A Bella Wallis Mystery

The Player's Curse

Kidnap, cricket and cross-dressing: all in a day's work for Bella Wallis in her third thrilling Victorian mystery.

Thompson specialises in sharp, elliptical dialogue and brisk little glances into the murk that rises beyond Bella's window

Brian Thompson writes well and there is a rich vein of humour

Brian Thompson was born in London in 1935 and now lives in Oxford. He has written two award-winning volumes of memoir: Keeping Mum (2006), winner of the Costa Prize for Biography and the PEN/Ackerley Prize, and Clever Girl (2007), longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. The Player's Curse is the third Bella Wallis mystery, following The Widow's Secret, and The Captain's Table. A fourth and final volume is planned.

Bella Wallis – respectable society widow with a secret identity as a writer of sensationalist novels – is now happily engaged to the love of her life, Philip Westland. But Westland’s shadowy job, working for the British government, continually takes him abroad and away from the charismatic, impatient Bella. And then there is the matter of Westland’s sister’s incarceration in a French nunnery, a mystery about which he refuses to say a word. 
 
Bella is convinced that their future together can only be resolved by getting to the bottom of his secret. The resulting quest will take her from the Oval, and a vicious curse laid on champion batsman W.G Grace, to the desolate moors of Yorkshire, on the trail of some decidedly dangerous women and a surprisingly chatty hermit…

The Captain's Table

Bella Wallis -- 'woman of mystery' -- returns in a scintillating new episode from prizewinning author Brian Thompson

With a glorious heroine and wicked humour, Brian Thompson lays bare the sexual shenanigans and hypocrisy of Victorian England.

Brian Thompson was born in London in 1935 and now lives in Oxford. He has written two award-winning volumes of memoir: Keeping Mum (2006), winner of the Costa Prize for Biography and the PEN/Ackerley Prize, and Clever Girl (2007), longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. The first Bella Wallis mystery, The Widow's Secret, was published in 2008.

London, 1875. At Lady Cornford's famous soiree (sugared almonds and tittle-tattle) everyone is gossiping about Henry Ellis Margam's latest hit, The Widow's Secret. Only a few people know that one of Lady C's guests, the enigmatic Bella Wallis, is in fact the bestselling novelist. Bella punishes evil-doers by exposing them as thinly-disguised characters in the books she writes under her male pseudonym. Armed with her pen, the handsome Miss Wallis surrounds herself with useful men: the dashing Philip Westland, possibly a government spy; Captain Quigley, Bella's fixer, and his shady assistant, Murch, who can always crack a bone or two when someone needs persuading. 
 
Westland comes to Bella with a problem: his best friend Kennett is smitten by the heiress Miss Mary Skillane. But Mary's father, Sir William is 'an old fraud with a beautiful daughter' and she has been promised to Robert Judd, a vulgar treasure seeker. Mary is due to inherit the Skillane pearls, currently residing in a red lacquer box in a Cornish bank vault. But the pearls it seems were ill-gotten, and as Bella and her band uncover more of the strange business, a new Henry Ellis Margam novel looks set to be written, if Bella can first side-step her own affairs of the heart, and evade a brutal threat to her life...

The Sailor's Ransom

Glamorous, glorious heroine Bella Wallis must investigate the case of an unhappy heiress and some mysterious pearls in her second thrilling Victorian mystery.

With a glorious heroine and wicked humour, Brian Thompson lays bare the sexual shenanigans and hypocrisy of Victorian England

The atmosphere is delicious, tangible, and irresistible. The dialogue is believably Victorian. And Bella Wallis is a joy to follow around through a few hundred pages

London is alive with gossip about the thrilling new book by sensationalist author Henry Ellis Margam, but only a select group of people know that the real author is beautiful widow, and member of high society, Bella Wallis. 
 
One of her confidantes is the dashing Philip Westland, who comes to Bella now with a problem: his best friend Kennet is smitten with the heiress Mary Skillane but Mary's father, Sir William, has promised her to Robert Judd, a vulgar treasure-seeker. Mary is due to inherit the Skillane pearls, which are currently residing in a Cornsih bank vault, but it seems that the pearls were ill-gotten. 
 
Can Bella and her friends reunite the young lovers and escape the attention of the villainous Judd?

