David Williams – лучшие книги

University College, Itchendever is short of funds - and up for grabs. The rival parties in the proposed takeover seem to be the American Funny Farms Foundation, run by the widow of a board-games mogul, and a calculating Arab prince. Banker sleuth Mark Treasure tries his hardest to adjudicate, but instead finds a baffling murder on his hands. And this isn't a mere…

Litchester Cathedral, usually an oasis of cloistered calm, suddenly finds itself at the centre of an acrimonious dispute over the proposed sale of of its 1225 copy of the Magna Carta. Merchant banker Mark Treasure is invited down to sort out the squabbling cathedral chapter. But even as he journeys to Litchester a fire destroys the ecclesiastical library - Magna…

It's high summer in Oxford. The university vacation has just begun. The eight governors of the Moneybuckle Endowment architectural library are assembling at All Saints College for the annual dinner before their meeting under chairman Mark Treasure, merchant banker.

The talk at the table is of some pricey sketches said to be by Constable, and an offer from a dealer in…

The Closter Drug company is going to double in value as soon as it perfects its cure for migraine: most of the directors are set to make sizeable fortunes as they float the company on the Stock Exchange. When a group pledged to stopping experiments on animals demonstrates at a Closter news conference, the action is seen as no more than embarrassing. But the kidnap of one of the Closter directors that follows cannot be so easily ignored, especially when, instead of a ransom, the kidnappers demand that the other directors sell their company shares at a crippling loss... No one understands what the kidnappers themselves are gaining by this, until banker Mark Treasure - the non-executive Chairman of Closter Drug - returns from an American trip and works out what's really happening. Even so, he is too late to prevent two murders and the stock market skulduggery that decimates Closter management and threatens to wipe out the company.

Could the take-over of Rigley's Patent Footbalm by the giant American Hutstacker Chemical Corporation really be scuppered by Mrs Ogmore-Davies's parrot finding a body in Panty Harbour? It looked like it, but banker sleuth Mark Treasure took a different view when a second body was discovered the morning after he arrived in the little West Wales sailing village close…

Sir Ray Bims is about to be charged as the principal in a Caribbean bank that's laundering international drug money. Lord Grenwood, octogenarian chairman of Grenwood, Phipps, the London merchant bankers, is appalled. Three years ago he sold Bims the family football club - the Eel Bridge Rovers - and now his lordship wants to buy it back to avoid being tainted by Bims' disgrace. Only hours after refusing Grenwood's offer for the Eels, Bims commits suicide - except that Detective-Inspector Jeckels of the Fulham CID suspects that it was murder. And he discovers a string of people with motive and opportunity to dispose of Bims - among them the husband of Bims mistress; the Eels' manager whom Bims had been about to fire; a well-known concert pianist; a curiously religious pest controller; not to mention several Eels players, and Bims wife and ex-wife.

Marton Manor, in rural Herefordshire, makes a romantic setting even for a hastily organised wedding. And it is a quickly-arranged ceremony indeed that Fleur Jarvas is demanding - even though marrying before her twenty-first birthday means forfeiting a large inheritance. Naturally all the guests, including banker-turned-sleuth Mark Treasure and his wife Molly, are…

To steal a painting from the Hermitage museum in Leningrad is going to take planning, nerve and ingenuity - and that's how Sergey Vasilefski does the job, unaided. But there's no way he'll be able to get the painting out of Russia alone... The police come to suspect that members of the Baroque Circle - a cultural group on a visit from England - are implicated in the…

Hardly anyone attends St Martin's Church, Kengrave Square, in West London, and it's very nearly falling down. But when news gets out that it's to be closed, and possibly sold, there's a significant flurry of interest. The site is worth millions. Aziz Developments are after it, and so is the Community of Investors for Jesus - a curious American group of televangelists. Enter Kengrave Square resident, the Honourable Mrs Monica Lodey, whose grandfather built the church. The venerable Mrs Lodey is determined to save St Martin's. She's not only rich but she can also exert huge influence: her brother is Chairman of Grenwood, Phipps, the merchant bankers, where Mark Treasure is Chief Executive. When the vicar's wife launches a fund to repair St Martin's, there's a rowdy parish meeting where Treasure's actress wife Molly is the first to promise money. Treasure hopes that can be the extent of his involvement. But when a sudden death follows, spawning more dramatic events, both he and Molly find themselves gradually drawn into yet another investigation, and this time very close to home.

King Charles Island, a British Colony in the West Indies, came dramatically awake through the foul murder of its most influential citizen. But then banker sleuth Mark Treasure arrived on business to discover that his accident-prone assistant was the number one suspect...However, Treasure quickly volunteered to assist the daunted Chief Inspector Small in finding the…