Scotland Yard investigate when a woman, apparently the estranged wife of a London painter, is murdered with a shotgun in rural Surrey at the same time as the artist's striking model with her long black hair disappears.

The lives of the members of a West Yorkshire cycling club are complicated by romantic entanglements and a series of bike thefts.

A British army officer becomes fascinated by the portrait of a young woman. He travels to Germany to find her, only to discover that she is suffering from amnesia.

Someone knocked out a man and left him for dead during a fishing trip in Portugal. That someone is either his fetching wife, or two business partners, all sporting guilty faces after his unexpected return. Two more murders and a frame-up befall the quartet before an inspector closes the case.

There's pandemonium in a country house when various relatives come to stay.

A strange new virus has appeared, which only attacks strains of grasses such as wheat and rice, and the world is descending into famine and chaos. Architect John, along with his family and friends, is making his way from London to his brother's farm in northern England where there will hopefully be food and safety for all of them.