THE SIGN OF EVIL is the first book in Anthony Wynne's Dr. Eustace Hailey mystery series. Dr. Eustace Hailey, a doctor in mental diseases and amateur sleuth, was featured in many of Wynne's 45 mystery novels, beginning with 'The Sign of Evil' (1925) and ending with 'Death of a Shadow' (1950). Anthony Wynne (1882-1963) was the pseudonym of Robert McNair Wilson, an English physician and author. He wrote biographies and historical works under his own name and a single novel under the pseudonym Harry Colindale. As Anthony Wynne he wrote the Dr. Hailey mystery series and also wrote short stories for a variety of magazines and newspapers.

Dr Eustice Hailey took a pinch of snuff, then considered the situation his agitated young friend, the Honourable Robert Barling, had disclosed to him. While dancing the previous night with his fiancée, Olva Vorloff, a beautiful, tragic-eyed Russian exile, Bob saw her face pale with terror. He had turned just quickly enough to see a man in the doorway, a Russian she had recently passed on the stairs without recognition. The girl had pleaded fatigue and he took her home. The next morning she had vanished.

The Ashes is a grand and sombre country house perched on a headland on the Northumberland coast. Its wild position, betwixt sea and land, seemed to harmonize with the wild spirit of its owner, eccentric young heiress, Patricia Keene. Staffed with strange servants and riddled with secret passages The Ashes is preparing to host a murderous gathering to include: Dr Eustace Hailey, consultant in diseases of the criminal mind; Inspector Biles of Scotland Yard; and Bruce Netherby, a Harley Street physician. Their endeavour? To explain blackmail, murder and mysterious disappearances from within the walls of… The Ashes.

Dr. Hailey investigates an impossible murder of a dying man. Why kill a dying man? How could someone have reached him in a locked and guarded room? I'd tell you what the blue Vesuvius is, but what fun would that be?

Murder mystery involving a man who felt his impending murder and wrote a letter to his friend, who faced his own death to solve the mystery.

Duchlan Castle is a gloomy, forbidding place in the Scottish Highlands. Late one night the body of Mary Gregor, sister of the laird of Duchlan, is found in the castle. She has been stabbed to death in her bedroom - but the room is locked from within and the windows are barred. The only tiny clue to the culprit is a silver fish's scale, left on the floor next to Mary's body.Inspector Dundas is dispatched to Duchlan to investigate the case. The Gregor family and their servants are quick - perhaps too quick - to explain that Mary was a kind and charitable woman. Dundas uncovers a more complex truth, and the cruel character of the dead woman continues to pervade the house after her death. Soon further deaths, equally impossible, occur, and the atmosphere grows ever darker. Superstitious locals believe that fish creatures from the nearby waters are responsible; but luckily for Inspector Dundas, the gifted amateur sleuth Eustace Hailey is on the scene, and unravels a more logical solution to this most fiendish of plots.

Il corpo di Lord Wallace, in pigiama e con un coltello conficcato nella schiena, viene trovato dalla polizia su una spiaggia sabbiosa della costa inglese nei pressi di Eastsea. La morte è sopraggiunta istantanea e da alcuni elementi appare certo che la pugnalata fatale è stata inferta proprio in quel luogo. Ma intorno al corpo la sabbia è intatta; non ci sono impronte di alcun tipo nel raggio di un centinaio di metri e la stessa posizione del cadavere, che giace composto e senza altre ferite a parte una leggera escoriazione alla mano destra, esclude la possibilità che sia stato gettato da un aereo. Neppure le maree hanno avuto un ruolo in quel delitto un accurato controllo dei movimenti del mare dimostra infatti che sono da scartare sia l'ipotesi che il colpevole si sia allontanato a nuoto, sia quella che il corpo di Lord Wallace sia stato lasciato da una barca approdata a riva. Toccherà al dottor Eustace Hailey, medico psichiatra e investigatore per hobby, venire in soccorso della polizia e risolvere il mistero di questo e di altri due omicidi commessi in circostanze altrettanto inspiegabili. Un solo indizio accomuna i tre la presenza, vicino ai corpi, di alcune monete d'oro. Finora inedito in Italia, Il coltello nella schiena (1934) è un tipico esempio di "delitto impossibile", uno dei temi caratteristici dell'età d'oro del giallo.

A detective story, it has been said, ought first and foremost, to provide a puzzle. In the second place, it ought to furnish all the clues whereby the puzzle may be solved. In Death of a Shadow Anthony Wynne has fulfilled both of these conditions. Dr. Eustace Hailey, big, kindly, imperturbable, never encountered a more baffling case than this murder on Rylock sands. Only perhaps his method of relating physical facts to the facts of the mind could have unlocked the secret. This latest adventure of Dr. Hailey is likely to find a welcome among all those who have enjoyed his many former triumphs.