Planning on Murder

Description

The plan to save the Elizabethan stately home Vormer House by selling part of its deer park for a golf and hotel complex has a mixed reception from local politicians, and others. Merchant banker Mark Treasure is financial advisor to the property group behind the development. He and his wife Molly drive up to attend the Thatchford town meeting called to air the project. Scandalous accusations are made, but worse is to come when a party in the house where the Treasures are staying is interrupted by the police, come to question the local MP after finding his glamorous secretary ghoulishly murdered. While the probable suicide of the likeliest suspect promises a swift and easy solution to the case, it's too much so for the conscientious DCI Furlong, especially when another less explicable death occurs. But when Treasure discovers that Furlong is about to arrest someone who the banker is positive is blameless, he sets up his own investigation.

David Williams was a writer best known for his crime-novel series featuring the banker Mark Treasure and police inspector DI Parry. After serving as Naval officer in the Second World War, Williams completed a History degree at St Johns College, Oxford before embarking on a career in advertising. He became a full-time fiction writer in 1978. Williams wrote twenty-three novels, seventeen of which were part of the Mark Treasure series of whodunnits which began with Unholy Writ (1976). His experience in both the Anglican Church and the advertising world informed and inspired his work throughout his career. Two of Williams' books were shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award, and in 1988 he was elected to the Detection Club.