Part of Series
When Arthur Crook's latest client arrived, to consult him, unannounced, at 8:00 in the evening, the red-headed rogue among lawyers already had the published facts of the case at his fingertips. No interesting murder case comes to light without Crook keeping an eye on it, and the case against Hatty Savage—young, attractive and with a chip on her shoulder—was making headlines. Some thought she had been lucky to escape a similar charge not long before and feeling was running high in the neighborhood. Crook attacks the case like a Terrier, a rat and in his own inimitable and explosive way, proves his client's innocence by revealing a cunning killer. She Shall Die also shows once again that Anthony Gilbert has an incomparable mastery of the detective story which is both highly ingenious and continuously entertaining.
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.
