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John Buxton Hilton

This page lists novels by John Buxton Hilton. It includes books published using his own name and, in a second section at the bottom pf the page, books published using the pen name John Greenwood.

Note that the cover image are for the first edition and for a recent paperback or digital edition.

 

John Buxton Hilton: Novels

Death of an Alderman

John Buxton Hilton

Cassell

1968

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"The murder of an alderman on the canal towpath of the north country town of Fellaby brings about a crisis in the lives of the men who run the place and those who tell them how to run it. The papers are filled with eulogies of the dead man, of his rags-to-riches rise to power, but Detective-Superintendent Simon Kenworthy of the Yard soon discovers that Alderman Edward Barson was definitely one of Fellaby's least favourite sons. While the local police explore the more orthodox avenues of investigation, Kenworthy turns to an unlikely source for help - fifteen-year-old Putty, a tough young girl whose local knowledge and influence he is to use to his own decidedly unorthodox ends."
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Death in Midwinter

John Buxton Hilton

Cassell

1969

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"Lured into a scandalous rendezvous with a lovely milk-maid, a young politician suddenly finds himself a suspect when the girl turns up murdered, and it is up to Scotland Yard's Inspector Kenworthy to sort out the truth."
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Hangman's Tide

John Buxton Hilton

Macmillan

1975

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"A savage and macabre murder occurs in East Anglia, on the edge of the Wash. Superindendent Kenworthy, John Buxton Hilton's eccentric and ingenious policeman, faces the task of unravelling the past of the Margerum family who are rooted in the Fens and evidently connected with the murder. It is in the past history of this large and complicated family, and in a strange and touching romance that took place in the 1920's, that the secret motivations lie. Kenworthy is perfectly contented to employ ruthless bluff and downright lies to bring pressure that will break the case open. His winger, Detective Sergeant Wright, has the curious role of having to make what he can of it all, building to an ending with a cunning surprise."
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No Birds Sang

John Buxton Hilton

Macmillan

1975

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"A soldier is killed trying to save the life of a civilian who has no business to be wandering about an army battle range. The man is picked up and threatened by the local police, understandably angry. Then on to the scene comes by chance Chief Superintendent Kenworthy, who is holiday with his brother-in-law, also a senior police officer and in charge of this district. At first unwilling, Kenworthy is increasingly baffled and intrigued by the long history of events that begins to unfold. Why should a staunch citizen of faultless antecedents risk his life under a storm of live ammunition? Why does he seem unable to keep away from this forbidden abandoned village? An extraordinary incident in the Second World War comes to light; a man's glimpse of a beautiful young woman, in a setting haunted by inexplicable activities; his pilgrimage to find her - and his involvement in a strange rural mystery that leads inexorably to murder."
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Rescue from the Rose

John Buxton Hilton

Macmillan

1976

An Inspector Thomas Brunt novel.

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Gamekeeper's Gallows

John Buxton Hilton

Macmillan

1976

An Inspector Thomas Brunt novel.

"When Brunt, in search of Amy, makes the long journey to the very remote hamlet of Piper’s Fold he finds that there has been something of a traffic in young girls in this tiny, enclosed community. .... Brunt’s investigation entangles him in an extraordinary web of legend, folklore, rustic customs and secret community loyalties. The story develops excitingly as Brunt picks his way through mysteries and lies, and ends with a pleasing denouement."
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Dead-Nettle

John Buxton Hilton

Macmillan

1977

An Inspector Thomas Brunt novel.

