Books in series
#1
Unexpected Night
1940
An antiquarian book dealer spends his vacation investigating murder in this series opener from Agatha Christie’s favorite American author.
New York handwriting and rare book expert—and a gentleman sleuth—Henry Gamadge is vacationing in coastal Maine when the police there need his help. It’s a strange case involving a seemingly natural death, a large inheritance, a mysterious nighttime rendezvous, and a troupe of summer stock actors who start dying off. Something is clearly afoot, but nothing quite seems to fit. With an eye for frauds, Gamadge is just what the local detective needs to throw the book at a killer . . .
“Daly offers the reader a challenging case with a believable pair of sleuths, all set in a beautiful and distinctive context.” —Margot Kinberg, author of A Matter of Motive
#2
Deadly Nightshade
1940
With talk of war all over the radio waves, Henry Gamadge is back in Maine, this time by invitation of Detective Mitchell whom he so aptly helped in Unexpected Night. Mitchell has a real puzzler in his hands: three different children have been poisoned with deadly nightshade, and there is no motive that could possibly link all three poisonings beside the fact that they all live in the same small community. Could the Gypsies, whose encampment is nearby, be involved? And was the death of a state trooper at about the same time a mere coincidence? Gamadge and Mitchell will eventually answer all these questions, while Elizabeth Daly paints a picture of a small community at the end of summer and right before a world war.
#3
Murders in Volume 2
1941
Third in the Henry Gamadge series. One hundred years earlier, a beautiful guest had disappeared from the wealthy Vauregard household, along with the second volume of the collected works of Byron. Improbably, both guest and book seem to have reappeared, neither having aged a day. The elderly Mr. Vauregard is inclined to believe the young woman's story of having vacationed on an astral plane. But his dubious niece calls in Henry Gamadge, gentleman-sleuth, expert in rare books, and sufficiently well-bred to avoid distressing the delicate Vauregard sensibilities. As Gamadge discovers, the household includes an aging actress with ties to a spiritualist sect and a shy beauty with a shady fiancé.
#4
The House without the Door
1942
Acquitted of murdering her husband, Mrs. Vina Gregson remains essentially a prisoner, trapped in her elegant New York apartment with occasional furtive forays to her Connecticut estate. A jury may have found her innocent, but Mrs. Gregson remains a murderess in the eyes of the public and of the tabloid journalists who hound her every step. She has recently begun receiving increasingly menacing letters written, she is certain, by the person who killed her husband. Taking the matter to the police would heighten her notoriety, so she calls on Henry Gamadge, the gentleman-sleuth who is known for both his discretion and his ability to solve problems that baffle the police.
#5
Nothing Can Rescue Me
1943
In mid-1943, and up to his elbows in war work, Henry Gamadge is longing for a quiet weekend. But when a half-forgotten classmate requests assistance, Gamadge is unable to refuse the tug of an old school tie. The problem, says Sylvanus, concerns his Aunt Florence—a giddy socialite terrified of Nazi bombs. Florence has moved her extensive household of hangers-on to the family mansion in upstate New York. But menace seems to have followed them, in the form of threatening messages inserted into the manuscript of Florence’s painfully bad novel in progress. Several members of the household are convinced the messages are emanating from Another World, but the politely pragmatic Gamadge suspects a culprit closer to home.
#6
Evidence of Things Seen
1943
In the sticky summer of 1943, a secluded cottage in the Berkshires sounds just the ticket to the newly married Clara Gamadge. The resident ghost, a slender woman in a sunbonnet who died just one year ago in the cottage Clara is now renting, merely adds to the local color. It’s all nothing more than a spooky game, until the woman’s sister is strangled while Clara sits in a chair by her bed. The only clue: Clara’s panicked memory of a woman in a sunbonnet standing at the door. Happily, Henry Gamadge arrives in time to calm his wife and solve the mystery (though not without some stellar help from Clara!).
#7
Arrow Pointing Nowhere
1944
Something is not right at the elegant Fenway mansion on the Upper East Side of New York City. The only clues are coded distress messages thrown out of a window and addressed to Henry Gamadge and, once he gets himself admitted to the mansion, a missing page in a book. But who is the member of the household who has asked for Gamadge’s assistance, and what is the nature of the danger?
#8
The Book of the Dead
1944
The hospital sees nothing to question about the death of the reclusive Mr. Crenshaw, and it’s not as though he had any friends to press the issue. He did, though, have one casual acquaintance, who happens to pick up Mr. Crenshaw’s battered old edition of The Tempest…and happens to pass that book on to Henry Gamadge. Gamadge, of course, is not only an expert in solving pesky problems but also an expert in rare books, and his two sets of expertise combine to uncover the extraordinary puzzle of Mr. Crenshaw, which began in California and ended on the other side of the country, at a chilly New England rendezvous.
#9
Any Shape or Form
1945
Just about any of the guests at Johnny Redfield’s party seems to have a good reason to have killed the guest of honor, Johnny’s Californian aunt who, with her “astral name” and vague pretensions of mysticism, does not exactly blend in the elegant New York atmosphere that surrounds her. And what’s more, no one has a solid alibi. It will take all of Henry Gamadge’s ingenuity to figure out this closed-room mystery.
#10
Somewhere in the House
1946
The Clayborn clan has been waiting 25 years to divvy up Grandmama's fortune, locked up by her will, and to open a small room in the Clayborn mansion. Tomorrow The Room is to be opened, and the Clayborns can't wait to get their fingers on the old lady's reportedly priceless button collection. Harriet Clayborn, who doesn't quite trust her family, asks Henry Gammadge to witness the Opening of The Room, to make sure there's no funny business. Gammadge agrees, and it's a good thing this masterful sleuth is on hand: the Room has been hiding something grislier than buttons.
