A Mr. Crook Mystery, from the Author of Death in the Blackout. From inside front cover: No wonder they called Mereshire "The Village That God Forgot!" For over it, like an ominous pall, hung the Curse of the Clevelands—the curse that struck with uncanny force, generation after generation. Always the eldest son of the Earl of Cleveland kept an appointment with Death—one was drowned, one shot, one poisoned, one killed in battle. And then "it" struck Edmund Oliver, who was found at the bottom of a quarry, his neck broken. Was "it" the Curse—or the bloody hands of the village ne'er-do-well, Tom Grigg? Then, years later, Tom Grigg dares to return—and he is murdered! Are these two deaths—a generation apart—connected in any way? That's what Arthur Crook, that solid sleuth, wants to know. The Curse is understandable—it was born of greed—but why should anyone want to get rid of a penniless fugitive? Had he known a secret that someone had to silence? When the police arrest the victim's elderly aunt, Mr. Crook simply must ferret out the answers—or eat that brown bowler of his. The victim was certainly deserving of death, but not the hard, cruel death he found. No one deserved that ...At first, the killer goes unsuspected. Someone else would pay the price for the crime - an innocent woman would pay and the murderer was willing to arrange other, more 'accidental' deaths to ensure it ...until solicitor/detective Arthur Crook steps in. It was sheer luck that caused Arthur Crook, taking an unwanted holiday in November in the little Mereshire Village of Bridges St. Mary, to stumble on a body where no body had any right to be. It was Crook who hardily undertook to work for the defense of the old woman arrested for the crime, who followed the trail from Kings Fossett to Bishop Cleveland, and thence to London; who unraveled the mystery of the strange girl, Stella Reed; who attacked the murderer with his own weapons and at the eleventh hour, when everything seemed lost, who produced the final iota of evidence that brought the criminal to book. In one of his most baffling cases, Crook only has two guiding principles: his client is always innocent and, come hell or high water, he always gets his man.