Anthony Gilbert’s first ever detective novel (originally published under a different pen-name, ‘J. Kilmeny Keith’), back in print for the first time in almost a century‘Master of the craft of the crime story’ IRISH INDEPENDENT‘Careful in craftsmanship, scrupulously fair, more than well-written, Anthony Gilbert’s novels show the detective story at its best’ THE DAILY TELEGRAPH Streathfeild Manor, a secluded country house deep in the heart of southern England, was built for one of Queen Elizabeth I’s most trusted knights, Sir Aylmer Rupert. Sir Rupert’s portrait would remain in the Great Hall to bare witness to history’s long shadow; the sheltering of renegade priests, the end of the Rupert line and today, to murder. At a weekend house party the new owner of Streathfeild, nouveau riche financier, John Ryman, is found dead in the library, stabbed in the heart with an African sacrificial dagger. Papers vital to a controversial business deal are missing. His terrified guests, including his ward Eve and her fiancé, Felix, begin receiving threatening notes from a man calling himself ‘London.’ This person unknown, is determined to stop the deal from going through at all costs… ABOUT THE AUTHOR Anthony Gilbert was one of four pseudonyms adopted by Lucy Beatrice Malleson, the English novelist who wrote over seventy detective and crime novels between 1925 and 1972. From the age of seventeen, she wrote verse and short pieces for Punch and various literary weeklies. She also wrote as Anne Meredith, J. Kilmeny Keith and Lucy Egerton, but settled on the Anthony Gilbert pen name for her most popular literary creation, earthy, pugnacious, Cockney lawyer-detective Arthur G. Crook. Although an early member of the prestigious Detection Club, Malleson valued her privacy and for many years successfully concealed her identity as the writer of the Gilbert novels, even publishing her memoir, Three-a-Penny, under a pseudonym. Recently reissued under her real name, Three-a-Penny, was selected as a BBC Radio 4 ‘Book of the Week’. She lived most of her life in London, never married, and died in 1973. Praise for Anthony Gilbert ‘First-rate… beautiful characterisation’ New York Times ‘Mr Gilbert writes extremely well’ E.C. Bentley ‘Anthony Gilbert has real descriptive power’ E.R. Punshon ‘His stories, like his detectives, have vitality… and credible characters and, detection-wise, fair play’ Times Literary Supplement ‘A most intelligent author… gifts of ingenuity, style and character drawing’ The Sunday Times