#11
The Wrong Way Down
1946
An amateur sleuth with an eye for fakes is on the lookout for a murderer in this mystery by Agatha Christie’s favorite American author.
What begins as a courtesy call on his wife’s friend, Miss Julia Paxton, turns into another case for Henry Gamadge, antiquarian book dealer, handwriting expert, and amateur detective. Miss Paxton presents Gamadge with a a framed etching that had always hung in the hallway of the Ashbury mansion has suddenly sprung an inscription dated 1793. Miss Paxton swears nothing had been written on that portrait before the previous Sunday. Did Iris Vance, a relative and professional medium, made it happen? And how? Henry Gamadge is pretty sure the solution to this mystery has nothing to do with the supernatural, but he can’t quite make out what it all means. Was it a joke? Petty larceny? Or is something much more dangerous going on, and has Gamadge somehow stumbled onto a criminal conspiracy?
#12
Night Walk
1947
For 'refusing to co-operate' the Emm Luther Special Police took out Earth agent Sam Tallon's eyes and imprisoned him on a dark and eerie swamp from which nobody ever escaped.
But then Tallon invented a way of seeing - ludicrous, agonizing, yet still a way to make escape possible. He 'saw' through the eyes of a bird. A dog, a woman guard and, later, even saw himself through the eyes of his enraged Lutheran pursuers. Madness and death were his constant companions as he schemed and fought and struggled for his life. Any other man would have gladly given up, but then, Sam Tallon had no choice, for he was the unfortunate possessor of the single most important secret in the universe - a secret which had to be returned to Earth, somehow.
#13
The Book of the Lion
1948
It should be a fairly routine job for Henry Gamadge: Examining the papers of a dead poet and playwright with some early promise but not much in the way of commercial success. But it's not so much the life and letters as the death of the author (murdered in Central Park) that interests Gamadge. Add in a dead witness and the odd behavior of the family, and Gamadge decides something criminal is afoot. The New York Times call this "another top-flight Elizabeth Daly story"
#14
And Dangerous to Know
1949
In this mystery novella by Agatha Christie’s favorite American author, a 1940s antiquarian book dealer searches for a missing Manhattanite.
Alice Dunbar was a very proper Upper East Side woman with a very boring life. There is, in fact, absolutely no reason why she should go missing, and yet that’s exactly what she does. One hot summer day, shortly after an elderly aunt’s funeral, Alice Dunbar changes into a new outfit, puts on some make-up, and slips into a subway car, not to be seen again. Where was she going? Amateur detective Henry Gamadge, on the case after the police have failed to locate Alice, tracks down her last trip and uncovers a secret life that’s stranger than fiction . . .
#15
Death and Letters
1950
Henry Gamadge is summoned to a secluded estate by way of a crossword puzzle, the only means of communication for a widow being held captive by her relatives. They claim she’s lost her mind; she thinks they have shut her away to keep her from spilling on her late husband’s suspicious suicide. Gamadge knows that a woman who can convey her situation in the space of a crossword is most definitely in possession of her mental faculties. But can he sort out the secrets of a clan so scandal-averse they would do anything to avoid it?
#16
The Book of the Crime
1951
Young Rena Austen, newly wed, is afraid she's made a terrible mistake. Her husband, once a dashingly romantic figure of a wounded war hero, has turned into a moody lay-about, and they are sharing a gloomy house on the Upper East Side of New York with his unpleasant, always-there family. When her husband reacts in a frighteningly angry way to Rena pulling a particular volume off the library shelf, she has had enough, and flees her home in fear for her life. Thankfully, Henry Gamadge is on hand to solve the mystery of the book and the dead body that inevitably turns up. This 1951 novel is, sadly, Gamadge's last appearance, but on the bright side he is as charming here as he was on his first outing.
Authors
Bob Shaw
Author · 30 books
Bob Shaw was born in Northern Ireland. After working in structural engineering, industrial public relations, and journalism he became a full time science fiction writer in 1975. Shaw was noted for his originality and wit. He was two-time recipient (in 1979 and 1980) of the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. His short story Light of Other Days was a Hugo Award nominee in 1967, as was his novel The Ragged Astronauts in 1987.
Elizabeth Daly
Author · 15 books
Elizabeth Daly (1878-1967) was born in New York City and educated at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania and Columbia University. She was a reader in English at Bryn Mawr and tutored in English and French. She was awarded an Edgar in 1960. Her series character is Henry Gamadge, an antiquarian book dealer. Daly works in the footsteps of Jane Austen, offering an extraordinarily clear picture of society in her time through the interactions of a few characters. In that tradition, if you knew a person's family history, general type, and a few personal quirks, you could be said to know everything worth knowing about that person. Today the emphasis is on baring the darkest depths of psycho- and socio-pathology; contemporary readers raised on this style may find Ms. Daly both elitist and somewhat facile. But fans of classic movies and whodunits know that a focus on polished surfaces brings with it the possibility of hidden secrets and things unsaid; for those who disdain the obvious confessional style of today, the Gamadge books have much to recommend them. Elizabeth Daly now seems sadly forgotten by many which a shame as all her books are superbly crafted and plotted, indeed she counted none other than Agatha Christie as one of her fans. She published sixteen books all of which featured her main series character Henry Gamadge. He is a bibliophile and expert on rare books and manuscripts which makes her books particularly appealing to fans of the bibliomystery. There was some disparity between UK and US releases some being published out of sequence, the bibliography shown follows the US editions which are the true firsts. Murder Listens In and Shroud for a Lady are re-titled reissues of earlier books.
