Unbecoming Habits & Blue Blood Will Out: Omnibus 1

by Tim Heald

Unbecoming Habits Brother Luke was late again. But this time Brother Luke's excuse for missing Sext was the best possible. He had been lying face down among the protatoes for quite some time when Brother Bede finally found him, turned him over and noticed that the deep magenta marks around his neck matched the pattern of the crucifix chain which he always wore. He was, of course, extremely dead... Blue Blood Will Out Frederick, third Earl of Maidenhead, had woken at six-thirty, drunk one cup of tea from the Teasmade machine and put on a pair of individually styled bathing trunks with FM embroidered on the left leg. While the rest of Sir Canning's guests slept, he was drifting downstream. He appeared to be making no effort to swim further; his arms and legs were perfectly limp. He was, of course, extremely dead...

276 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 2002

About the author

Tim Heald (b. 1944) is a journalist and author of mysteries. Born in Dorchester, England, he studied modern history at Oxford before becoming a reporter and columnist for the Sunday Times. He began writing novels in the early 1970s, starting with Unbecoming Habits (1973), which introduced Simon Bognor, a defiantly lazy investigator for the British Board of Trade. Heald followed Bognor through nine more novels, including Murder at Moose Jaw (1981) and Business Unusual (1989) before taking a two-decade break from the series, which returned in 2011 with Death in the Opening Chapter.