Bella Wallis Mystery

The Widow's Secret

Meet Bella Wallis: a charismatic Victorian widow with a secret sideline in writing sensationalist novels and a fierce determination to seek revenge in print for what can never be achieved in real life.

The Widow's Secret drops us headfirst into the realm of 19th-century sensation fiction - the lurid stuff of Wilkie Collins and old-fashioned penny dreadfuls. Although Brian Thompson is best known for his recent memoirs he's equally convincing on murder, mystery and the Victorians. As the curtain-raiser for a new detective series, this novel is a bold beginning. Thompson is clearly having the time of his life here. He revels in the vigilante justice, ribald talk and Dickensian grotesques at his disposal

A neo-Victorian yarn that rattles on merrily and rings true. We are told that more instalments of Bella's exploits are on the way. Let them come, say I

Brian Thompson writes well and there's a rich vein of humour

Entertaining, indeed dazzling. Dickensian in its humour, its vivid evocation of a criminal underworld, and the poverty and filth of the Victorian city

Brian Thompson was born in London in 1935 and now lives in Oxford. He has written two award-winning volumes of memoir: Keeping Mum (2006), winner of the Costa Prize for Biography and the PEN/Ackerley Prize, and Clever Girl (2007), longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

Bella Wallis is a respectable society woman with a secret identity: in an office buried deep within the seedy backstreets of London, she writes sensationalist novels exposing the scoundrels that litter high society under the pen name Henry Ellis Margam. 
 
So when a crested cigar case is found near the body of a murdered prostitute, Bella and her friends are determined to trace the murderer and write a mystery that will avenge the poor girl's untimely death. But the owner of the cigar case is a dangerous - and rich - man who has already destroyed the lives of others who have crossed him. Will Bella see justice done, or will she meet the same fate as so many of her characters...? 
 
The Widow's Secret is the first in the Bella Wallis series of mysteries and takes us from London to Paris, from the highest of society to the lowest of the low. It is an entertaining, effervescent romp and a wonderful introduction to this most charismatic of heroines.

Brian Thompson

A joyous, life-and-love-affirming account

A portrait of love and grief, both witty and tender

A beguiling mosaic of incidents and anecdotes… Writing of real charm and humour

Thompson is a terrific memoirist – wry, vivid and with one eye trained unforgivingly on his own failings... A beautifully written, deeply affecting book

A beguiling mosaic of anecdotes… Real charm and humour

A moving tribute… A refreshingly honest book

A poignant, wry and honest memoir, laced with a self-deprecating wit

Good books about being old but feeling young are rare and this is one. Brian Thompson knows how to keep the reader reading

Thompson writes with a style and a sense of humour that engages the reader and avoids self-indulgence

This tender memorial is told with fun, wit, gentleness and an honesty that does not shrink from the occasional bad temper and tetchiness

A delight in store from an author with an impressive track record

A love story (with the usual reservations)

In 1973, Brian Thompson kissed the impossibly glamorous Elizabeth North for the first time, in a busy supermarket car park along the Leeds ring road. This is the story of the unexpectedly joyous consequences – ones to baffle many, not least themselves – until her death, aged 78. 
 
Both were writers, though they came from opposite ends of the social register – she an Admiral’s daughter, he the descendant of unruly Cockney eccentrics. She was by nature a solitary, while he was loud, incurably facetious – and needy. From a tiny Harrogate terrace, to the deeply un-picturesque French farmhouse where they spent their summers, Brian and Liz battled their way to a heart-rending goodbye in an Oxford hospital ward. In many ways, their partnership was ‘an exercise in asymmetry’ – yet, despite the conflicts, they emerge in this deeply-felt memoir as a couple who were lucky enough to find their corner of paradise in one another.

A Corner of Paradise

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Brian Thompson

Praise for A Corner of Paradise

A joyous, life-and-love-affirming account

A portrait of love and grief, both witty and tender

A beguiling mosaic of incidents and anecdotes… Writing of real charm and humour

A joyous, life-and-love-affirming account

A portrait of love and grief, both witty and tender

A beguiling mosaic of incidents and anecdotes… Writing of real charm and humour

A joyous, life-and-love-affirming account

A portrait of love and grief, both witty and tender

A beguiling mosaic of incidents and anecdotes… Writing of real charm and humour

Books by Brian Thompson

Series by Brian Thompson

Bella Wallis Victorian Mysteries

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