Part of Series
Forget The Girl on the Train - meet the woman who watches from her window, and finds herself caught up in murder... Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club 'Watching, fascinated and horrified, she saw thin fingers creep around the edge of the black curtain. Someone from inside was tugging to loosen it . . .' Miss Janet Martin, a 74-year-old spinster of small means and delicate health, finds her chief interest in observing people passing by while sitting at the window of her lone room in Kensington. One day, her attention is caught by a little golden-haired girl called Pamela, whom subsequently she gets to know. It is obvious this child comes from a comfortable home, where she appears to be in the care of a guardian and a charming young governess named Terry. A little later, Miss Martin is taken ill, removed to hospital and finally sent to an Old Ladies' Home outside London. Here she is very lonely, but one day, again watching from the window, she sees a group of children from the Destitute Children's Orphanage coming down the street, and to her amazement and horror she recognizes Pamela. When she tries to make inquiries, however, she is repulsed on all sides and assured that she must be mistaken. Profoundly dissatisfied with this explanation, the old lady persists in her efforts despite obstacles from the matrons and her unsympathetic niece, Doreen Blake. Eventually, she decides to take a risk and contacts private investigator Arthur Crook to explain her predicament. Crook, recognizing the unfamiliar territory, conducts some investigations and eventually unearths a most exciting plot involving murder, attempted murder, fraud and abduction . . .
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.
