Ellis Peters: Never Pick Up Hitch-Hikers! (USA 2016)

From the Publisher:
An English hitchhiker disrupts a criminal's plans in this caper gone wrong from the Edgar Award-winning author of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael.
On the road to a new town and a new life, William Banks is grateful to Alf, the somewhat seedy stranger who gives him a lift. In return, the unworldly young man is more than happy to deliver a package for his benefactor to a specific address in Braybourne.

He has no idea, however, that his driver has chosen him to serve as a patsy in a sinister plot to retrieve £250,000 stolen earlier from a Braybourne bank -- and that, if the scheme succeeds, William Banks will be dead before sundown.

But with the help of Calli, a lass William encounters along the way, and a dose of blind luck, he is able to avoid a most unpleasant end. Now he and Calli will somehow have to steer clear of London gangsters, as well as the original thief and his vengeful entourage, while further derailing Alf's insidious plot without getting shot, stabbed, strangled, or blown to smithereens in the process.

The Edgar, Agatha, and Gold Dagger Award-winning author delivers a funny, edgy stand-alone crime novel. "Charm is not usual in murder mysteries, but Ellis Peters' stories are full of it." -- The Mail on Sunday

Ellis Peters: Never Pick Up Hitch-Hikers! MysteriousPress.com / Open Road Integrated Media, ISBN: 9781480443853 (March, 2016), eBook, 5.59 MB (ca. 261 p.), $9.99.

Ellis Peters: Never Pick Up Hitch-Hikers! (UK 2000)

From the Publisher:
When Alf Jarrett spots the hitch-hiker waiting on the motorway slip-road, he thinks his prayers have been answered. William Banks is a personable young man of twenty, just leaving home for the first time - perfect for what Alf has in mind.

And when William is offered a free night's lodging and the chance to repay Alf for the lift, he accepts eagerly. After all, it sounds simple enough - drop off a package at a block of flats and post the spare key through the letter-box.

What William doesn't realise is that he is the intended victim in a sinister plan of arson and murder. And it is only his good fortune - and the timely intervention of a guardian angel in the form of a charming girl called Calli - that saves him from becoming a corpse...

Thrown involuntarily into a case that involves mistaken identity and a bank robbery from which the spoils have never been recovered, the two young sleuths discover they aren't the only ones on the trail... And there is another murder and a dramatic confrontation before the tangled threads are finally unravelled.

Ellis Peters: Never Pick Up Hitch-Hikers! A Classic Whodunnit. Headline, ISBN: 0747238405 (November, 2000), 256 p., £6.99.

Ellis Peters: Never Pick Up Hitch-Hikers! (USA 1976)

From the Publisher:
When a stranger offers young William Banks a ride and then asks him to deliver a package, Banks agrees, unaware that he is about to become part of a sinister plot. How could he know that the stranger wants a very special favor? The innocuous-looking package contains a fire bomb, and what the stranger needs is Banks's dead body!

This is the beginning of a chilling story set in England in the quiet little town of Braybourne, which suddenly becomes the center of deadly activity. Three years carlier, Braybourne's Regional Assurance Bank had been robbed of a quarter of a million pounds-the money had never been recovered. Now a group of ruthless and determined men have converged on Braybourne to find the money, even if they have to kill to get it. In the middle of everything are William Banks and the girl he meets, Calli Francis. Only they can lead the police to the money. That knowledge throws them into a dangerous tangle of mistaken identity and violence. Never Pick Up Hitch-Hikers! is a compelling and swiftly paced story by a master of suspense.

Ellis Peters is the nom-de-crime of English novelist Edith Pargeter, author of more than twenty books under her own name. Ellis Peters came into being in 1959, to the delight of readers everywhere who appreciate the fully drawn characters and admirably descriptive background mixed with the spectre of evil-doing. Miss Pargeter is well known as a translator of prose and poetry from the Czech language and in 1968 was awarded the Gold Medal of the Czechoslovak Society for International Relations for her services to Czechoslovak literature.

Ellis Peters: Never Pick Up Hitch-Hikers! A Chilling Novel of Suspense. New York: William Morrow, 1976, ISBN: 0688030491, 256 p., $7.95.