rock band of the 1960s, who hanged herself in mysterious circumstances after the boy’s abduction.

Along the way, the Vinyl Detective finds himself marked for death, at the wrong end of a shotgun, and unknowingly dosed with LSD as a prelude to being burned alive. And then there’s the grave robbing…

He is a record collector — a connoisseur of vinyl, hunting out rare and elusive LPs. His business card describes him as the “Vinyl Detective” and some people take this more literally than others.

Like the beautiful, mysterious woman who wants to pay him a large sum of money to find a priceless lost recording — on behalf of an extremely wealthy (and rather sinister) shadowy client. 

Given that he’s just about to run out of cat biscuits, this gets our hero’s full attention. So begins a painful and dangerous odyssey in search of the rarest jazz record of them all…