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Overview: Born in 1926, Gerald Hammond lived in Scotland, where he retired from his profession as an architect in 1982 to pursue his love of shooting and fishing and to write full time. After his first novel, Fred in Situ, was published in 1965, Gerald became a prolific author with over 70 published novels. His last title, The Unkindest Cut, was published in 2012. Most of his novels were published under his own name, but he also wrote under the pseudonyms Arthur Douglas and Dalby Holden.
Genre: Mystery & Crime
1. Dead Game
Keith Calder is an itinerant gunsmith and shooting instructor. He is also a rascal with a total disregard for the law, a skilled and dedicated poacher of birds of both varieties.
Calder is a guest at a shoot in the Scottish Borders when one of the syndicate members dies—apparently by accident, but a bullet is found in his body.
Calder has a personal interest in the case, which deepens when the brother of his current girlfriend is arrested and charged with the murder. Calder begins to makes his own enquiries but he and Molly find themselves in danger . . .
2. The Reward Game
Imagine returning to your parked car and finding a corpse in it…
This is exactly what happened to Molly Calder, and the discovery sparks the beginning of a tense trail for Molly and her husband Keith.
They have their work cut out in chasing reward money for missing gems and missing money: the search leads them from their rural setting to the heart of Glasgow—and they need help from family and friends along the way. Molly wants to buy Briesland House more than anything in the world, although she’s pretty keen on trying to keep her husband safe and sound—will she be successful?
3. The Revenge Game
Drama comes to the quiet town of Newton Lauder when the canal overflows, flooding streets, houses and the surrounding countryside. The drama is intensified when there is found, in the emptied canal, a skeleton, soon identified as that of a canal employee, absent for over a year and missed, but not lamented, by his colleagues.
Keith Calder — gunsmith, hunter and more-or-less reformed Casanova — is only interested in the flood as it affects the movement of the local wildfowl, until he is interviewed by the police in connection with certain anomalies in the dead man’s firearms certificate. During the interview, Keith gets word that his shop is on fire; and there starts a horrific chain of events which involves him deeply and personally.
As assault and attempted murder are added to homicide and arson, Keith’s inbred instinct as a hunter comes to the fore and what follows is a tremendously exciting and tautly-plotted whodunnit.
4. Fair Game
When Ray Grass died he left an estate worth millions, a valuable collection of firearms and a will full of his own mischievous sense of fun. He had been an enthusiastic sportsman and when the fatal accident enquiry brought in a verdict of accidental death, due to his carrying a loaded gun while climbing a fence, his neighbours and acquaintances shook their heads sadly at the folly of rich bachelors.
But for some of his friends such carelessness was uncharacteristic, so reluctantly (but with an eye on the gun collection) Keith Calder agreed to accompany the solicitor, Enterkin, to Grass’s estate and make his own enquiries.
Once Calder learnt the detailed facts of the ‘accidental’ death, he knew the verdict had been wrong and set about trying to prove the truth. Not an easy task, since he was surrounded by a large number of people who, in very individual and bizarre ways, would benefit hugely from Grass’s death.
He discovered that one of the policemen on the case shared his doubts. As they piece together the events of the death they find more than one murder and run into grave danger.
5. The Game
Keith Calder, the engaging rogue who has appeared in Gerald Hammond’s previous novels, is in his element in this new adventure.
Millmont House, not far from Edinburgh, is the headquarters of a group of companies under the name of Personal Service, and Millmont House offers the oldest service – it is a high class and very expensive brothel. In one of its luxury apartments there is substantial evidence that a murder has been committed and it is clear that an antique pistol was the weapon.
But there is no body, in fact no clue as to who might have been killed, never mind who was the murderer. Into this discreet, wealthy atmosphere comes Keith to privately investigate the crime and, with little finesse but with great promptitude, he manages to establish who is dead. He also disturbs a hornets nest of local government corruption and blackmail.
6. Cousin Once Removed
Keith Calder returns home from a tour of France with a deep tan, a disenchanted wife, a profitable deal in duty-free and an accumulation of vintage guns – including a pair of duelling pistols found in a bricked-up barn.
