• 'An unusually well told mystery tale' New York Times

• 'A very good tale' Boston Transcript

• Lucy Malleson's first detective novel under her most popular pseudonym, Anthony Gilbert, back in print for the first time in almost a century

• Amateur sleuth Scott Egerton's first case

When Sir Simon Chandos is found poisoned in his library, with a confession in front of him and a phial of morphia tablets on the table at his side, suicide is the obvious deduction. This is a dreadful shock to the members of the house party gathered in his picturesque old Norman country house, Freyne Abbey. But the discovery of a trivial discrepancy, by one of the guests, turns the suspicion in the direction of murder, and from that slight clue the amateur detective, Scott Egerton, unravels the web of an exceptionally brilliant and cold-blooded plot...

About the Author

Anthony Gilbert was one of four pseudonyms adopted by Lucy Beatrice Malleson, the English novelist who wrote over seventy detective and crime novels between 1925 and 1972. From the age of seventeen, she wrote verse and short pieces for Punch and various literary weeklies. Her first crime novel The Man Who Was London was published in 1925 under the name of J. Kilmeny Keith. She also wrote as Anne Meredith and Lucy Egerton. Malleson settled on the Anthony Gilbert pen name for her most popular literary creation, earthy, pugnacious, Cockney lawyer-detective Arthur G. Crook, who starred in over fifty novels. She was an early member of the prestigious Detection Club. She valued her privacy and for many years successfully concealed her identity as the writer of the Gilbert novels, even publishing her memoir, Three-a-Penny, under a pseudonym. It was recently reissued under her real name and was a BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week'. She lived most of her life in London and never married. She died in 1973.

Praise for Anthony Gilbert

'Unquestionably a most intelligent author. Gifts of ingenuity, style and character drawing'
The Sunday Times

'Arthur Crook is a lawyer-sleuth worth meeting'
New York Times

'His stories, like his detective, Mr Crook, have vitality with decent and credible characters and, detection-wise, fair play'
Times Literary Supplement

'Careful in craftsmanship, scrupulously fair, more than well-written, Anthony Gilbert's novels show the unsensational type of detective story at its best'
The Daily Telegraph

'Anthony Gilbert is a master not only of the craft of the crime story, but also of the creation of character and atmosphere'
Irish Independent

'Mr Gilbert writes extremely well'
E.C. Bentley

'Anthony Gilbert has real descriptive power'
E.R. Punshon

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• Mystery, Thriller & SuspenseMysteryPrivate Investigators

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• Print Length: 230 Pages
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