"A newcomer to a Derbyshire village has been brutally murdered on the moors, and the obvious suspect is Lomas the miner who took her off to his remote Dead-Nettle mine workings. Brunt, however, does not trust the obvious. Sooner or later everybody tells him everything - or nearly everything. All he has to do is guess the rest and patiently await his moment. Hilton evokes a special mood as he paints the countryside, details traditional lead-mining lore, village custom and community loyalties, and scenes from the Boer War that illuminate the central character. In this way he portrays Edwardian England at its best, and sometimes worst, as the grisly plot unfolds."
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Some Run Crooked

John Buxton Hilton

Macmillan

1978

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"Julie Wimpole came as a stranger to the nearby village of Peak Low in 1958, and everyone assumed she was there for fifteen days, the qualifying period to allow her to marry her lover. But was she a stranger? Some of the villagers knew more about Julie than they cared to admit - and she about them. What had she known about that other girl also seeking the residential qualifications for a romantic and hasty marriage, who was murdered here in 1940, and how does this relate to the nasty murder of an eloping couple in 1758, and Julie's own death? Inspector Kenworthy finds himself investigating three murders spread over two hundred years with methods as bizarre and circuitous as ever. In effect a triple whodunit, Some Run Crooked weaves John Buxton Hilton's knowledge of Derbyshire and of country history and folklore into the construction of a splendidly ingenious and baffling story."
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The Anathema Stone

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1980

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"The Derbyshire village of Spentlow, where Chief Superintendent Kenworthy and his wife had chosen to spend their autumn holiday, was in the grip of celebrations organized by the Vicar to commemorate a remarkable incumbent of a hundred years ago. It was also in the grip of a long-standing feud between two prominent families, the Allsops and the Brightmores, and of the machinations of Davina Stott, a precocious, pretty adolescent, who had a lead part in the centenary celebration play. One evening Kenworthy walked home with her from rehearsal. Next morning her body was found on the Anathema Stone. ...... In such an atmosphere the local police found it difficult to extract clear and truthful statements about the murder from this closed community. Kenworthy, anxious though he was to help, was made uncomfortably aware that he was an outsider, and worse, the finger of village suspicion was unmistakably pointing at him."
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Playground of Death

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1981

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"Detective Superintendent Kenworthy must dig into the past to solve the murder of a man charged with killing his wife, only to discover that the dead man’s memoirs hide the origin of a yet unsuspected crime."
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Surrender Value

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1981

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"Why has John Everard, a gentle-mannered teacher of old-fashioned outlook surrendered an insurance policy and vanished? Is it really because, as he has told his wife, he fears a deterioration in his health and wants to go out 'living it up' in his own way? Have the tensions in a permissive sixth form college got him down? Did other women in his life really matter to him? Or has he absconded with one of his pupils, prim little Susan Shires, who has also disappeared? Why has Sue dumped her bag and booked a double room at a sleazy London hotel? Kenworthy, now retired from the Yard, is called in by Mrs Everard and finds himself exploring a world of some strange values. Meanwhile, reports on missing persons all over the country are being collated. Are Everard and Sue indulging in love-hate tantrums up an down the Norfolk coast? Or are they in the West Country, being turned away by suspicious landladies?"
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The Green Frontier

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1982

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"An eminent Lutheran pastor comes to England to take part in an investigative TV documentary called Crucible and is caught shop-lifting in the West End. He tries to demand that his case be handled by Superintendent Kenworthy, but Kenworthy has retired and it is decided not to bother him - until Pastor Pagendarm is found murdered on the edge of a Hertfordshire wood. Kenworthy is puzzled, until a meeting with the pastor's widow brings back memories of his days in wartime Intelligence. But this is not a spy story, nor does it repeat the usual clichés about Nazi Germany. It is a patient and sensitive search for the long tap-roots of evil."
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The Sunset Law

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1982

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"Chief Superintendent Kenworthy, now retired, is visiting his married daughter in Florida. The visit is not wholly successful, for to the unsettlement of retirement was added the disorientation of the American scene, anxiety lest his daughter's marriage to a State policeman was in low water, and concern that there might be truth in the allegations of corruption made against his son-in-law. The scene changes with the murder of the two prostitutes who had preferred the charges. When his son-in-law disappears, Kenworthy moves into action, contacting the Luther Boones I, II and III, a family who had policed a remote stretch of the Everglades for three generations."
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The Asking Price

