Murder By The Book - Where a good crime is had by all!

Martin Starberth stands to inherit his family's estate provided he can fulfill a certain condition. Part of the estate is an old prison where the Starbeths had been wardens for generations. From a balcony off the Governor's Room, Starberth wardens watched countless men be hanged from the Hag's Nook gallows, their lifeless bodies dropping to a deep well below. A cholera epidemic wiped out the prison population decades earlier but a curse seems to have settled upon the Starberth family with several heirs meeting their death via a broken neck. To inherit the estate, each prospective heir must spend the night of his 25th birthday locked in that warden's room, hopefully escaping the curse. But when Martin's body is found battered, his neck broken, beneath the balcony, it seems that the curse has once again claimed a victim. First published in 1933, this is the first of 23 novels that would feature Dr. Gideon Fell, perhaps the most accomplished solver of locked room and impossible crime mysteries in the history of the genre.

With the Nazis beaten and the Russians not yet acting up too much, British Agent Tommy Elphinstone Hambledon is at loose ends so he agrees to do a bit of undercover work for the police by posing as an inmate at one His Majesty’s prisons. It seems that lately an alarming number of prisoners have escaped, fueling suspicions that it’s an organized effort. Tommy and a fellow prisoner named Cobden substitute themselves for the next escapees and find themselves sailing across the nighttime skies of Britain in a hydrogen balloon. But when the gang behind the escapes tumbles to the substitution, thinking Tommy is a real crook with a hidden stash, they ask him to share his ill-gotten gains. Tommy, of course, declines, and before long bodies begin to pile up. First published in 1948.

This third outing in the Pat and Jean Abbott series is set in the early months of World War II at a time when everyone smoked, women wore girdles, and warships could be seen steaming along past Fisherman’s Wharf. Tall, lanky private detective Pat is back home in San Francisco, doing some work for the government and just hours away from marrying his sweetheart Jean Holly, when a fellow detective is murdered in his office, the only clue a yellow violet. As it happens, a beautiful Spanish entertainer, a refugee from the Spanish Civil War—whose trademark is the yellow violet—is in town. She’s on tour accompanied by her mother, her manager, and a red dachshund named Pancho. Pat also has a new client, a lovely (and very rich) blonde whose foolish younger brother has cast his lot with Mussolini. Throw in a few Italian Fascists (“they don’t fight very well,” says Pat, “but they know how to spy”) and you’ve got enough trouble to halt anyone’s nuptials. First published in 1942, it’s a richly evocative portrait of one of America’s favorite cities as well as of a country newly at war.

Merlin's Castle, Merlin's Furlong—it's no wonder the three undergraduates off on a lark end up in the wrong place when they set out to retrieve the valuable diptych which old Professor Havers, a dabbler in witchcraft, believes was stolen from him by a rival collector, the odious Mr. Aumbrey. When they eventually find the right place, they discover Aumbrey's dead body instead of the icon, and have a lot of explaining to do to the police. Meanwhile, Aumbrey had recently revised his will in favor of his impoverished poet nephew Richmond, making him a prime suspect in the murder, although his other three nephews insist no one knew of the change. It's a knotty problem indeed for Mrs. Bradley, and right up her alley, with her fondness for unruly students and all things macabre. First published in 1953, it well displays Gladys Mitchell's quirky humor and love of the bizarre.

"I can't remember a case with so many motives," Emmy remarks to her husband, Chief Inspector Henry Tibbett. "Hauser must have been just about the most hated man in Europe." The Tibbetts are at a small resort in the Italian Tirol for a spot of skiing and to look into a little matter of interest to Interpol. The "most hated man in Europe" is Fritiz Hauser, a fat, odious little man who is a frequent visitor to the lodge, although he does not ski. The lodge itself is located high above a small village and is reachable only via the longest chair-lift in Europe. It is on that chair-lift that Hauser's body is discovered with a bullet through his heart. Just about all the guests at the resort had reason to want Hauser dead. An Italian policeman is in charge and he does a marvelous job of compiling timetables but it's up to Henry's intuitive police work, what he calls his "nose," that finally reveals whodunit. Published in 1959, this would be the first of nineteen books in which the Tibbetts solve crimes in various locales around the globe. As Katherine Hall Page says in her introduction, Moyes worked in the grand tradition of the Golden Age detective novel.

HIGHLY recommended by Dean! 

Chicago lawyer John J. Malone's mission in life is to keep every blonde—or brunette—or redhead—from going to the chair. Luckily for Holly Inglehart she's a redhead because that's just about the only thing she's got going for her when she's discovered unconscious on the floor next to dead body of the aunt who was about to disinherit her for marrying band leader Dick Drayton. She's also got Drayton's press agent, Jake Justus, and her best friend, neighboring deb Helene Brand, on her side. Helene's no ordinary deb. She can drink Malone and Justus under the table and if the rye holds out this trio of wisecracking sleuths just might get her off. It isn't going to be easy because just about everyone else in the case has an airtight alibi for the time of the murder—3 a.m.—which is when every clock in the Northshore mansion stopped. Originally published in 1939, this screwball gem was the first of a dozen books to feature these hard-drinking sleuths and helped make Rice not only the highest paid mystery writer in the country but also the first to appear on the cover of Time.