Part of Series
When an accident begins to look like murder... Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club On a quiet country station, Detective Arthur Crook, waiting for the train to London, witnessed a near-fatal accident. Despite the arm of her companion, Miss Imogen Garland slipped and almost fell under the train. No harm was done, and Arthur Crook may have dismissed the incident all together if not for a newspaper article that captured his attention several weeks later. The chatty Imogen makes friends wherever she goes. While waiting for the London train, she confides to fellow passengers Dora Chester and Arthur Crook about her dislike for her companion Miss Styles and the number of accidents she has suffered recently. Her point is proven soon enough, as Imogen nearly ends up under the wheels of a train. This incident raises suspicions for Dora and Arthur, who speculate that the "accident" may have been intentional. Arthur believes that someone like Imogen is bound to become a murder victim, emphasizing the potential risks of living life on one's own terms. A few weeks later, Dora is saddened, yet not overly shocked, to learn that Miss Garland had once again encountered an accident, this time fatal. However, the surprising aspect is the person who actually passed away: It's not Imogen, but Miss Styles, her companion. . . and Imogene has disappeared. The prestigious hotel is plunged into disarray when Miss Styles' downfall occurs, observed solely by the distressed Mrs. Huth, who is unsure of how she will convey the situation to her husband in Surbiton. In the hotel lobby, she stammers to the onlookers, “It was like some great bird, like a great black bird…No one expects to see a body falling through space from…well, from nowhere!” Arthur Crook thus acquired one of his strangest clients and an exceptionally puzzling case. Someone wanted Imogen Garland dead but her singular combination of guile and guilelessness proved unexpectedly tough. As usual, Crook digs deep to unearth an ingenious solution, while remaining at the top of his racy form.
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.