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1983

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"Kenworthy in retirement is consulted by a special team operating from the Cabinet Office. They need his second opinion on the random kidnapping of a motley collection of customers from a village shop in Bedfordshire. The ransom price is so bizarre that it is kept secret from the public - and on their return the villagers seem none the worse for their experience. But a rougher time is had by all when an entire Norfolk Parish Council is spirited away. Not until they try their hand at abducting a Yorkshire branch of the Women's Institute do the kidnappers meet their match. In the meantime, Kenworthy has been sorting out the red herrings and finds the answer in the cut-throat power politics of organized crime. The action moves rapidly - and murderously - from the North Country to the Fens, from rural Wiltshire to the hinterland of the Costa del Sol."
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Mr. Fred

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1983

An Inspector Thomas Brunt novel.

"The setting of this powerful mystery is Edwardian Derbyshire. The story is told by Kathy in her old age, but the events she describes took place when she was still a child at school, living in abysmal poverty. Kathy secretly encounters the mysterious Mr Fred who is being hidden on her father's farm. But why? Who is Mr Fred? What is the truth behind the scandalous rumours about him? Surely it cannot be true that this kindly man is a pervert and a murderer? And why does her dull-witted brother finally murder him? If he did . . ."
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Corridors of Guilt

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1984

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"Called in to help his former colleague Forrester, Kenworthy finds himself disentangling the intrigues of the Duchy of Axholme, a Government department specially established to absorb misfits and failures. Then there is murder: an academic-minded young lady is saddled with the corpse of an elderly civil servant whom everyone believes to have died while making love to her. Has this anything to do with Peter Paul Whippletree, the drop-out extraordinary and crossword-puzzle compiler with whom she falls in love? There is pungent oblique comment here on the way things are sometimes managed in high places but Kenworthy’s main concern is a mystery as obscure as any he has ever tackled. It calls for all the imagination and double-dealing he can muster."
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The Hobbema Prospect

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1984

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"While Anne Cossey is on honeymoon in Spain, her mother 'commits suicide' in a manner that Anne is the first to recognize as murder. From then on the knots begin to tighten, for Anne is on the civilian payroll of Chief Superintendent Kenworthy, now in his closing years at the Yard, and her husband is a detective-sergeant in the squad of Kenworthy's old winger, Shiner Wright. She unearths various files in the archives that might refer to her mother's elusive past, but then finds herself one chilly dawn abducted under anaesthetic and coming to in the very avenue of her nightmare. The action grows increasingly sinister, giving Kenworthy one of his most complex cases to date - and John Buxton Hilton the opportunity to introduce a few more to his gallery of memorable characters, including Swannee Foster, a criminal individualist, whom many at the Yard have agreed not to harness."
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The Quiet Stranger

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1985

An Inspector Thomas Brunt novel.

"In the 1870s, the future Inspector Brunt is on his way home after a reprimand when he has a disturbing encounter with George Ludlam, an enigmatic, taciturn man, intent on reaching one of Derbyshire's more remote villages. Then news reaches HQ that this man's arrival has terrified some of the villagers. Who is he? Who used he to be? And why has he come back? Brunt is sent to carry out an investigation, thus distracting him from the pursuit of Amelia Pilkington, a confidence trickster who lives off the hydropathic society of the time, but the affair becomes public when a woman is murdered and George Ludlam is the obvious suspect."
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Passion in the Peak

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1986

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"When Lord Furnival, a left-of-centre dilettante, tries to stage a musical version of the Oberammergau Passion Play in the High Peak of Derbyshire, he does not foresee what strife and tension he is setting in motion. Petty thefts, a peeping Tom, artistic jealousies, a vendetta against Mary Magdalene - the record of crime culminates in the murder of the hyped rock singer who is brought out of disgraced retirement to play the Christ part. Kenworthy is called in as a private consultant to 'protect the interests of the management' and finds himself involved with a bewildering array of eccentrics. This is knotty a puzzle as Kenworthy and his reader have ever squared up to, as the case-work takes us out of Derbyshire into the squalid history of The Stalagmites, a failed rock group of London's swinging years. On the way we take a Hiltonian look at more than one level of contemporary society."
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Moondrop to Murder

