Smoke Screen Third in the Dido Hoare Mysteries series. First publication: 1999 UK hard/soft back US hard/soft back Audio book More? Read sample chapter Reviews Buy on-line(coming soon)

When Her Majesty offers Dido Hoare, London's most intrepid antiquarian bookseller, the opportunity to buy her personal library, Dido can't believe her luck. But it turns out to be her last bit of good fortune for some time.

Her Majesty is in fact the aged and daunting Clare Templeton Forbes, once the lover of the famous American modernist poet, Orrin Forbes, and the mother of Forbes' only child. Dido is suspicious of Clare's rush to sell the books. She suspects that some kind of family quarrel is being acted out, but she knows that her shop can profit nicely from the deal, and so she goes ahead with it.

Then things turn nasty. When the old Templeton house in Oxford catches fire, Clare is found dead and Dido herself has to flee. Then she discovers the valuable manuscript of the great poet's famous Lost Canto in her own locked car, and she is soon being asked to "help the police with their enquiries" - though not in the way that she normally prefers. Who would want Clare dead, and why? Who would want to frame Dido, and why?

In her search for answers, Dido delves into the past of both the Templetons and her own family, always with the sceptical assistance of her father, Barnabas, who discovered the worst about Claire Templeton years ago.