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This page lists novels that feature the policeman Perry Trethowan.

Sheer Torture

Robert Barnard

1981

Also published as Death By Sheer Torture.

A Perry Trethowan novel.

" It can be a bit of an embarrassment when your old man is done in. Particularly, when you are a rising inspector with CID, and hated his guts. Particularly, when your old man was at the time subjecting himself to a do-it-yourself version of a Spanish Inquisition torture. And wearing spangled tights. What it meant was that Perry Trethowan had to go back to the home of his ancestors and do a bit of semi-official sleuthing. Like the Sitwells and the Mitfords, the Trethowans proved that Birth and Artistic Talent could go together. The Trethowans, though, made one hope it didn't happen too often. Perry's father had been a dilettante composer so minor that he stopped composing long before he started decomposing. His Uncle Lawrence, head of the family, was a poet of sorts, one of his aunts a stage designer, another an overgrown schoolgirl who had never grown out of her Thirties crush on Adolf Hitler. And that's only the older generation. Perry goes with fear and trembling back into the lions' den, and finds that his worst forebodings are mere shadows of the grisly reality."

Death and the Princess

Robert Barnard

1982

A Perry Trethowan novel.

"A Princess, albeit only a minuscule royal offshoot, with a snug little apartment in Kensington Palace and a snug little sum on the Civil List, is threatened – but by whom, why, and exactly what is uncertain. Her circle consists mostly of boy-friends, and they are a motley lot, drawn from the worlds of politics, the stage, even the football field. But are they endangered too or are they part of the threat? The Princess (fresh as morning dew, and much more treacherous) trips gaily through the minefield, while around her men keep dying. But blood will out, especially blue blood, and by the time Perry Trethowan gets to the bottom of the case, a murderer has been brought to justice and not a few reputations tremble in the scales."

The Missing Bronte

Robert Barnard

1983

A Perry Trethowan novel.

"Superintendent Perry Trethowan was enjoying a peaceful motoring holiday in North Yorkshire when he and his wife, Jan, had a strange encounter in a country pub. The seemingly unremarkable elderly spinster who introduced herself as Miss Edith Wing, a retired schoolmistress, proceeded to produce form her capacious blue handbag a yellowing manuscript - and claimed that it was part of an undiscovered novel by one of the Brontė sisters. Was it a clever forgery, or the literary sensation of the century? What started out as a harmless holiday diversion for the superintendent turned into a hunt for a vicious attacker as both Miss Wing and Perry himself found themselves in deadly danger."

Bodies

Robert Barnard

1986

A Perry Trethowan novel.

"Police superintendent Percy Trethowan found London's Soho as colourful and full of life as ever - except for the four corpses in a seedy photography studio. Shot doing a layout for Bodies, a soft-porn "health and fitness" magazine, the photographer, his assistant, and two models had left a camera loaded with film but no clues. Then one victim's obsession with pumping iron sent Trethowan into the erotic world of body-building, where an out-of-shape policeman would learn that building biceps is beautiful and the temptation to star in the buff in the bluest of movies could really be murder."

Death in Purple Prose

Robert Barnard

1987

A Perry Trethowan novel.

"Norway in cherry blossom time seemed exactly the right place to hold a conference of the World Association of Romantic Novelists (WARN for short). Superintendent Perry Trethowan wondered at times how he had allowed his sister to 'con' him into accompanying her to the conference but he finally decided that his role was to be one of amused detachment and observation, most especially of the two Queens of the Conference - frothy, gushy, lethal Amanda Fairchild, the British challenger, and the vast, malevolent Lorelei Zuckerman from America. What Perry had not been prepared for was a body - one clothed in billowing pink, with a bough of cherry blossom carefully placed on the corpse. It was a most unusual murder, in a most unusual place."