Mark Treasure Mysteries

Sir Ray Bims is about to be charged as the principal in a Caribbean bank that''s laundering international drug money. Lord Grenwood, octogenarian chairman of Grenwood, Phipps, the London merchant bankers, is appalled. Three years ago he sold Bims the family football club - the Eel Bridge Rovers - and now his lordship wants to buy it back to avoid being tainted by Bims'' disgrace.

Only hours after refusing Grenwood''s offer for the Eels, Bims commits suicide - except that Detective-Inspector Jeckels of the Fulham CID suspects that it was murder. And he discovers a string of people with motive and opportunity to dispose of Bims - among them the husband of Bims mistress; the Eels'' manager whom Bims had been about to fire; a well-known concert pianist; a curiously religious pest controller; not to mention several Eels players, and Bims wife and ex-wife.

Banking on Murder was David Williams'' seventeenth, and final, Mark Treasure mystery, and is just as full of charm, wit and thoroughly British laughs as its predecessors.