They include three Inspector Banks short stories, one (Going Back) previously unpublished.

The stories are set in Yorkshire, London, Canada (often Toronto), the United States, Paris and Vienna.

Two stories in Not Safe After Dark: Missing in Action and In Flanders Fields are set in wartime (1940s) Yorkshire with Frank Bascombe a "special constable in the war" and veteran of World War I.

The story Cornelius Jubb in The Price of Love was intended as the third and refers to "Constable Bascombe", although he could not use the full name Frank Bascombe in that collection for copyright reasons; see Introduction and Afternotes to the collections.

Those from anthologies often involve a theme specified by the editor or a source, which are given below if stated by Robinson in the Introduction to the collection.