Abel Jones - Faded Coat of Blue by Owen Parry
The author is a former military strategist for the US government. His detective hero is a Welsh soldier/immigrant caught up in the American civil war. Abel Jones' Methodist values are played off against the criminality and bloodshed around him. The author is of Welsh descent himself, dedicating his book to: "the Welsh, Scots, and Irish who built America while the English weren't looking."

David Brade - The Tattooed Detective by David Craig (aka Bill James)
Excellent Butetown procedurals. Along with sidekick Glyndwr Jenkins (black and bilingual), Inspector David Brade - the tattooed detective, contends with feuding criminals, property developers and the usual crew of Tiger Bay hustlers.

Merlin Richards - Murder in Perspective by Keith Miles
Young Welsh architect goes to America to meet his hero Frank Lloyd Wright but becomes involved in a murder investigation. Prime suspect turned amateur detective.

Louie Knight - Aberystwyth, Mon Amour and Last Tango in Aberystwyth by Malcolm Pryce
Malcolm Pryce's private dick cleans up the mean streets of Aberystwyth. Make mine a double choc-mint ice cream with a wafer of the absurd.

Brother Cadfael - A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters
Classic detective series. Squabble over the bones of Saint Winifred in the mountain town of Gwytherin leads to murder. Welsh Benedectine monk, brother Cadfael sorts it out.

"Old Nick" Nicholas Meredith - The Lately Deceased and Tiger at Bay by Bernard Knight (as Bernard Picton)
Dogged Chief Superintendent on the case in London and Cardiff.

Merlin Parry - Dead in the Market by David Williams
Someone's copped it in the indoor market, Cardiff, but nobody's blabbing. Send for DCI Merlin Parry and DS Gomer Lloyd.

Owen Archer - Gift of Sanctuary by Candace Robb
More medieval Welsh shenanigans. One-eyed Welshman Owen Archer returns to Wales accompanied by none other than Geoffrey Chaucer! The double murder that follows somehow failed to make it into the Canterbury Tales. Strange that.

Evan Pinkerton - The Hammersmith Murders (1930) by David Frome (real name Zenith Brown Jones)
Zenith Jones was an American professor of Greek, Philosophy, and English Literature. She was also a magazine editor and writer of pulp fiction. Her unlikely hero Evan Pinkerton is a nervous little Welshman who was bullied by his former wife. Upon her death he inherits a fortune and uses the money to help his friend J. Humphrey Bull, a Scotland Yard Inspector, solve crimes. Pinkerton does the brainwork while Bull gets all the credit. Weird.

Michael McKenna - In Guilty Night by Alison G Taylor
Alison G Taylor's VERY dark books are set in North Wales, dealing with such unsavoury subjects as child abuse. Cops Mike McKenna and Dewi Prys aren't exactly the brightest either. If I was living in the Bangor area I'd be having nightmares.

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