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1986

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"When a retired English colonel plans a walking tour in the South of France, his wife engages Kenworthy to mind him. Is this an unpardonable breach of personal privacy? And is Colonel Neville's purpose really sinister - as it sometimes appears? Kenworthy finds him in turn eccentric, domineering, secretive and, on occasion, bumblingly inefficient; then he loses him. Murder follows, and Kenworthy, helped by Monique Colin, a delectable young private eye from an agency in Nice, traces a trail back to the wartime Resistance: a world of pride, passions, jealousies and shame, in which the harshness of reality was sometimes more powerful than the heroism."
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The Innocents at Home

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1987

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"The rural town of St. Botolph's Fen End may have a pervert in their midst. Did Henry Gower, the very enthusiastic schoolteacher, carry the demonstrations in his sex education classes just a little too far? So claim four "innocent" schoolgirls. But the weakest of the four buckles and confesses to her parents that they made the story up-but why? Was it boredom, revenge, or just a pure evil in the leader of the group? After all, she's been seen consulting the town's ancient herbalist, a local witch of sorts. But when Henry Gower's body is found mangled in a pond, the unanswered questions grow even more complex. Only Superintendent Simon Kenworthy, with the help of the sexy but hard-nosed young cop Polly Parrott, can sort through the slander and find the true murderer."
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Displaced Persons

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1987

A Superintendent Simon Kenworthy novel.

"Retired Superintendent Kenworthy would never have recognized his wartime acquaintance Marie-Thérèse in the ageing woman found near a murdered man with three-quarters of a million francs in her possession. But he could identify the man. He had been Kenworthy's superior officer in an advance detachment of British troops during the 1944 thrust through the Low Countries. Marie-Thérèse had been something of a camp-follower and mascot, and Kenworthy learned that other wartime associates had kept in touch with her. Why? Was it blackmail? Marie-Thérèse had been suspected of it before. But who directed her? And who was their victim?"
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Slickensides: A Derbyshire Mystery

John Buxton Hilton

Collins

1987

An Inspector Thomas Brunt novel.

"Inspector Brunt investigates a reported break-in at Slickensides farm. At the same time a private detective with distinctly Holmesean characteristics (they even include a Watson!) arrives at the local inn. He is there to investigate the alleged disappearance of Barnard Brittlebank, the squire's dissolute son. Before long he informs Squire Brittlebank that his son has left for Canada. So it is disconcerting when young Brittlebank's body is found in the Slickensides mine. A dense fog descends, cutting off all communication with the outside world, and Brunt is left to answer some tricky questions with no assistance beyond the evidence and that of his own sharp wits."
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John Buxton Hilton: Novels published using the pen name John Greenwood

Murder, Mr. Mosley

John Greenwood

Quartet

1983

An Inspector Mosley novel.

"After seventeen years, Brenda Cryer returns to the tiny Lancashire village of Parson’s Fold with a shadowy past and a mysterious fortune. Shortly afterwards she is shot dead, and the one possible witness - her invalid mother - is missing . . . The only man available for the job is the notoriously slow and old-fashioned Inspector Mosley, but this case is a radical departure for a man more used to locating missing geese than tracking down a coldblooded killer. And it doesn’t help that Mosley refuses to use forensics or computers, preferring to trust ‘intuition’ and a network of gossips, busybodies and village idlers to get to the bottom of things. Luckily, high-flying Sergeant Beamish – fresh out of the police academy and nursing a penchant for technology – has been tasked to keep an eye on the unpredictable Mosley. Keen to establish the superiority of his methods, Beamish sets out to solve the mystery by himself but somehow the grubby, balding and rumpled Mosley is always two steps ahead."
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Mosley by Moonlight

John Greenwood

Quartet

1984

An Inspector Mosley novel.

