Although he expects to revel in his Scottish heritage, Qwill must try to keep Polly safe from the Pickax Prowler. Instead, his trip is cut short when a thief swipes a suitcase, the bus driver disappears, and a fellow tourist is found dead - all on the same day. The remaining tour members return to Pickax, where Qwill has other worries on his mind: Who is the fellow still following Polly? In The Cat Who Went into the Closet, Qwill rents Euphonia Gage's mansion in Pickax, which includes fifteen closets jammed with several generations of junk. Koko begins investigating and discovers obsolete currency, canceled checks, an old bankbook, nail clippers, foot powder and a man's argyle sock. Meantime, while enjoying a new life in Florida, the mansion's former occupant apparently commits suicide. But why would someone as happy as Euphonia kill herself? In The Cat Who Came to Breakfast, the development of a major resort complex at the southern end of serene Pear Island (affectionately known as Breakfast Island) is causing a ruckus. Local residents, summer people, and mainland fishermen are all hopping mad that the peace of their island retreat is being shattered. Then a cabin cruiser explodes in the marina, causing general alarm. And when a series of deadly "accidents" follows on the heels of the mysterious explosion, Qwilleran begins to wonder if sabotage is involved.

    The visitor in the coffin has come to be buried in the Abbey's grounds, and it is his attendant Elave's mission to carry out his master's final wish. But Gerbert, the mighty prelate and guest of the Benedictines, remembers the dead man as a heretic. When a violent death ensues, Brother Cadfael is called once more to turn detective and solve the murder - but matters are complicated still further by the marvellous treasure box in Elave's care...The Potter's Field: During the ploughing of the Potter's Field in October 1143 the grisly remains of a woman's body are unearthed. Recently abandoned by her husband, the tenant potter, rumour had it that the wild, beautiful Welsh woman had returned to her homeland - perhaps with a lover. But the discovery of the corpse on Abbey land raises all sorts of questions, and ones that impel Brother Cadfael to leave the tranquillity of the herbiary in order to piece together the cryptic clues of a baffling crime.The Summer of the Danes: In April 1144 Brother Cadfael leaves his monastery once more, in the company of the youthful Brother Mark, representing the bishop on a matter of church diplomacy. Cadfael does not foresee trouble on their errand, but then the travellers become entangled in the affairs of Heledd, a young woman desperate to escape an arranged marriage, and in the conflict between Owain Gwynedd and his treacherous brother Cadwaladr, who has allied himself with a Danish mercenary fleet in order to vanquish Owain...

    Although it was always intended to be a screenplay, it was first put to paper in prose as a glorified treatment which I enjoy calling a novella. The reasons for this circuitous writing process were twofold: first I was very intentionally cribbing from the novels of Dashiell Hammett, and thought that doing a prose pass imitating as best I could his style of writing would help shape the thing as a whole. Second, I did not own a professional screenwriting program, and had to format the whole damn thing using tabs in Word, so the less I goofed around with it in screenplay format the better." - Rian Johnson