He is not long home when it becomes clear that some item in the collection has aroused fierce competition. Not only is he made a tempting but unspecific offer by a titled politician, but an attempt is made on his life and he would have bled to death but for the despatch of an ambulance to his aid, apparently by his assailants.
Not the man to wait on events, Keith sets himself a programme of convalescence and confrontation.
The results, in the best Calder tradition, are devious, shocking and spectacular. They include a humiliating incident on a grouse moor, attempted robbery, a hundred and fifty-year-old duelling scandal and contemporary greed and corruption.
7. Sauce For the Pigeon
A burnt out land rover is found with a body in the driver’s seat, and over two dozen dead woodpigeons nearby…
Inspector Munro, needing expert help with the forensic evidence, swallows his natural distrust of Keith Calder and asks him to assist the Police. But Calder’s enthusiasm to help rapidly turns to dismay when he realises his findings point to the involvement of his inventor-storekeeper friend, Jake Paterson.
Jake had been sleeping with the victim’s wife and, with Edinburgh’s Chief Inspector Russell holding a long-standing grudge against him, there’s a swift arrest and murder charge.
But something doesn’t add up for Calder.
Can he discover the truth to save his friend and bring the true murderer to justice?
8. Pursuit of Arms
Keith Calder struck a deal with Eddie Adoni for the overhaul of a load of Sterlings and Brownings, although he knew that Eddie’s reputation as an arms dealer was mixed. But the lorry transporting the guns was hijacked outside Keith’s workshop, leaving two men dead.
Keith, aided by his brother-in-law and surreptitiously by Superintendent Munro, begins his own search — a quest which becomes urgent when a member of his family is kidnapped by the hijackers.
9. Silver City Scandal
The silver city is Aberdeen, capital of the North Sea oil industry, and it is here that Keith Calder is summoned to give evidence in the trial of Hugh Donald for murder…
Keith’s ballistic evidence proves unexpected and the result is that peculiarly Scottish verdict – Not Proven.
But ‘Not Proven’ is a long way from ‘Not Guilty’. Hugh Donald is employed by one of the giants in the oil industry. His position, in which he holds the financial power to make or break contractors, is one which demands trust. Hugh Donald and his employers are jointly determined that his name must be cleared.
Donald and his solicitor, Jeremy Prather, persuade Keith to reinvestigate in the hope of finding the real killer. The evidence is months old, but they have two starting points: the substitution of another gun in place of the murder weapon and the conviction that the motive is connected to Donald’s working life.
Will they be able to unravel the crime?
10. The Executor
Keith’s friend and customer Robin Winterton has been murdered, and—almost as shocking to Keith—his not-so grieving widow has sold Winterton’s superb antique gun collection to a knocker for a fraction of its worth.
As executor of Winterton’s estate, Calder tries to track down the guns. He soon comes across some facts at variance with the prevailing theory that Winterton was killed by a casual thief. Further investigation uncovers blackmail, violence, and more than one skeleton in the Winterton family closet.
11. The Worried Widow
Keith Calder—ex-poacher, gunsmith, and sometime sleuth—returns to solve a sinister crime.
The worried widow is Jenny Hendrickson, whose husband has just been found fatally shot, apparently by his own hand. Jenny doesn’t believe that Sam Hendrickson would have committed suicide, and pleads with Keith to look into the case.
Against his better judgement—he was no great admirer of the deceased, a hard-nosed union boss—Keith allows his wife Molly to persuade him to heed the widow’s request. Soon he begins to think that Jenny may be right and the coroner’s verdict wrong. When his old enemy, Inspector Munro, hints the police aren’t entirely satisfied with the verdict, Keith is far too intrigued to let the matter drop.
But he runs up against a seeming dead end: While several people were nearby when the fatal shot was heard, no one apparently had the opportunity to kill Hendrickson. Calder’s natural stubbornness prevails, however, and the outcome is a puzzle skilfully solved.
