Murder by Experts launched Anthony Gilbert's long-running series featuring the shady London lawyer and detective Arthur Crook. Although she had been writing since 1926, this was her first major popular success. The plot revolves around collectors of Chinese antiques. Badly dressed and unappealing, Mr. Crook's appearance often traps murderers. Gilbert uses skillful plotting, lively supporting characters, entertaining dialogue and clever action to tell the story. A strong and popular personality, Crook is not generally the protagonist of the stories, but comes to help when women or children are in peril or an innocent person is blamed for a crime. . .and his clients are always innocent! In this story, Sampson Rubenstein, a wealthy English art collector, has invited several people to his country house to admire his latest acquisition, a very rare and highly valuable Chinese cloak. Fanny Price, a beautiful adventuress, Graham, a dealer in curios, and Simon Curteis, visit the country home to see Rubenstein's collection of Chinese antiquities. Chinese art is his dominant passion and his collection includes a large number of ancient and fabulously valuable cloaks, dresses and other items of clothing. Fanny, an ambitious, intelligent and beautiful woman who fascinates every man who meets her, is middle-aged Graham’s mistress. Curteis is in love with her, he knows that Fanny is dangerous, but doesn't care. Lal, Rubenstein’s wife, is madly jealous of her. Fanny also acts as Graham's agent in buying and selling antiques, especially Chinese antiques. Also in the house is a young photographer artist named Norman Bridie with his girlfriend Rose. Problems erupt on the first night when Rubenstein offers to drive Fanny to the railway station. The weather is atrocious, with heavy rain and fog, and Rubenstein is a notoriously bad and reckless driver. Lal is jealous and makes a scene, but Rubenstein and Fanny leave for the railway station. . . but Rubenstein does not return. Later his car is found at the foot of the cliffs, buried under a fall of rock. Naturally the police expected to find his body there as well, but they do not, and a week or more later he is found stabbed to death in a locked room in his own house. The mystery is narrated by Simon Curteis, an adventurer who has fallen in love with Fanny Price who has been charged with Rubenstein’s murder. Curteis enlists lawyer Arthur G. Crook to help him find the real murder. Anthony Gilbert delivers a twisty plot and a double surprise ending!

Laura Verity, tired of life, decides to rent a very isolated cottage in the countryside. On arriving there in the darkness in the middle of the storm, she is shocked to find evidence that there is somebody else in the house. Shortly afterwards she discovers a body of a young woman, strangled to death, on the bed. Terrified, in the morning she hurries into the nearest market town to report the crime, only to find the police dubious about her claims - particularly when they return to the cottage with her and find no body. Only Arthur Crook, a dishevelled lawyer she encounter, is ready to believe her. He suggests that she is now in grave danger from the murderer and persuades her to move to a large, busy hotel in Brighton where she will be safer. The determined Verity perseveres in trying to solve the mystery, assisted at first in an offhand way by Crook. Newspaper publicity at last draws the police into the case, and with Crook's advice they find a body hidden in the well of the cottage. It soon proves to be not the corpse of the missing young woman, but the cottage's previous owner. To add to the confusion Miss Verity has herself now vanished, with Crook concerned that she has fallen into the hands of the murderer.

JULIA ROSS had a dreadful premonition about the new job for which she was applying. But she was hungry and lonely and out of work. Otherwise, she would never have rung the door-bell of that dark, forbidding house at 30 Henriques Square. And when she did, it was too late to retrace her steps, too late to avoid the strange little old woman in red, too late to escape the fateful net about to close in on her. Next morning Julia Ross had vanished completely, as if by magic into thin air! A few days later notice of her death appeared in a London paper But a young man, with whom she used to dine, and Arthur Crook, eccentric lawyer, were skeptical, persistent and patient enough to find sometime later a young woman of another name, halfway across England, being slowly driven to insanity and death.

'No author is more skilled at making a good story seem brilliant' ~Sunday Express Nora Deane, a young nurse, has been instructed to report to 12 Askew Avenue, Charlbury, to look after a new patient. As she steps from the station into an impenetrable blanket of fog, she is glad to accept the escort of a mysterious young man to the address. Once alone in the darkness, she presses the bell and waits. She shivers. She wants to be inside, out of the dangers of the dark. Yet some inner voice persistently warns her not to cross the threshold of that sinister house . . .

