The Complete Dangerous Davies

As plain-clothes men go, Dangerous Davies looks like a non-starter. The small fry of petty larceny and minor disturbances in the backwaters of north-west London are his daily round. His philosophising Welsh drinking companion Mod, his outsized and unruly dog Kitty, his quarrels with his landlady Mrs Fulljames - none of these bodes well for the efficient solving of crimes and outwitting of villainy. But Davies is encouraged by his beautiful friend Jemma, and every so often he stumbles upon something really big. Gathered together for the first time in one volume, here are Leslie Thomas's three books about the most endearing comic hero he has ever created.

As plain-clothes men go, Dangerous Davies looks like a non-starter. The small fry of petty larceny and minor disturbances in the backwaters of north-west London are his daily round. His philosophising Welsh drinking companion Mod, his outsized and unruly dog Kitty, his quarrels with his landlady Mrs Fulljames - none of these bodes well for the efficient solving of crimes and the outwitting of villainy. But Davies is encouraged by his beautiful friend Jemma, and every so often he stumbles upon something really big.

Lost, baffled, and alone in Willesden's mean streets, Detective Constable Dangerous Davies is up against the cream of criminality. Newspaper theft (the work of organized crime?), household robbery (including cheese from the fridge), it's all grist to his mill. When Dangerous is beaten up, yet again, at a European Friendship dinner dance he reluctantly takes some sick leave. Recuperating in Bournemouth he is approached by a member of the local Widows' Luncheon Club. She wants him to find out the truth about her husband's disappearance. Dangerous declines. It's against the rules. Back in Willesden a further beating helps change his mind. So starts a double life of regular casework and moonlighting as Dangerous lurches into a mystery fit to confuse the great Holmes himself...

Dangerous is back... In this, the fourth of Leslie Thomas's novels about Dangerous Davies, the last detective, Davies has retired from the Metropolitan Police and set up as a private eye. Cases are hard to come by until he is aburptly thrown into two mysteries - the murders of women answering lonely hearts advertisements, and the disappearance of a young girl student, a psychologist and a secret worth millions. But can Davies solve any of the mysteries and will his new career as a private detective be a success? People with the amazing characters that are the trademark of any book by Leslie Thomas, this is a highly original detective story that is as ingenious as it is touching and funny.

In the seedier sprawl of London's northwest frontier, he's the copper who gets all the scruffy jobs and manages to make them scruffier. He's Dangerous Davies, the Last Detective. When Dangerous is allocated a murder case, it proves to be a twenty-five year old sex crime. His witnesses range from a veteran of the Zulu Wars to a bloke who thinks he's Peter the Great... and the mightily endowed Ena Lind, cat-suit wearer and creme-de-menthe drinker. Exhibit A is the pair of green knickers that the victim wasn't wearing...

Detective Constable Dangerous Davies is pursuing a gang of petty cheque-thieves when he is thrown down stairs in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, by the author of Àrrivals and departures'.

A walk through Kensal Green Cemetery, a meat pie in the greasy spoon, a weekend away complete with flannel pyjamas - Dangerous Davies knows how to treat the woman he loves. Detective Constable Davies has two things on his mind: Jemma Duval, the beautiful, black, hymn-singing social worker, and 'Lofty' Brock, the harmless old eccentric who drowned in the canal. To prove that Lofty's death was no accident, our hero sets out to do some undercover detective work. He soon discovers that something sinister is going on. Something that requires intuition, dedication, brilliant deduction - and a timely blow with a blunt instrument.