12. Adverse Report
This time, the story is told by a bemused Londoner who meets Calder, and a host of other local characters, when they all become embroiled in a Highland whodunit.
When Englishman Simon Parbitter journeys to Scotland to view a piece of property he has inherited from a recently deceased relative, he learns that the “shooting accident” that killed his uncle may not have been quite so accidental.
Picking up the unpleasant scent of murder, Parbitter turns to Keith Calder for help in investigating the incident; but when Calder himself is injured in another such mishap, he and Parbitter are forced to throw themselves into a full-fledged hunt for the killer.
What follows is a taut, complex mystery, a true test of Keith Calder’s mental resources.
13. Stray Shot
When Simon’s dog is stolen during a hunt, and another disappears on the same day, at first it seems just a freak incident; but when one dog reappears, only to be stolen again—along with some samples of a revolutionary new shotgun cartridge—it becomes clear that something more foul is afoot.
As Simon traces the scent across the Atlantic, and dognapping turns to murder, Keith Calder finds himself embroiled in a mystery that takes all his wits, and those of Simon as well, to solve.
14. A Brace of Skeet
This time, it’s Calder’s daughter’s turn to tell the tale, as she takes her father’s place as resident gunsmith—and amateur sleuth—of Newton Lauder.
The last thing Deborah Calder thought she’d be consulted on during her parent’s vacation was a murder. Yet they’d hardly left when Inspector Munro called her to the Pentland Gun Club, where the steward’s body had been found lying by a skeet trap. Tullos wasn’t a popular man, but his grouchy moods were hardly a cause for murder.
Finding the cause becomes Deborah’s mission, as she is suddenly appointed the expert forensic witness—and, with her father’s curiosity, finds herself launching an investigation of her own.
15. Let Us Prey
In Ladyhill Woods Jim Broxburn, the keeper, has been found dead.
If, as it appears, he accidentally jabbed himself while preparing bait for birds of prey, it could mean serious trouble for Alec Deeley, the owner of the land and chairman of the local shooting syndicate. But Broxburn was a law-abiding man, with a deep concern for all wildlife.
It is solicitor Ralph Enterkin’s task to clear Deeley’s name and resolve the uncertainty surrounding the accident. As his investigations continue Enterkin, with the help of his wife and gunsports expert Keith Calder, reveals that Broxburn was on to something, and was silenced before he could take action. But Enterkin and his associates take over where the keeper was forced to leave off, unmasking a cruel and illegal scheme run at the expense of the local landowners and wildlife alike.
16. Home to Roost
In Home to Roost, daughter Deborah—heroine of Hammond’s Let Us Prey—takes on rogue-hunting and romance in one fell swoop.
When Detective Sergeant Fellowes learns that poachers are operating in his area, he’s of two minds about whether to take the matter seriously—after all, his superiors can’t even agree whether it’s worth the trouble to investigate the problem. But when he goes on his first pigeon shoot with Deborah, and a missing-sportsman case comes his way, Fellowes feels bound to follow up; and with the gun-sporting expertise of Deborah Calder at the ready, the Calder/Fellowes team finds itself on the trail of not only a murderer but a burgeoning mutual attraction as well.
17. In Camera
Keith Calder’s gunsmithing used to be confined to the tools of sport. Did he ever expect to encounter an assassin?
Along with whisky, bagpipes, and golf, the Scots have added in the last decade another robust, entertaining tradition: the Highland mysteries of Gerald Hammond, peopled with a colorful assortment of characters and, in his best-known Keith Calder series, filled with fascinating gun lore. In Camera finds Calder, during a slow summer at the gunshop, interviewing a new job candidate. But when a series of questions about the applicant’s references reveals a sinister tale suggesting nothing less than an assassination plot, Calder is met with a case whose repercussions may reach far beyond rural Newton Lauder.
18. Snatch Crop
Gerald Hammond’s latest romp through the Scottish Highlands proves that a Calder can take a new name, but she can’t lose the investigative instinct that courses through the veins of this first family of amateur sleuthing.
