
A killer has an axe to grind in this classic whodunit from the #1 New York Times –bestselling author of The Circular Staircase and mystery-writing pioneer. Crescent Place was once a peaceful country green surrounded by five tasteful suburban houses and populated by polite, responsible citizens. But as the city enveloped it, the residents built a gate to keep the world out. With each passing year, the subdivision grew stranger and stranger—until it began to look like a time capsule of the 1890s. In these houses are a husband and wife who fight constantly, and another couple who hasn’t spoken to each other in two decades. There is a widow in permanent mourning and a daughter whom the newspapers call psychotic. And there is a bedridden old woman who is about to be killed with an axe. When her murder shatters the quiet of the little enclave, the tabloids delight in trumpeting the neighborhood’s peculiarities. But as the search for the killer intensifies, the area’s strangest secrets have yet to be revealed.
Author

Mysteries of known American writer Mary Roberts Rinehart include The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Door (1930). People often called this prolific author often the American version of Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie. She, considered the source, used not the phrase "The butler did it," and people also consider that she invented the "Had-I-But-Known" school of mystery writing. Rinehart wrote hundreds of short stories, poems, travelogues, and special articles. People adapted many of her books and plays for movies, such as The Bat (1926), The Bat Whispers (1930), and The Bat (1959). Amid many of her best-selling books, critics most appreciated her murder mysteries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary\_Ro...