Ruth Dudley Edwards Books In Order

Publication Order of Robert Amiss Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Ruth Dudley Edwards
Ruth Dudley Edwards was born in Dublin, Ireland on May 24, 1944. After being a teacher, a Cambridge postgraduate, a marketing executive, and a civil servant, she became a full-time writer. A broadcaster, a journalist, a historian, and a prize winning biographer living in London, who has lived in England since 1965 and describes herself as a Unionist and British-Irish.

She first graduated from University College, Dublin, and has said that she loved her time at UCD but left Ireland subsequently to escape from the Catholic Church’s influence, and a culture which backed ‘physical force nationalism’. Ruth ended up studying at two Cambridge University colleges, Wolfson and Girton.

“Corridors of Death” was short listed for the CWA John Creasey Memorial Dagger, while two others got nominations for the CWA Last Laugh Award.

Ruth has been a columnist with the Daily Telegraph, The News Letter, Irish Sunday Independent, and Sunday Telegraph. Two of Ruth’s short stories have appeared in The Economist and the Oxford Book of Detective Stories.

“Corridors of Death” is the first novel in the “Robert Amiss” series and was released in 1981. Beaten to death with a piece of abstract sculpture that was called ‘Reconciliation’, Whitehall departmental head Sir Nicholas Clark’s claimed by all of his colleagues to have been a respected and fine public servant cut off right in his prime. Bewildered by the labyrinthine bureaucracy of Whitehall, Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Jim Milton recognizes a potential ally in Robert Amiss, Clark’s young Private Secretary.

Milton quickly learns from Amiss how Whitehall works: it can be Machiavellian and possibly even homicidal, that Sir Nicholas was widely loathed and obnoxious, and that he’d spent the weeks before getting murdered antagonizing and upsetting associates and family. On the last morning on earth was spent gleefully observing the success of his plan to humiliate his department and minister publicly. And they still need to learn who wielded the blunt instrument.

“The Saint Valentine’s Day Murders” is the second novel in the “Robert Amiss” series and was released in 1984. Life in a dismal bureaucratic cul-de-sac isn’t what the high-flying and irreverent Robert Amiss expects when the British civil service lends him out for one year to the British Conservation Corporation. In theory, he’s to gain some invaluable experience of thrusting capitalism: in practice, he’s condemned to some non-job in backwater managing some demoralized and disgruntled time-servers that deeply resent this here interloper.

Morale in such an all-male environment isn’t improved at all by a radical feminist lesbian separatist, named Melissa. It’s only Amiss’ sense of humor and the joys of visiting with his new love, Rachel, who lives in Paris, that could possibly keep him sane.

The anger, malice, and envy which burgeons among all the filing cabinets first gets expressed in pettiness, then in unpleasant practical jokes. These start escalating worryingly and at last culminate in callous by boxes of poisoned chocolates sent to the wives of bureaucrats. Could they have come from the dirty old man, Henry Crump? Or the depressed home improver, Graham Illingworth? Or the Miser, Tony Farson? Or possibly one of the other disappointed, sad men? Potentially even from Melissa, herself?

With Ellis Pooley’s help, the young detective obsessed with fictional sleuths that makes his debut in this novel, Amiss and his buddy Superintendent Milton attempt assessing motives in an office where busted dreams and marital discord may drive anybody to murder.

“The English School of Murder” is the third novel in the “Robert Amiss” series and was released in 1990. The death of an instructor, a mugging, and one more “accidental” death has got Detective Constable Ellis Pooley sending Robert Amiss in undercover to investigate Knightsbridge School of English and apprehend the murderer before anymore of these little accidents can happen again.

“Clubbed to Death” is the fourth novel in the “Robert Amiss” series and was released in 1992. It’s no secret that the British have a fondness for tradition, however there are some members of London’s ffeatherstonehaugh’s club (naturally pronounced “Fanshaw”) appear to be taking things much too seriously. As they continue knocking officers off the club that threaten their ordered, if slightly eccentric, way of life.

After the club’s secretary allegedly jumps to his death from the gallery of the club, Robert Amiss, who’s conveniently unemployed at the moment, agrees to aid his friends at the Police Department get to the bottom of the matter. Amiss hires on as a waiter at the club, and finds himself getting caught up in an odd caricature of a club, that is run by and for some debauched geriatrics, all with skeletons rattling in their closets.

The portraits are of roues, the library houses some erotic literature, and the servants are treating much like Victorian lackeys. And that’s on a good day. Why are there so very few members? How can they possibly be financed? Is Amiss going to be able to keep his job, as well as his cover, despite the enmity of the snuff covered and ferocious Colonel Flagg?

“Matricide at St. Martha’s” is the fifth novel in the “Robert Amiss” series and was released in 1994. St. Martha’s, Cambridge, was just staggering along on nothing more than a mere shoestring for decades. Then Alice Toon, an alumna, leaves her former school a major fortune.

The dons instantly sink to fighting it out over the spoils. The Virgins, who are led by Dame Maid Theodosia Buckbarrow, believe that the bequests should be spent on scholarships. The Dykes, who are fewer in number but are better street fights, want to raise this center for Gender and Ethnic Studies. The Old Women, primarily made up of men, dream about fine vintages to be placed down in a decent new wine cellar.

They have reckoned without Ida “Jack” Troubeck, the Bursar. She elects to infiltrate this maelstrom of politics with Robert Amiss, her own agent, and a former civil servant that has a talent for sorting stuff out. No sooner does he show up where the Virgins are starting to get the upper hand than Dame Maud gets killed.