‘A pleasure’ The Daily Telegraph‘Not a dull moment in it’ New York TimesThe much-revered crime writer J. Jefferson Farjeon’s mystery back in print for the first time in almost a centuryBy the author of the bestselling Mystery in White‘J. Jefferson Farjeon is quite unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures’ Dorothy L. Sayers Perched up high on the edge of cliffs on Byford Moor, Northumberland, Coomber House was a desolate place. Strange sounds reverberated through its empty rooms and hallways; was it the booming of breaking waves crashing against the rocks below, or ghostly echoes from the old mine workings? Such is the setting for this puzzling country house mystery. But our story begins in London, three hundred miles south of the moor in a King’s Cross restaurant. Lowly clerk, Mr Brown is minding his own business when he overhears two men plotting to kidnap a Miss Joscelyn Marlowe. She is sitting a few tables away… ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joseph Jefferson Farjeon was born into a literary family in Hampstead, north west London in 1883. He was a prolific crime writer, writing over sixty novels over the course of thirty years, many published by William Collins & Sons and featuring in their hugely popular Collins Crime Club. Dorothy L. Sayers said of his work, ‘every word is entertaining.’ His best-known novel (and play) Number 17, was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock. He died in 1955. PRAISE FOR J. JEFFERSON FARJEON Uninvited Guests ‘An ingenious country house mystery… absorbing’ New York Times The Master Criminal ‘A Sherlock Holmes novel of the first degree’ New York Post The ‘Z’ Murders ‘A classic serial killer mystery’ Martin Edwards Mystery in White ‘The perfect book for a winter's evening, a cosy chair and an open fire’ The Daily Mail Thirteen Guests ‘A country house mystery story firmly in the tradition of the “Golden Age of murder”… lively entertainment as well as a teasingly constructed mystery’ Martin Edwards No 17 ‘Works its way up by delicate graduations of horror to a climatic explosion of gun-play, diamonds and false identities, leaving the criminals safe in the hands of Scotland Yard’ New York Times