Die Once Sixth in the Dido Hoare Mysteries series. First publication: 2002 UK hardback More? Read sample chapter Reviews Buy on-line(coming soon)

Tim Curwen is any bookseller's ideal customer -- polite, enthusiastic, loyal, and rich.

Three days after Dido Hoare sells him Charles Dickens' The Haunted Man, her elegant young customer jumps to his death. Not only that: his cheque has bounced.

Being as stubborn as the next antiquarian book dealer, Dido sets out to retrieve either the book or her money. Simple? Yet in Curwen's flat, she discovers that the book is missing. So are all the other valuable books she has ever sold him, as well as his personal belongings right down to the food in the kitchen, and not forgetting the mysterious sister -- if she really exists.

With the reluctant help of her father, Professor Barnabas Hoare, a drunken policeman, a detective disguised as a dentist, a blind boy with an alias, and a thoroughly unreliable journalist, Dido follows a trail from the empty mansion flat to an abandoned house in London's East End, from threat to cover-up, from betrayal to more deaths. Through it all, her stubborn curiosity leads her to an unexpected truth.