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
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.
