M. J. Trow

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Titles to Look Out For:

The Peter Maxwell Novels:
1995 Maxwell's House
1998. Maxwell's Flame
1998. Maxwell's Movie
1999. Maxwell's War
2000. Maxwell's Ride
2001. Maxwell's Curse
2001. Maxwell's Reunion
2002. Maxwell's Match
Maxwell's Inspection
2004. Maxwell's Grave
2005. Maxwell's Mask

About the Author:
M. J. Trow is a full-time teacher of history, who has been doubling as a crime writer for 17 years. Originally from Rhondda in South Wales, he claims to be the only Welshman who cannot sing or play rugby. He was educated at Warwick, London and Cambridge. He currently lives on the Isle of Wight with his wife and son. His interests include collecting militaria, film, the supernatural and true crime. M. J. Trow is the author of the Inspector Sholto Lestrade series, the Peter Maxwell murder mystery novels and six non-fiction books

• Maxwell's House [top]
  First published in 1995 in Great Britain by Constable & Company
  First published in 1998 in Great Britain in paperback by Hodder and Stoughton, 281pp, ISBN 0340707534
  Original UK retail price: £5.99; Canada $14.95; Australia $8.99
  Cover illustration: Lee Gibbons

Storyline/synopsis: The derelict house on the edge of the sleepy seaside town was a haven for courting couples, down-and-outs - and someone with altogether more sinister intentions. It was there that they found the corpse of seventeen--year-old Jenny Hyde. She'd been strangled. Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell didn't have to become involved at all. But one of his pupils had been murdered and Maxwell took it personally. His efforts to discover the truth about Jenny's death land the genial head of Sixth in deeper troule than he could ever have thought possible...

• Maxwell's Flame [top]
  First published in 1995 in Great Britain by Constable & Company Ltd, in hardback with dustjacket
  First published in 1998 in Great Britain by New English Library in paperback, 267pp, ISBN 0340708158 . Original UK retail price: £5.99; Canada $8.99; Australia $14.95. Cover illustration by Lee Gibbons

Storyline/synopsis: Peter Maxwell didn't want to attend the GNVQ course. He didn't want to get mixed up in murder either-but perhaps it was all part of death's rich tapestry. And while a disparate gathering of teachers was breaking ice upstairs at the Carnforth Centre, someone else was in the basement - breaking skulls. But what the killer couldn't have foreseen was that one of the victims was an old flame of Maxwell's. So now, it was personal. And when 'Mad Max' takes something personally, he doesn't get madder, he gets results

• Maxwell's Movie [top]
  First published in 1998 in Great Britain in hardback by Constable, with dustjacket, 201pp, ISBN 0340707542. Original UK retail price: £16.99
  First published in 1998 in Great Britain in paperback by New English Library, 201pp, ISBN 0340707550. Original UK retail price: £5.99, Australia $15.95. Cover illustration by Lee Gibbons on both paperback & hardback editions
  

Storyline/synopsis: Meticulously organised and judiciously scheduled to coincide with the dreaded Chemistry test, the school trip to the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) had been Peter Maxwell's idea.

But Maxwell himself, grievously afflicted with a vicious dose of flu, was forced to stay behind. And so it was that fifty chattering, squealing, excited pupils set off with only Maxwell's ineffectual Deputy and the inexperienced NQT Alice Goode to keep control. Not everyone was destined to return from the happy outing.

For in the darkened cinema complex of MOMI, two members of the party disappear without trace. As the instigator of the doomed trip, Maxwell feels personally responsible for the fate of the missing pair and sets out to discover what happened to Alice Goode and sixth form pupil Ronnie Parsons.

