Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s deceptively mild spinster sleuth, is being treated to a few days’ holiday by her niece, staying at Bertram’s Hotel, a dignified, unostentatious establishment tucked away in a back street of busy Mayfair. Here is a place where sedate upper class ladies, retired military gentlemen and the higher echelons of the clergy can indulge in the comforts of a bygone age. But Miss Marple begins to feel uneasy. Something sinister lurks beneath the polished veneer.

This is the very first Poirot/Hastings story. Set in 1916, we meet Captain Hastings as he is invalided out of the Great War and goes to convalesce at Styles Court, the family home of his great friend, John Cavendish. By an extraordinary coincidence, billeted in the village is a brilliant little retired detective with an egg-shaped head, who made a considerable impression on the Captain when he was in Belgium. Styles is not a happy household and in the blistering summer heat, tensions mount.

A BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation starring June Whitfield as Miss Marple, the sharp-witted spinster sleuth. In the sleepy little English country village of St Mary Mead, all is not as it seems. Under a seemingly peaceful exterior lurks intrigue, guilt, deception - and murder. Colonel Protheroe, local magistrate and overbearing landowner, is the most detested man in the village. Everyone, even the vicar, wishes he were dead. And very soon he is - shot in the head in the vicar's own study.

BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation starring June Whitfield as the sharp-witted spinster sleuth. Dolly Bantry, mistress of Gossington Hall, is enjoying a pleasant doze when suddenly her dreams take a strange turn. The housemaid Mary is telling her that there is a body in the library.

After the death of her husband, Dolly Bantry sold Gossington Hall to the former film star Marina Gregg and her husband. When the glamorous couple decide to throw a benefit party for the local hospital, the grounds are thronged with curious visitors, and for one of them, the day ends in tragedy. As Marina is serving cocktails in the house, she is cornered by the excitable Heather Babcock, who chatters away about their former meeting about eleven years ago before spilling her daiquiri all over herself and Marina.

June Whitfield stars as Miss Marple in seven full-cast BBC Radio 4 dramatisations. The stories included are: 'The Moving Finger', 'They Do It with Mirrors', 'Nemesis', 'Sleeping Murder', 'Tape-Measure Murder', 'The Case of the Perfect Maid' and 'Sanctuary'.

With World War II at an end, Charles Hayward is finally free to marry the woman he loves, Sophia Leonides. However, she refuses - the unexplained death of her grandfather, wealthy businessman Aristide Leonides, draws her back to the suffocating environment of her family home. Charles follows, but his arrival coincides with the discovery that Aristide’s death was murder. The ensuing investigation drags Charles into the dark heart of the family, and its deadly secrets and dangers.

A group of adventurers set out from Damascus to visit the legendary Gate of Baghdad, also known as the Gate of Death. When one of the party is found dead, the others look to the seemingly unimpeachable Mr Parker Pyne.

As Miss Marple sat basking in the Caribbean sunshine, she felt mildly discontented with life. True, the warmth eased her rheumatism, but here in paradise nothing ever happened. Eventually, her interest was aroused by an old soldier's yarn about strange coincidence. Infuriatingly, just as he was about to show her an astonishing photograph, the Major's attention wandered. He never did finish the story....

Ian Carmichael stars as Lord Peter Wimsey in the much-acclaimed radio dramatisations of Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Strong Poison, Five Red Herrings and Have His Carcase.