Inspector Hanaud is assigned to investigate the murder of a wealthy widow and the theft of her priceless jewels

A young, wealthy vagabond English man, Calladine, whom Ricardo knew before, hastily comes to Ricardo's London home in the morning, while Hanaud happens to be visiting. Calladine, very agitated, still dressed formally as for an evening ball, tells his disturbing story- He had gone to a costume party that night in a hotel ballroom, met a beautiful young woman, Joan Carew, with whom he danced, dined, and talked. While dancing, Joan's eyes fixed upon a stout costumed lady, obviously wealthy. Calladine was puzzled, but didn't ask why the fascination with that woman. Joan and Calladine leave the party and Joan runs off at 1:30am. A few hours later, Joan appears at Calladine's apartment door, very distressed. He lets her in. She tells her story about being obsessed with the pearls the lady wore; about finding the lady's dropped key to her hotel suite; about sneaking into the room at night to steal the pearls but being surprised by other thieves already in the dark room, who grabbed her and tied her as she fell unconscious; about awakening in the early morning and finding herself untied, on the couch, with the wealthy lady motionless in bed, apparently dead; then fleeing, seeking Calladine's help. Ricardo and Hanaud accompany Calladine to his home. While Calladine showers, Hanaud finds hidden beans of mescal, a hallucinogenic plant. On the mantle, there is a porcelain figurine of a woman looking exactly as Calladine described Joan. Hanaud's astute mind wonders, was Calladine's story truth or a fantasy imagined in a vivid mescaline dream? He and Ricardo then endeavor to solve this mystery.

The House of the Arrow is a detective novel that has inspired movies in French and in English. It features the fictional French detective Inspector Hanaud.

The scene is the south of France. An English lady has been murdered and a beautiful American girl has disappeared. Discovered is a body with a severed hand and an opal bracelet somehow connected to devil worship. Clearly a case for Inspector Hanaud or the Surete and his English friend Mr. Ricardo. Can Hanaud solve the two mysteries in time to prevent a second murder? Readers will be kept in a constant state of mystification until the surprising denouement.

"The Ginger King", was first printed in the Strand Magazine in 1940, and was never collected in a book form during Mason’s lifetime. A detective Hanaud mystery.

SYNOPSIS: Enter Bryan Devisher, over the side of the ketch in which Mordaunt was taking Mr. Julius Ricardo home to London on the summons of his old friend, Inspector Hanaud of the Paris Surete and the English ' idioms.' Exit, Devisher and Mordaunt. Enter Daniel Horbury. Exit Daniel Horbury-violently, with his throat slit in the garden room of the House in Lordship Lane, with Olivia, his wife, locked in her bedroom upstairs. Enter Septimus Crottle, patriarchal, tough old shipowner ; and the Crottle family, at a Sunday evening ' reading attended by Hanaud and Ricardo. Re-enter Mordaunt and Devisher-in Cairo. Exit Septimus Crottle, mysteriously ; re-enter Hanaud, hurriedly ; re-enter Sep. .nus, with all the toughness gone. But the house ?n Lordship Lane has never gone out of the story, and the master-craftsman brings us back to it at the end. And, when you read what really had happened in the garden room that night when Olivia drove her husband down to Lordship Lane, you remember the ejaculation of one of A. E. W. Mason's reviewers : ' What a work of art a thriller can be ! ' source: www.classiccrimefiction.com