Part of Series
The imminent publication in a limited edition of a scandalously anti-Semitic book—The Open Bellied Mountain—by the printing house of Saxant and Senss, finds the author of the inflammatory work—Fortinbras Carn—and his closest relatives receiving disturbing threatening letters; threats that soon have to be taken deadly seriously when the author's wife is killed in mysterious circumstances. Mrs. Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley is soon drawn into a mystery as bizarre and as baffling as any that she has ever encountered during her long and illustrious career. Ably assisted by her resolute and energetic nephew Carey, and by the young and enterprising solicitor to the author's family, she finds herself battling Nazis, nudists and gun-toting motorcyclists in equal numbers; unmasking the reason behind a sudden craze for wearing false beards; and the origin of several dismembered human body parts, which begin to appear in a variety of increasingly peculiar locations. All before eventually arriving at the case's unexpected and surreal climax.
Author
Aka Malcolm Torrie, Stephen Hockaby. Born in Cowley, Oxford, in 1901, Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell was the daughter of market gardener James Mitchell, and his wife, Annie. She was educated at Rothschild School, Brentford and Green School, Isleworth, before attending Goldsmiths College and University College, London from 1919-1921. She taught English, history and games at St Paul's School, Brentford, from 1921-26, and at St Anne's Senior Girls School, Ealing until 1939. She earned an external diploma in European history from University College in 1926, beginning to write her novels at this point. Mitchell went on to teach at a number of other schools, including the Brentford Senior Girls School (1941-50), and the Matthew Arnold School, Staines (1953-61). She retired to Corfe Mullen, Dorset in 1961, where she lived until her death in 1983. Although primarily remembered for her mystery novels, and for her detective creation, Mrs. Bradley, who featured in 66 of her novels, Mitchell also published ten children's books under her own name, historical fiction under the pseudonym Stephen Hockaby, and more detective fiction under the pseudonym Malcolm Torrie. She also wrote a great many short stories, all of which were first published in the Evening Standard. She was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger Award in 1976.
