Inspector Hanaud

This audiobook contains the first three adventures of A. E. W Mason’s enigmatic and mercurial Sûreté detective, Inspector Hanaud—a key inspiration for Agatha Christie’s celebrated sleuth Hercule Poirot. First, Hanaud investigates the murder of wealthy Mme Dauvray at the fashionable French resort of Aix-les-Bains. Then, during a visit to London, Hanaud unravels a case of theft and murder following a costume party at a prestigious hotel.

At the fashionable French resort of Aix-les-Bains a murder is discovered: wealthy but naïve Mme Dauvray is found strangled in the salon of her villa, apparently for her famously expensive jewels. Her young English companion, Celia Harland, is missing, and her maid is bound and chloroformed upstairs. A young English inventor who has been courting Miss Harland adamantly protests her innocence, and begs the famous Sûreté detective Inspector Hanaud to investigate.

While Sûreté inspector Gabriel Hanaud visits the London home of his friend Mr. Ricardo, they receive a visit from Carradine, a young socialite with a disturbing story. A beautiful young woman he met at a costume party has appealed to him for help. Obsessed with a rich American woman’s pearls, this young woman went to steal them from the American’s hotel room … only to find a gang of thieves, who overpowered her. She woke up hours later, alone in the room except for a dead body. Can Hanaud prove her innocence, and bring the real murderers to justice?

Wealthy widow Mrs. Harlowe has died at her house in Dijon, apparently of natural causes. But then her brother-in-law accuses her niece Betty of poisoning the old woman; Jim Frobisher, junior partner in the office of Betty’s English solicitors, is dispatched to France to provide legal advice and support. In France, as Jim seeks to discover the truth and clear Betty, he enters into an uneasy alliance with the enigmatic and mercurial Sûreté detective, Inspector Hanaud.