Gavin MacDonald

When six professors are drugged at a dinner and then humiliated by being smeared with unpleasant substances, Sergeant MacRae is baffled, but Chief Inspector Forsyth forsees a related incident which turns out to be the murder of a lecturer notorious for seducing local wives and female undergraduates. When a campus wife, who was having an affair with the lecturer, is also murdered on a lonely beach at the time that her husband is holding a departmental party, everyone is at sea except Forsyth who comes up with a solution to all the incidents by the application of some brilliant logical deductions.

Another case for DCI Ian Forsyth. An Edinburgh wine and spirits merchant is found dead in a junk yard when he should have been on a sleeper train to London. Supposed regular trips to London appear to have been an excuse to visit a mistress. When it is found that all is not well in the business and the murders of a sleazy private detective and one of the merchant's sons follow, it requires all Forsyth's ingenuity to solve the mystery by means of logical deduction. The story is told by Forsyth's long-suffering sergeant, Alistair MacRae

Sergeant MacRae's first case with Chief Inspector Ian Forsyth, explaining their odd relationship and giving a humorous insight into the Scottish university scene. A lecturer is murdered in Inverforth University and MacRae is appalled when Forsyth lets an academic committee loose on the investigation, making a bet with the University's Principal on who will solve the crime. A second murder occurs and MacRae is in despair, fearing for his job, when an academic admits he has solved the mystery and the other two say likewise. But it emerges each has fastened on a clue relevant to his own discipline and they have come to three different solutions. Forsyth again triumphs by using logical deduction to name the killer.

DCI Forsyth and DS MacRae skive off from a course they are attending in Inverness to investigate the murder of the alcoholic wife of a professor. She appears to have been knifed after returning to their house up a glen from a drinking binge, her body being dumped in a nearby loch. When ome of her lovers is shot dead with an arrow in the back after attempting to blackmail the murderer, Forsyth presents his former assistant, who is in charge of the case, with the solution, arrived at by logical deduction.

A detective novel in the tradition of classic whodunnits. An Edinburgh publisher is murdered in an apparently motiveless crime in an office where the window is fastened and the door locked on the inside. Two possible clues are the wrong date on the desk calendar and the piece of plastic found in the dead man's hand. When the firm's accountant is killed at the wake, DCI Ian Forsyth solves the mysteries in masterly fashion by the use of logical deduction. The story is told by Forsyth's put-upon sergeant, Alistair MacRae