His search drags him into a world far removed from the essay crises and cosy staff room banter of Leighford High. Sucked into the sleazy and sinister world of Soho and the porn industry, Maxwell finds himself ensnared in a mesh of blackmail, vice - and murder

• Maxwell's War [top]
  First published in 1999 in Great Britain by New English Library in hardback
  Reprinted in 1999 in Great Britain by New English Library in paperback, 246pp, ISBN 0340707577

Storyline/synopsis: When Peter Maxwell agrees to act as historical adviser to a film company making a bodice-ripper on the south coast, he discovers that the knives-out policies of Leighford High are as nothing to the cut-throat world of television production. But his difficulties have only just begun. Filming is interrupted when the director is shot dead during a skirmish on the beach. The gun that did the killing was fired by Giles Sparrow, one of Maxwell's Sixth Formers earning a few bob as an extra.
It was Sparrow's finger on the trigger - but Maxwell gave the order to fire. Determined to clear the name of his boy recruit, 'Max Max' hones that razor mind of his to bring the real killer to book. He might have come to Willow Bay to re-enact a war -but he's goine to end up fighting one

• Maxwell's Ride [top]
  First published in 2000 in Great Britain in hardback by Hodder & Stoughton
  First published in 2000 in Great Britain in paperback by New English Library (Hodder & Stoughton), 267pp, ISBN 0340707593. Original UK retail price: £5.99
  Paperback cover image by Photonica
  Published in Audiobook format in February 2001 by Soundings Audiobooks in stereo/mono in 8 cassettes, 8.5 hours of playing time. Narrated by Peter Wickham. Recorded at the Soundings studios in Whitley Bay, England. ISBN 1860429815

Storyline/synopsis: Peter "Mad Max" Maxwell's two precocious nieces insist he takes them to a theme park. While riding the Wild Water, a passenger is killed in the float ahead, and Maxwell and the girl's become eye-witnesses to murder. The dead man was an accountant working with CHARTS, a charity organisation sponsoring Leighford High School where Maxwell works. Mad Max delves into CHARTS and begins to unearth a complex web of murky secrets. The corpses multiply as Maxwell nears the end of his search for truth -but will one of them be his own niece...?

Interior view of the audiobook format:

• Maxwell's Curse [top]
  First published on 7 Dec 2000 in Great Britain in hardback by Hodder and Stoughton, 282pp, ISBN 0340767766
  Published on 17 May 2001 in Great Britain in paperback by New English Library (Hodder and Stoughton), 282pp, ISBN 0340767774. Original UK retail price: £6.99
  Cover illustration: Larry Rostant
  Comments: Scarce

Storyline/synopsis: Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell is celebrating the Millennium. Not the one everybody else celebrated-that was last year. His is the mathematically and historically correct version-31st December 2000. Just about to savour his umpteenth Southern Comfort, he is interrupted by the doorbell. It's no New Year reveller, however, but the body of an old woman who, on a night of unseasonal mildness, has frozen to death. Rattled by the discovery of a corpse on his own doorstep, Maxwell decides to investigate. But when others start falling ill, hysteria grips the area. The local health authorities are at a loss to explain the symptoms-or why all the victims are elderly and live alone.

At the dawn of the 21st century, Maxwell seems to have stumbled onto something every rational soul would think had been buried with the past: witchcraft

• Maxwell's Reunion [top]
  First published in 2001 in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton, in hardback with dustjacket, 263pp, ISBN 0340767782. Original UK retail price: £18.99
  Jacket photography by Simon Marsden; Jacket design by Sonar
  Publishing Notes: An Audiobook format edition was also published in February 2002 (7 cassettes) by Soundings Audio Books, with Peter Wickham reading the text (ISBN 1842832085)

Storyline/synopsis In the year Peter Maxwell left school, Winston Churchill died and Mary Whitehouse began to clean up TV. Rhodesia broke with Britain, somebody built the Post Office Tower in London and the end of civilisation began when they gave the MBE to the Beatles.

Thirty-seven years later on, as Peter Maxwell's old school closes down, Maxwell attends a reunion of the class of '65 at a swish hotel in the Midlands. But through the endless reminiscences and schoolboy banter, the seething tensions of the school years surface in unlikely ways. All is not as it seems among Maxwell's old chums and at the end of the reunion weekend, a man is dead, hanging from the bell rope of the old school.

