Part of Series
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!
Author
Anthony Gilbert was the pen name of Lucy Malleson an English crime writer. She also wrote non-genre fiction as Anne Meredith , under which name she also published one crime novel. She also wrote an autobiography under the Meredith name, Three-a-Penny (1940). Her parents wanted her to be a schoolteacher but she was determined to become a writer. Her first mystery novel followed a visit to the theatre when she saw The Cat and the Canary then, Tragedy at Freyne, featuring Scott Egerton who later appeared in 10 novels, was published in 1927. She adopted the pseudonym Anthony Gilbert to publish detective novels which achieved great success and made her a name in British detective literature, although many of her readers had always believed that they were reading a male author. She went on to publish 69 crime novels, 51 of which featured her best known character, Arthur Crook. She also wrote more than 25 radio plays, which were broadcast in Great Britain and overseas. Crook is a vulgar London lawyer totally (and deliberately) unlike the aristocratic detectives who dominated the mystery field when Gilbert introduced him, such as Lord Peter Wimsey. Instead of dispassionately analyzing a case, he usually enters it after seemingly damning evidence has built up against his client, then conducts a no-holds-barred investigation of doubtful ethicality to clear him or her. The first Crook novel, Murder by Experts, was published in 1936 and was immediately popular. The last Crook novel, A Nice Little Killing, was published in 1974. Her thriller The Woman in Red (1941) was broadcast in the United States by CBS and made into a film in 1945 under the title My Name is Julia Ross. She never married, and evidence of her feminism is elegantly expressed in much of her work.
