POST ONLINE: 'Take Hercule Poirot, Philip Marlowe and Inspector Clouseau, rolled into one, and you have the Penny Detective. This is a highly imaginative five-star read. The Penny Detective Eight Morris Shannon and his long-suffering sidekick Shoddy are on the trail of a brutal killer in this eighth book in the Penny Detective series. This is a superb story of murder and suspense that is set against the backdrop of Liverpool in the 1980s. Morris is working for a journalist who wants to track down a killer. He is trying his best to cut through a web of intrigue and lies to get to the truth, in this classic British Detective page-turner that is often funny, sometimes very tense but never dull. The Hangman Mystery will keep you guessing until the last page.