An escaped convict, a mysterious deserted house, and murder in the Lake District..
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club
The shades of night were falling fast when Arthur Crook drove the old Superb over the Lakeland Fells and into the valley, to stop at a mysterious house where, though a light burned in an upper window, no one answered the bell.
Here opens a double murder mystery in which Crook acts in the defence of a young prisoner on the run, whose guilt appears evident.
'The usual gusto, racy prose, good plotting and up-to-the-minute social observation' Sunday Times
Well-plotted, fast-moving - brilliant
Anthony Gilbert shared with other successful crime writers a combination of writing talent and clever plotting skills necessary to make it in detective fiction's Golden Age ... Along with Agatha Christie [he] had a talent to deceive - mysteryfile.com
No author is more skilled at making a good story seem brilliant - SUNDAY EXPRESS
The plot is knife-edge tension all the way - BELFAST TELEGRAPH
Fast, light, likeable - NEW YORK TIMES
Unquestionably a most intelligent author. Gifts of ingenuity, style and character drawing - SUNDAY TIMES
The usual gusto, racy prose, good plotting and up-to-the-minute social observation - SUNDAY TIMES
If there is one author whose books need to be widely available, it is Gilbert - Inkquilletc.blogspot
Anthony Gilbert was the pen name of Lucy Beatrice Malleson. Born in London, she spent all her life there, and her affection for the city is clear from the strong sense of character and place in evidence in her work. She published 69 crime novels, 51 of which featured her best known character, Arthur Crook, a vulgar London lawyer totally (and deliberately) unlike the aristocratic detectives, such as Lord Peter Wimsey, who dominated the mystery field at the time. She also wrote more than 25 radio plays, which were broadcast in Great Britain and overseas. Her thriller The Woman in Red (1941) was broadcast in the United States by CBS and made into a film in 1945 under the title My Name is Julia Ross. She was an early member of the British Detection Club, which, along with Dorothy L. Sayers, she prevented from disintegrating during World War II. Malleson published her autobiography, Three-a-Penny, in 1940, and wrote numerous short stories, which were published in several anthologies and in such periodicals as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and The Saint. The short story 'You Can't Hang Twice' received a Queens award in 1946. She never married, and evidence of her feminism is elegantly expressed in much of her work.