Detective Club Crime Classics
3 total works
First published by Collins in 1928, this was the first of 22 mystery novels by Vernon Loder, one of the most popular British mystery-thriller writers of his generation.
When a guest at Stowe House is found dead, killed by a lethal dart, suspicion naturally falls on the resident collector of poisoned weapons from tribes in South America. With the entire house party as potential suspects, what part did the woman explorer play in this sinister tragedy? The local police are baffled, and call on the help of an amateur, whose recent assignment working with bushmen in Africa brings new insight into an increasingly unconventional investigation . . .
This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by mystery genre collector and expert Nigel Moss, who looks at how one of the most dependable Golden Age authors has been forgotten.
The visitors at the Hotel Haut Ton at Hallsea are drifting leisurely through an uneventful winter season, relieved only by their own petty gossip, mainly about themselves, when suddenly they are plunged, one and all, into a baffling murder mystery. Mr. Grange, a universally unpopular resident at Mrs. Goville-Gore's, is found dead in his private rooms by his wife, who, alarmed by a loud crash while dressing for dinner, rushed, as do half the other visitors, to see the cause of the disturbance. She discovers the body of her husband lying beside the shattered remains of a large ornamental vase which formerly stood on the mantel-shelf of their room. Facts all but prove Grange's death to have been an accident, but Inspector Fox discovered something which suggested foul play!
The delight of Christmas shoppers at the unveiling of a London department store’s famous window display turns to horror when one of the mannequins is discovered to be a dead body…
Mander’s Department Store in London’s West End is so famous for its elaborate window displays that on Monday mornings crowds gather to watch the window blinds being raised on a new weekly display. On this particular Monday, just a few weeks before Christmas, the onlookers quickly realise that one of the figures is in fact a human corpse, placed among the wax mannequins. Then a second body is discovered, and this striking tableau begins a baffling and complex case for Inspector Devenish of Scotland Yard.
Vernon Loder’s first book The Mystery at Stowe had endeared him in 1928 as ‘one of the most promising recruits to the ranks of detective story writers’. Inspired by the glamour of the legendary Selfridges store on London’s Oxford Street, The Shop Window Murders followed, an entertaining and richly plotted example of the Golden Age deductive puzzle novel, one of his best mysteries for bafflement and ingenuity.
This Detective Club classic is introduced by Nigel Moss, who looks at how Loder’s books are still acclaimed today by reviewers for being ‘as different from the standard whodunits of his colleagues as champagne is to soda water.’