Prescription for Murder - David Williams

The Closter Drug company is going to double in value as soon as it perfects its cure for migraine: most of the directors are set to make sizeable fortunes as they float the company on the Stock Exchange. When a group pledged to stopping experiments on animals demonstrates at a Closter news conference, the action is seen as no more than embarrassing. But the kidnap of one of the Closter directors that follows cannot be so easily ignored, especially when, instead of a ransom, the kidnappers demand that the other directors sell their company shares at a crippling loss. No one understands what the kidnappers themselves are gaining by this, until banker Mark Treasure - the non-executive Chairman of Closter Drug - returns from an American trip and works out what's really happening. Even so he is too late to prevent two murders and the stock market skulduggery that decimates Closter management and threatens to wipe out the company. 'An ingenious puzzle.' Mail on Sunday 'David Williams consistently offers well-crafted English mystery novels, polite, amusing and socially observant.' The Tablet.

David Williams was a writer best known for his crime-novel series featuring the banker Mark Treasure and police inspector DI Parry.

After serving as Naval Officer in the Second World War, Williams completed a History degree at St Johns College, Oxford before embarking on a career in advertising. He became a full-time fiction writer in 1978. Williams wrote twenty-three novels, seventeen of which were part of the Mark Treasure series of whodunnits which began with Unholy Writ (1976). His experience in both the Anglican Church and the advertising world informed and inspired his work throughout his career.

Two of Williams' books were shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award, and in 1988 he was elected to the Detection Club.