Set just after the First World War, the novel follows a country-house household when a wounded officer returns from the trenches with severe mental shock and memory loss.

A celebrated detective traveling home is detained when a murder is found on the Orient Express after heavy snowfall. Stranded passengers become a finite pool of suspects and the detective must sort through conflicting alibis, motives, and testimony to reconstruct what happened before the train resumes its journey.

Set on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s, the novel follows Bigger Thomas, a young Black man shaped by crushing poverty and social isolation.

A country solicitor is drawn into defending a mother and daughter accused of abducting and assaulting a visiting young woman. The plot hinges on assembling testimony, scrutinizing inconsistent claims, and testing how community suspicion and newspaper pressure shape culpability.