Book description
When a man gets to be a hundred years old, and is an Appleby, he should
be able to look forward to spending the rest of his life quietly,
comfortably, and free from care. So William Appleby, known as The
Ancient to his large respectable family and his neighbours, thought.
There was the celebration of his hundredth birthday to look forward to,
of course, and then the marriage of his favourite great-granddaughter,
Barbara, but aside from that, supposedly, just his everyday routine. The
Ancient and the rest of the Appleby clan certainly never expected to be
confronted with murder! But murder struck, in the midst of the lovely
countryside, close to the heart of the clan: decisively, brutally,
skilfully. Scotland Yard had a difficult time indeed discovering who the
murderer was, because the indomitable front of the Appleby family
covered the traces quickly and proudly, in spite of the terror, the
distress and the shock that murder brings with it. Roger Bax is the
pen name of Paul Winterton (1908-2001). He was born in Leicester and
educated at the Hulme Grammar School, Manchester and Purley County
School, Surrey, after which he took a degree in Economics at London
University. He was on the staff of
The Economist
for four years, and then worked for fourteen years for the London
News Chronicle
as reporter leader writer and foreign correspondent. He was assigned to
Moscow from 1942 to 1945, where he was also the correspondent of the
BBC’s Overseas Service.
After the war he turned to full-time writing of detective and adventure
novels and produced more than forty-five books. His work was serialized,
televised, broadcast, filmed and translated into some twenty languages.
He is noted for his varied and unusual backgrounds - which have included
Russia, newspaper offices, the West Indies, ocean sailing, the
Australian outback, politics, mountaineering and forestry - and for
never repeating a plot.
Paul Winterton was a founder member and first joint secretary of the
Crime Writers’ Association.