Forget The Girl on the Train - meet the woman who watches from her window, and finds herself caught up in murder... Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club 'Watching, fascinated and horrified, she saw thin fingers creep around the edge of the black curtain. Someone from inside was tugging to loosen it . . .' Miss Janet Martin, a 74-year-old spinster of small means and delicate health, finds her chief interest in observing people passing by while sitting at the window of her lone room in Kensington. One day, her attention is caught by a little golden-haired girl called Pamela, whom subsequently she gets to know. It is obvious this child comes from a comfortable home, where she appears to be in the care of a guardian and a charming young governess named Terry. A little later, Miss Martin is taken ill, removed to hospital and finally sent to an Old Ladies' Home outside London. Here she is very lonely, but one day, again watching from the window, she sees a group of children from the Destitute Children's Orphanage coming down the street, and to her amazement and horror she recognizes Pamela. When she tries to make inquiries, however, she is repulsed on all sides and assured that she must be mistaken. Profoundly dissatisfied with this explanation, the old lady persists in her efforts despite obstacles from the matrons and her unsympathetic niece, Doreen Blake. Eventually, she decides to take a risk and contacts private investigator Arthur Crook to explain her predicament. Crook, recognizing the unfamiliar territory, conducts some investigations and eventually unearths a most exciting plot involving murder, attempted murder, fraud and abduction . . .

This is the nineteenth in Gilbert's long-running series featuring the unscrupulous London solicitor Arthur Crook, one of the more unorthodox detectives of the Golden Age. In the spring of 1946, shortly after the Second World War the domineering Lady Bate came to live at the Downs, built by the eccentric Col. Anstruther many years before. War conditions made it necessary for the Colonel's daughter to take in paying guests, but only Lady Bate knew the secret of her past life and the key to her mysterious hermit-like existence. When, in due course, Lady Bate is found dead, a chance remark puts Arthur Crook on the right track, which he follows—but at the risk of his life! Lady Bate's murder threatens to unravel secrets best kept buried. In Death in the Wrong Room, the talented Anthony Gilbert has written a first-rate detective story at once mystifying and well-constructed. It is a story which the legion of Crime Club readers will thoroughly enjoy.

Novelist John Sherren's three elderly relatives were eccentric -and rich. And, by a curious quirk of fate all three died shortly after he visited them. The colonel, a recluse and a conscientious objector to anything modern, went first. Then there was Aunt Isabel, a trusting, timid soul who believed in everything and everyone. She kept falling for unscrupulous fortune hunters (all considerably younger than herself), and finally fell - to her death. Aunt Clara, as shrewd as she was stingy, completed the doomed trio. It was not exactly coincidence that brought Arthur Crook to the scene during this violent upheaval. He just happened to be in the vicinity ... So it was only natural that the famous legal beagle in the brown derby should eventually succeed in nosing out Scotland Yard - a practice which has become almost second nature to him.

A serial killer who has a knack of ridding himself of superfluous wives, but destiny sometimes hangs by a single thread, and it is the slenderest of chances that puts one Arthur Crook in contact with the latest of his galaxy of victims. 'No author is more skilled at making a good story seem brilliant'~Sunday Express Henry's vocation is being a husband. Like the famous English king with whom he shares his first name, Henry first woos, then weds, then kills his wives. When he falls in love with orphan Sarah, Henry takes her to a lonely cottage and her initial happiness at being with him soon gives way to some uncomfortable suspicions. But will anyone reach the isolated spot before Henry deems her a little too inquisitive for her own good?

"If you ever need my help, I'll be there." But by the time he arrived, she had already disappeared... Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club Arthur Crook and Miss Pinnegar meet by accident and take to each other on sight, parting with mutual appreciation and an invitation by the detective to call on him professionally should she ever need help - unlikely as that may be. But when Miss Pinnegar receives a visit, it threatens to shake her life to the very foundations. She sends Crook an SOS and he comes on the double, but by then Miss Pinnegar has already disappeared . . . "Anthony Gilbert has real detective power" Manchester Guardian

