Book description
Colonel Crisp is summoned to Watlington Lodge by a mysterious caller to
investigate the murder of Lord Watlington.
Lord Watlington, a self-made millionaire, elevated into the Peerage,
decided that the woman his nephew - and sole heir - plans to marry is
not a suitable mate. But it is this decision that eventually sets the
stage for his death.
When he arrives at Watlington Lodge, the Colonel encounters bewildering
clues in his search for the killer . . .
Roy Vickers, a master of characterization and sparkling dialogue, is at
his best in this fast-moving tale of intrigue. Roy Vickers was the
author of over 60 crime novels and 80 short stories, many written under
the pseudonyms Sefton Kyle and David Durham. He was born in 1889 and
educated at Charterhouse School, Brasenose College, Oxford, and enrolled
as a student of the Middle Temple. He left the University before
graduating in order to join the staff of a popular weekly. After two
years of journalistic choring, which included a period of crime
reporting, he became editor of the Novel Magazine
, but eventually resigned this post so that he could develop his ideas
as a freelance. His experience in the criminal courts gave him a view of
the anatomy of crime which was the mainspring of his novels and short
stories. Not primarily interested in the professional crook, he wrote of
the normal citizen taken unawares by the latent forces of his own
temperament. His attitude to the criminal is sympathetic but
unsentimental.
Vickers is best known for his ‘Department of Dead Ends’ stories which
were originally published in Pearson’s Magazine
from 1934. Partial collections were made in 1947, 1949, and 1978,
earning him a reputation in both the UK and the US as an accomplished
writer of ‘inverted mysteries’. He also edited several anthologies for
the Crime Writers’ Association.
