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It's tough to be a preacher's kid, and for Leo Stanhope it may be harder than for most. He was born Charlotte, and in the Reverend Pritchard's home-as in all of Victoria's England-there is little room for persons unwilling to know their place and stick to it. And things are about to get harder: There's a gentleman who knows the secret that could get Leo locked up for life, and this so-called gentleman is not above a spot of blackmail. There is a bright spot, though, in the form of two little kids who are teaching Leo's heart to open again, after a wretched year. In warming to them, he realizes how much more he has to learn. Leo knows how to be a man. Now he must learn to be a father.

In this, his third adventure, Professor Andrew Basnett takes a brief break from his usual stomping grounds in the Little English Village, opting to spend Christmas in a Small Australian City instead. He¿s visiting Tony, an old colleague with a newish wife, and he¿s barely had a post-flight snack before he¿s made aware of a cloud hanging over the marriage. Jan, Tony¿s bride, is widely believed to have bashed her first husband over the head, and though she was acquitted of the murder, Tony himself is starting to have uncomfortable second thoughts. Things don¿t get any more comfortable when, at a family dinner, one of the guests is done in, killed with a chunk of the same crystal that put paid to Jan¿s first husband. And Jan herself? She¿s disappeared. Only the Professor, it would seem, can banish the clouds of distrust and reveal the truth, clear as crystal.

Andrew Basnett may be retired from academia, but that doesn¿t seem to have stopped his former colleagues from dumping problems in his lap. This time around it¿s the peppery Constance Camm, whose neighbors keep disappearing. Miss Camm and her sister, Mollie, might be tempted to shrug things off, were it not for a frightening letter. ¿I know where you buried the body,¿ says the letter, but¿to which disappeared neighbor does the letter refer? And why was it sent to Mollie, who hasn¿t been burying anything? Spurred by a desire to help a friend (and—admit it!—by his own curiosity), Professor Basnett starts poking around. But his efforts uncover more than one village skeleton, and they may call up more than anyone has bargained for.

Sarah Deane is an English teacher by profession, but with these first two adventures she discovers that sleuthing—of the strictly amateur variety—may be where her truest passions lie.The first book takes Sarah, still a grad student at this point, out of her natural New England habitat and into the wilds of Texas, where her maybe-boyfriend is keen on a spot of birdwatching. But birds are not all that she spies through her binoculars, and so the adventures begin. In Down East, Sarah is glad to be back on home ground, but somebody, it appears, is not happy in any way at all, and Sarah is forced (and secretly thrilled) to put her newfound detecting skills to use again.

"Sixteen-year-old Mariah Ebinger's idyllic suburban life is upended by a man whose obsession reveals a tragedy in her past"--

Gracie Allen breaks the Philo Phormula in a number of ways. First is its title: this is the only book in the series to modify ¿Murder Case¿ with more than one word, much less with the name of a character. And then there¿s that character: Gracie Allen was a very real, much-loved comedienne in the 1930s, famous for her double act with George Burns, and in fact the plot revolves around her. Gracie¿s centrality is no accident: Van Dine wrote the story as a vehicle for Allen, and actually created the novel only after the film had come out. So do all these departures pay off? We¿d be lying if we said that Gracie hits every single mark, but Van Dine does a surprisingly entertaining job of translating Ms. Allen¿s delicious Ditzy Blonde persona to the page, and she makes a charming foil for Philös evergreen erudition.

Like The Gracie Allen Murder Case before it, Winter was first written as a screenplay, in this case a vehicle for the figure skater Sonja Henie. However, while Allen¿s scatterbrained persona made a charming foil for Philös stuffed-shirt pretensions, Ms. Henie provided no such inspiration. Van Dine did not live long enough to see her outed as a Nazi supporter, but her ice-princess act offered less for Philo to play against. It should be noted that Winter was published posthumously to close out the series, and though it went to press without Van Dine¿s usual repeated revisions, it is true vintage Philo—utterly distinctive in style and its own very genuine kind of pleasure.