'No author is more skilled at making a good story seem brilliant' Sunday Express On the day that Emily Tate vanished, Inspector Marston met her husband, Stephen Tate, on the tow-path of the River Pyle. The unassuming Stephen was on the brink of a nightmare episode that was to make his unhappy marriage, his clandestine love affair and his disappointed hopes seem positively joyous by comparison. Stephen Tate's wife disappears without a trace, but he does not go to the police and report her missing. That in itself is suspicious. But Stephen hasn't missed Emily. Their marriage was unhappy, and Stephen is having an affair with a woman he cares about. When the police discover this, they begin to suspect that Emily has not just disappeared, but that Stephen has murdered her. Luckily, lawyer and detective Arthur Crook steps in to help! The determination of the girl he loved was the only thing that could save him from the web of circumstances in which he was enmeshed. She sent for Detective Arthur Crook. Arthur Crook is a charming, unorthodox and brash British lawyer and detective who cares a lot about his clients and less about formalities. He is the main character in the majority of Anthony Gilbert's crime novels, where he creatively solves murder mysteries and intrigues in 1900s England. Anthony Gilbert was the pseudonym of the British crime writer Lucy Beatrice Malleson. She also wrote under the name Anne Meredith, including an autobiography entitled Three-a-Penny (1940). Her first novel was published in 1927. Later, she published 69 crime novels, and 51 of them featured her best-known character, Arthur Crook, the brash and passionate British lawyer/detective.