A Case of the Claws

A Case of the Claws

by Catherine AirdEdmund Crispin Patricia Highsmith and others
Publication Date: 23/10/2025

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It's deep winter and time to light the fire, pull up a blanket and curl up with your cat. But has it occurred to you that your feline companion might be licking blood from its paws?


Slink through shadows and brush with death in these three classic cat-themed mystery tales from beloved crime authors Catherine Aird, Edmund Crispin, Patricia Highsmith and Ellis Peters.


A Case of the Claws brings a thrilling winter chill to the festive season and asks: are these furry friends the guardians of our secrets or omens of misfortune?

ISBN:
9781805226093
9781805226093
Category:
Short stories
Publication Date:
23-10-2025
Language:
English
Publisher:
Profile
Catherine Aird

Catherine Aird is the author of more than twenty crime novels and short story collections, most of which feature DCI Sloan. She holds an honorary MA from the University of Kent and has been awarded an MBE. She lives near Canterbury.

Edmund Crispin

Edmund Crispin (2 October 1921 - 15 September 1978) was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery (usually credited as Bruce Montgomery), an English crime writer and composer. Montgomery wrote nine detective novels and two collections of short stories under the pseudonym Edmund Crispin (taken from a character in Michael Innes's Hamlet, Revenge!).

The stories feature Oxford don Gervase Fen, who is a Professor of English at the university and a fellow of St Christopher's College, a fictional institution that Crispin locates next to St John's College. Fen is an eccentric, sometimes absent-minded, character reportedly based on the Oxford professor W. E. Moore.

The whodunit novels have complex plots and fantastic, somewhat unbelievable solutions, including examples of the locked room mystery. They are written in a humorous, literary and sometimes farcical style and contain frequent references to English literature, poetry, and music. They are also among the few mystery novels to break the fourth wall occasionally and speak directly to the audience.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and moved to New York when she was six, where she attended the Julia Richman High School and Barnard College. In her senior year she edited the college magazine, having decided at the age of sixteen to become a writer.

Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, was made into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley, published in 1955, introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, and was made into an Oscar-winning film in 1999 by Anthony Minghella.

Graham Greene called Patricia Highsmith 'the poet of apprehension', saying that she 'created a world of her own - a world claustrophobic and irrational which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger' and The Times named her no.1 in their list of the greatest ever crime writers. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland, in February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously, the same year.

Available for download after 23/10/2025

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