"Strange things are happening in the remote village of Hadley Dale. Without warning, a TV crew invades the district to shoot a commercial. Without reason, tales of extra-terrestrial sightings spring up. And without a clue, Matthew Longden's robust "housekeeper" friend disappears - in the same way his wife did five years ago. Assigned to find the missing woman, the unpredictable Mosley bicycles through the Lancashire countryside. Side-tracked by TV mischief-makers, cricket matches, and rumours of a buried body. Mosley is stopped in his leisurely tracks by a shocking death. By prying information from the locals and raising hackles at headquarters, deceptively brilliant Mosley soon unravels an intricate tapestry of delusions, disappearances, and death to neatly tie up a most malicious murder."
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Mosley Went to Mow

John Greenwood

Quartet

1985

An Inspector Mosley novel.

"Inspector Mosley's superiors don't usually court his company: he's thought to be slow and stupid, and he certainly has a gift for infuriating those in authority over him. But when a gallows in good working order is offered for sale in the Hemp Valley Advertiser, and a woman vanishes in suspicious circumstances from the village of Hempshaw End, it's even more infuriating that Mosley can't be found anywhere. For only his intimate knowledge of the district - the hill country of the Yorkshire-Lancashire border - has a chance of making sense of the affair."
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Mists Over Mosley

John Greenwood

Quartet

1986

An Inspector Mosley novel.

"The tiny village of Upper Marldale is being overwhelmed-by a mischievous coven of witches. Neither believers nor non-believers can explain why the church clock winds itself up without assistance, why a row of winter cabbages is suddenly struck down in the night, or why not one cat in the village will venture forth after dusk. Marldale is the territory of the deceptively brilliant Inspector Jack Mosley, and his exasperated superiors wish he would get on with solving these nagging little incidents. But nagging soon becomes nightmarish when a sculptor is found hanging from her ceiling beam. A whiff of local corruption tickles Mosley's nose, and he and his sidekick set off into the bracing northern air to seek the reasons and parties behind both the supernatural and the homicidal."
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The Mind of Mr. Mosley

John Greenwood

Quartet

1987

An Inspector Mosley novel.

"They’re rustling sheep on Mosley’s patch—the hill country of the Yorkshire-Lancashire border. Young Sergeant Beamish is in love. And Reuben Tunnicliffe of Upper Crudshaw has committed suicide by hanging himself with his braces in the earth closet at the bottom of his yard. Then his eighty-year-old widow Anna reports a theft of 500 pounds . . . Curious beyond the call of duty, unorthodox in his methods, and unwilling to leave matters in the hands of his nemesis Chief Inspector Marsters, the imperturbable Mosley sets a trap before departing on vacation. Before matters are sorted out, vicar Wilfred Weskitt is accused of running a brothel, Mosley publishes poetry under the name of local poetess laureate Millicent Millicheap, and the CIA, the KGB and Special Branch are baffled. But once again, Mosley triumphs in a manner that leaves his superiors and neighbours in states varying from bewilderment to near-apoplexy."
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What Me, Mr. Mosley?

John Greenwood

Quartet

1988

An Inspector Mosley novel.

"Ever since television’s “Antiques Road Show” passed by that way, the inhabitants of Mr Mosley’s patch—the hill country of the Yorkshire-Lancashire border—have become avid collectors of bric-a-brac. And Dickie Holgate, with a junk-cum-antique stall in the market-place of the little town of Bagshawe Broome, is doing very well as a result. That is, until Mosley spots one or two items of doubtful provenance among the chromium-plated teapots and bone-handled cutlery. Reducing his superiors - especially Detective-Superintendent Tom Grimshaw - to a state of nervous prostration, and accompanied by an admiring, if uncomprehending, Sergeant Beamish, Mosley, in his black homburg and overcoat, strolls through scenes of ever-increasing comic confusion to a final satisfying denouement."
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Last updated June 2018