Part of Series
Classic golden age mystery from a true icon of crime fiction Circumstantial evidence was as strong as proof at the trial of Viola Ross. Everything pointed to the conclusion that this beautiful woman had smothered her wisp of a husband. But, the twelfth juror, Richard Arnold, held out stubbornly to the end . . . perhaps he knew something which the others didn't . . . perhaps he only guessed. But, he was certain that beautiful Viola Ross could have had neither the heart nor the strength to have murdered her husband, Teddy. When a retrial is ordered, Arnold, haunted by the face of Viola Ross, sets out his own investigation before she faces the second trial for her life! Without Richard Arnold's almost fanatical interference, Viola Ross would have gone quickly to the gallows, for there were too many strikes against her from the beginning. A dead man, for example, alone in the house with his wife, does not get up to hide his alarm clock in a hat box! Moreover, Viola had quarreled frequently and bitterly with her husband over her stepson, young Harry Ross—and it was upon this young man and his life that the obsessed juror, Arnold, concentrated his desperate search for new evidence. Arnold discovered that Harry Ross had had both provocation and opportunity to have murdered his father and, as unbearable as the suspicion was to Arnold, young Ross could have been infatuated with his exquisite young stepmother. Three attempts on his life did not deter Arnold, but before the end of the story, he had learned that the police work more surely than the private individual. The final solution of The Clock in the Hat Box reveals the ingenuity of a plot that places this baffling and delightfully written story high on the list of Gilbert's widely popular mysteries. It is as brilliant a book as any that Anthony Gilbert (pseudonym of Lucy Beatrice Malleson) has written, full of ingenuity, character and refreshing humor.
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.