The victims were predictable – the murderer was not… Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club It all starts with a personal ad in a newspaper. A middle-aged man is looking for a spouse, and a little too much emphasis is placed on her being without a family. The experienced lawyer and detective Arthur Crook can immediately work out that the man has no real intentions towards his future wife, but does he have it right? Would you marry the man you loved if he were suspected of shooting his first wife? That was Helen Wayland's problem. Blanch French had died of a gunshot wound, and a jury could not decide if it was accident, suicide or murder. Sour, selfish and worth several millions, Mrs. French was just the kind of woman you’d expect to be murdered. And so, in due course, she was. Young, beautiful, capable nurse Helen Wayland hears from a friend that people are saying unkind things about her behind her back. She made her choice, but two years later a second woman died in mysterious circumstances, and once again Paul French's name was involved. Paul's housekeeper, Mrs. Hoggett was the next to die – another murder predicted by all who, unfortunately, knew her well. Since there was no shortage of suspects, it was small wonder the killer eluded the law. And then a lovely young woman came forth with a story of bigamy and blackmail so bizarre it had to be true. All that was needed for proof was yet another corpse… It was thanks to Arthur Crook, that intrepid legal champion of lost causes, that the astonishing truth about both deaths was finally established and the innocent vindicated. Arthur Crook, a charming, unorthodox and brawny British lawyer and detective, cares a lot about his clients and less about formalities. He is the main character in the majority of Anthony Gilbert's crime novels, where he creatively solves murder mysteries and intrigues in 1900s England. The exceptional standards of entertainment and integrity for which Anthony Gilbert is famous are fully maintained when Death Takes a Wife.

When Arthur Crook's latest client arrived, to consult him, unannounced, at 8:00 in the evening, the red-headed rogue among lawyers already had the published facts of the case at his fingertips. No interesting murder case comes to light without Crook keeping an eye on it, and the case against Hatty Savage—young, attractive and with a chip on her shoulder—was making headlines. Some thought she had been lucky to escape a similar charge not long before and feeling was running high in the neighborhood. Crook attacks the case like a Terrier, a rat and in his own inimitable and explosive way, proves his client's innocence by revealing a cunning killer. She Shall Die also shows once again that Anthony Gilbert has an incomparable mastery of the detective story which is both highly ingenious and continuously entertaining.

When an accident begins to look like murder... Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club On a quiet country station, Detective Arthur Crook, waiting for the train to London, witnessed a near-fatal accident. Despite the arm of her companion, Miss Imogen Garland slipped and almost fell under the train. No harm was done, and Arthur Crook may have dismissed the incident all together if not for a newspaper article that captured his attention several weeks later. The chatty Imogen makes friends wherever she goes. While waiting for the London train, she confides to fellow passengers Dora Chester and Arthur Crook about her dislike for her companion Miss Styles and the number of accidents she has suffered recently. Her point is proven soon enough, as Imogen nearly ends up under the wheels of a train. This incident raises suspicions for Dora and Arthur, who speculate that the "accident" may have been intentional. Arthur believes that someone like Imogen is bound to become a murder victim, emphasizing the potential risks of living life on one's own terms. A few weeks later, Dora is saddened, yet not overly shocked, to learn that Miss Garland had once again encountered an accident, this time fatal. However, the surprising aspect is the person who actually passed away: It's not Imogen, but Miss Styles, her companion. . . and Imogene has disappeared. The prestigious hotel is plunged into disarray when Miss Styles' downfall occurs, observed solely by the distressed Mrs. Huth, who is unsure of how she will convey the situation to her husband in Surbiton. In the hotel lobby, she stammers to the onlookers, “It was like some great bird, like a great black bird…No one expects to see a body falling through space from…well, from nowhere!” Arthur Crook thus acquired one of his strangest clients and an exceptionally puzzling case. Someone wanted Imogen Garland dead but her singular combination of guile and guilelessness proved unexpectedly tough. As usual, Crook digs deep to unearth an ingenious solution, while remaining at the top of his racy form.

In the novel, the story revolves around a seemingly simple case of mistaken identity that quickly escalates into a complex and dangerous murder mystery. Arthur Crook gets involved and strives to uncover the truth behind the crime, following the clues with his sharp intellect and unconventional methods. . . with a little help from two underestimated little girls who must prevent another murder. . . Jan van Damm, a pretty 18-year-old Dutch au pair, has been brought to England by a wealthy couple to help care for their two small daughters. When she was stood up by the boyfriend with whom she'd arranged to go away secretly while the family were on holiday, Detective Arthur Crook smuggles his business card into her pocket, unaware of the unpleasant surprises that are in store for her that very evening. She could not have foreseen that she would shortly need the lawyer/detective's services when she sneaked back to the house to find it burgled and the housekeeper's lifeless body in the broom cupboard. Crook was needed more than ever when there was a second murder in the village, and as always he steals the show, though this time young Dawn and Coral Banks run him a pretty close second, both for their engaging personalities and for their effectiveness in thwarting crime.