MICHAEL ALLEN – Spence and the Holiday Murders. Walker, hardcover, first U.S. publication 1978. UK title: Spence in Petal Park: Constable, hc, 1977. Paperback reprint: Dell, February 1981; Scene of the Crime #14.

   The season is Christmas, the victim is a swinging young bachelor with an unsuspected habit of snapping photos through the windows of the girls’ school across the way, and so the immediate conclusion is that someone was being blackmailed.

   As everyone has come to expect of the British police procedural, Detective, Superintendent Spence’s investigation is carried out so diligently and smoothly that it could as well serve as a primer for the novice mystery reader.

   Bibliographic data. [Expanded from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin] —

ALLEN, MICHAEL (Derek) 1939- . Pseudonym: Michael Bradford. SC: Supt. Ben Spence, in all below:
       Spence in Petal Park. Constable 1977.
       Spence and the Holiday Murders. Walker 1978. Reprint of Spence in Petal Park.
       Spence at the Blue Bazaar. Constable 1979.

       Spence at Marlby Manor. Walker 1982.

BRADFORD, MICHAEL. Pseudonym of Michael Allen.
        Counter-Coup. Muller, hc, 1980; Critics Choice, pb, 1986. “Rebels overthrow the South African government and President Kasaboru is on the run with Philip Morgan, formerly of the Metropolitan Police.”