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This page lists novels that feature the policeman Superintendent Simon Kenworthy.

Death of an Alderman

John Buxton Hilton

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."

Death in Midwinter

John Buxton Hilton

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."

Hangman's Tide

John Buxton Hilton

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."

No Birds Sang

John Buxton Hilton

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."

Some Run Crooked

John Buxton Hilton

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."

The Anathema Stone

John Buxton Hilton

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."

Playground of Death

John Buxton Hilton

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."

Surrender Value

John Buxton Hilton

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?"

The Green Frontier

John Buxton Hilton

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."

The Sunset Law

John Buxton Hilton

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."

The Asking Price

John Buxton Hilton

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."

Corridors of Guilt

John Buxton Hilton

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."

The Hobbema Prospect

John Buxton Hilton

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."

Passion in the Peak

John Buxton Hilton

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."

Moondrop to Murder

John Buxton Hilton

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."

The Innocents at Home

John Buxton Hilton

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."

Displaced Persons

John Buxton Hilton

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?"