When Keith Calder’s daughter Deborah weds Inspector Ian Fellowes, she hopes to luxuriate for a while in matrimonial bliss. Her plans evaporate, however, as she assumes the management of her godfather’s pheasant packing company at his behest.
She soon has the company running at peak efficiency, despite the twin annoyances of Mrs. Thrower, her arrogant and unreliable secretary, and Delia, the obnoxious woman’s unruly daughter. Finding herself wishing that the two would simply disappear, she is nonetheless shocked when one of them actually does.
Inspector Fellowes is assigned to the kidnapping, and Deborah tries to piece together the case from the questions her husband asks her. He’s not giving anything away, though, much to Deborah’s consternation. The Calder in her begins to assert itself, and she decides to launch an investigation of her own. Deborah soon finds herself swept up in a terrifying chain of events – including a perilous cross-country chase with the ruthless abductors – plunging her life into grave danger.
19. Thin Air
Few in the Scottish Highlands can match gunsmith Keith Calder’s knowledge of firearms.
Fewer still have solved as many crimes as Calder, so it is fitting that Gerald Hammond’s unique, most popular amateur sleuth is called upon to solve a particularly vexing murder. Old Murdo, tenant farmer at Easter Coullie Farm, is found lying in a field with a bullet through his head. There is no shortage of suspects in the cranky old man’s murder, but the method is so ingenious that Detective Sergeant Ian Fellowes is baffled.
Enter Keith Calder, who is able to reconstruct what just might have happened…
20. Hook or Crook
Professional fisherman Wallace James and his pupil Eric Bell are fishing for salmon when they discover the body of a man in the river, a fishhook embedded in his cheek.
At first it looks like the man accidentally slipped and fell while fishing. But where’s his fishing rod and the rest of his equipment? The dead man is Bernard Hollister. He hadn’t been in town long and already he’d come to blows with Imad Vahhaji, a quiet, soft-spoken Arab. When questioned about his altercation with Hollister, Vahhaji says nothing. Hollister had worked for many years in the Middle East. Do the reasons for his untimely death lie in his exotic past?
21. Carriage of Justice
In the Scottish Highlands, foxes are a gamekeeper’s worst enemy — except for poachers.
Deborah Fellowes and her Uncle Ronnie think they’ve caught a poacher — but they’ve actually stumbled across something much more sinister. Their “poacher” may turn out to be the perpetrator of a notorious murder that has never been solved… Scottish dialect, Scotch whisky and Highland ambience abound in this charming mystery.
22. Sink or Swim
Set amid the world of sport shooting in Scotland, a Keith Calder mystery—with help from a new sleuth.
While out with a friend on a local shoot, Wallace James has a sudden and terrifying reminder of his own mortality: a myocardial infraction, a.k.a. a heart attack. From now on, he’ll have to take life slowly and avoid exertion or stress.
Of course, this is easier said than done for an active, inquisitive man like Wallace—especially once he starts to follow the news of a local tragedy. Kenneth Berry, an important landowner, has apparently drowned while fishing—and his longtime enemy was reportedly nearby.
But then, even as Wallace stays home to avoid excitement, he overhears a CB radio conversation that suggests Berry’s death involved blackmail and something more sinister than an accident…
23. Follow That Gun
Are they chasing danger, or the truth?
For many years Keith Calder has been making lucrative sales of his antique guns to Mr Foster, an agent for major collectors. However, Keith’s daughter Deborah is suspicious of the buyer. Why does he always pay such large sums in cash? Why does his car have fake number plates? When it turns out Foster was running a money-laundering scam, they tell the police, and Foster’s cover is blown.
When only a few weeks later a raid on the Calder home leaves Keith and his brother-in-law Ronnie in hospital, and the family’s valuable gunroom empty, it’s clear who’s to blame. So it’s up to Deborah, with her husband Detective Inspector Ian Fellowes, to follow the trail to the guns – and to a ruthless man who will stop at nothing. Not even murder…
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