Verdon James, an Oxford man, has been a friend of the great and good for many years: his Holmesian intelligence and insightfulness coming to their rescue more times than he would care to remember.

But in The Discreet Interventions he does remember, recounting some of his most notable cases – including the resurrection of his friend’s father from the grave to save an ancestral estate, his elegant riposte to blackmail, his theatrical deceptions of World War II (which continued to deceive inside the walls of Spandau), and his involvement with an Oxford spy ring, unearthing a murder that happened forty years previously in the London Blitz.

Will be devoured by fans of PD James and Colin Dexter. Verdon James has all the studied charm of a classic fictional character.

Praise for his first book Shelley’s Boat
The story of Shelley’s last weeks is irresistibly dramatic, filled with spectres, premonitions, Gothic horrors and turbulent characters. (Suzi Feay, Independent)

This brief biography is…a heady and mood saturated portrait of a man who was a social thinker as much as a poet, and whose death as well as life has helped inform our retrospective perspective of the Romantic age. (Metro)

Click for PDF extract

Click for printable title information

BUY THIS BOOK