Treasure by Post

Treasure by Post is a mystery novel by the British writer Stuart David Williams, published in 1992 by St. Martin's Press. It is one of his novels about the merchant banker and amateur detective Mark Treasure.

Treasure is in the West Country because his wife Molly is on location with a film, and the Area Bishop of Chiversley asks him to review the affairs of a convent that has only three nuns left and assets worth a very large sum. He finds that two of the people who have been managing those affairs are dead, one in circumstances that were written off at the time and one strangled shortly after leaving a dinner party, and that a fire at the convent itself may be connected to the same business. The local police settle on a suspect Treasure believes is innocent, which leaves him using his professional knowledge of trusts, investments and paperwork to find out who benefits. Williams wrote a series of these, and his detective is unusual in that his expertise is financial rather than forensic.

The book followed a run of Treasure novels that began with Unholy Writ in 1976, and the series is set in the same English counties where Williams, a former director of the British Museum, spent his life.