David Stuart Williams (1926-2003) was a successful advertising executive who began dabbling in crime fiction as a hobby before illness forced his retirement and he took up writing full time. He published 23 detective novels between 1976 and 2003, 6 about DCI Merlin Parry and DS Gomer Lloyd, policemen in Cardiff, Wales, and 17 about Mark Treasure, a merchant banker in London, England, and his actress wife Molly Forbes.
Treasure by Post (Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press, 1991) is Treasure’s 14th appearance in an imaginative story about a convent with an unusually generous endowment. Treasure’s wife is filming in the West Country and he visits for a few days, partly to learn more about a request that he take a role in overseeing the finances of a local convent with only three elderly nuns. To his surprise, Treasure learns that the convent has far more money than the nuns can possibly spend and most of it is being donated to other charities.
One of the trustees died during a confrontation with thieves in the church, creating the vacancy that Treasure is expected to fill. A second one is murdered after a meeting of the trustees and the endowment officials. The remaining trustee wants to wrap up the trust and distribute the proceeds. The prospective recipients are all in favor of this idea.
A separate thread deals with an investigation into a stream of counterfeit postage stamps, the source of which points to the convent. No one can believe that three geriatric nuns have anything to do with forging rare British colonial postage stamps, but the trail leads back to one of the sisters who is a talented artist.
Treasure’s practical approach to the murders, the trust, and the fraudulent stamps helps the local police sort through the various crises that have rapidly taken over their attention to the exclusion of everything else.
I really enjoy reading these books. They remind me of the John Putnam Thatcher series by Emma Lathen. No shoot-outs, no car chases, no over-the-top confrontations. Just solid plotting, entertaining characters, competent writing, and original scenarios. This series is hard to find and is ripe for reprinting. I hope a publisher sees its way to re-releasing them soon. Highly recommended!