When a second violent death occurs, Maxwell finds himself in the midst of a murder investigation. But as he sets out to uncover the secret that has been lurking under his nose all those years, he begins to suspect that he may well be on the murderer's list for killing number three.

Maxwell's reunion is the seventh intriguing mystery in M. J. Trow's highly-acclaimed series featuring the irascible Head of Sixth and memorably unlikely sleuth, Peter 'Max Max' Maxwell.

Audiobook format:
Peter Wickham reads the Soundings Audiobooks recordings, presented in 7 cassettes encased in a plastic case. Peter Wickham has worked all over England and Wales in repertory theatre. He has appeared in 'Dixon of Dock Green' in its later years and more recently to 2002 in 'A Sense of Guilt'. His voice has been heard many many times on radio, in theatre plays, reading poetry, short stories and serials

• Maxwell's Match [top]
  First published in 2002 in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2002 in hardback with dustjacket
  Reprinted in 2003 in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2003, 325pp, ISBN 0749006218
  Republished in September 2003 in Audiobook format by Soundings Audiobooks Ltd
  

Storyline/synopsis: During a two-week staff exchange scheme, Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell swaps the delights of Leighford High for the more sophisticated charms of local private school, Grimmonds. This is a school where the teachers wear gowns, play interhouse rugby, join debating societies and fencing lessons. It's a far cry from his familiar comprehensive - Grimmods is steeped in tradition and dripping with money. But within a day of stepping through the imposing school gates, Maxwell has yet again stumbled upon an unnatural death. One of the Housemasters has fallen from the school roof - but did he jump or was he pushed? Two days later another teacher is found floating in the lake and this time it's definitely murder. As the pack of journalists at the gates grows and parents start removing their children from the school, the Headmaster has his work cut out to protect Grimmonds' reputation. And when DS Jacquie Carpenter, Maxwell's girlfriend, gets assigned to the case he finds himself caught up in a complex police investigation and a tangled web of secrets.

• Maxwell's Grave [top]
  First published in 2004 in Great Britain by Allison & Busby 2004, 288 pages, ISBN. 0749083662

Storyline/synopsis: [from front dj flap]: When Peter 'Mad Max' Maxwell took his kids from Leighford High on an archaeological dig, all should have been learning and fun. The professionals were very excited-was the grave they had found that of Alfred the Great? No, because the corpse was not Saxon and it wasn't a king, but an altogether more recent murder. No sooner has the first body been found than another, a policeman on the case is found dead at the wheel of his car. What knowledge did he possess that led to his death? And does his colleague, Maxwell's partnerJacquie Carpenter unwittingly have the same information? Maxwell locks horns with the great and not so good in a vicious world of skulduggery, academic back-biting and religious mania which can only end in murder...

• Maxwell's Mask [top]
  First published in 2005 in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in hardback with dustjacket
  Published in June 2006 in audiobook format by Soundings Audiobooks in nicely presented plastic holder; 8 cassettes, 11 hours listening time, narrator Peter Wickham, ISBN 1845594053. Recorded at the Soundings Studios, Whitley Bay, England
  Magna Large Print Format published 15 Feb 2008

Storyline/synopsis: Deena Harrison was one of Leighford High School's "characters" - setting fire to the toilet block and throwing boys down stairs. But she had the voice of an angel and could act the skin off a rice pudding, so Mr. Diamond, the Headteacher, did everything he could to keep her on. The autumn she came down from Oxford, there was something of a crisis in the Drama department at Leighford High. Mrs Carmichael was in danger of losing her baby and the Little Shop of Horrors was in danger of closing down. So Deena comes back to help out. And people start dying...just tragic accidents of course-loose cables, carelessly placed ladders-simple health and safety issues surely? DCI Henry Hall gets to know the Arquebus Theatre quite well, with murder treading the boards. And then Deena's old Head of Sixth Form stumbles into the spotlight...the return of Mad Max