UNITED KINGDOM AUTHOR
Dorothy Fielding
Also known as: A. Fielding, A. E. Fielding
The identity of the author is as much a mystery as the plots of the novels. Two dozen novels were published from 1924 to 1944 as by Archibald Fielding, A. E. Fielding, or Archibald E. Fielding, yet the only clue as to the real author is a comment by the American publishers, H.C. Kinsey Co. that A. E. Fielding was in reality a "middle-aged English woman by the name of Dorothy Feilding whose peacetime address is Sheffield Terrace, Kensington, London, and who enjoys gardening." Research on the part of John Herrington has uncovered a person by that name living at 2 Sheffield Terrace from 1932-1936. She appears to have moved to Islington in 1937 after which she disappears. To complicate things, some have attributed the authorship to Lady Dorothy Mary Evelyn Moore nee Feilding (1889-1935), however, a grandson of Lady Dorothy denied any family knowledge of such authorship. The archivist at Collins, the British publisher, reports that any records of A. Fielding were presumably lost during WWII. Birthdates have been given variously as 1884, 1889, and 1900. Unless new information comes to light, it would appear that the real authorship must remain a mystery.
Most acclaimed
Mystery at the Rectory
> Mystery at the Rectory, first published in 1937, is a classic British 'golden-age' murder mystery. >The Rev. John Avery, rector of the village church, was famous for the eloquence and scholarly nature of his sermons. No one in attendance at the Sunday service was surprised then, when the rector, having evidently exchanged his notes for some other document, after a moment’s hesitation, delivered one of his most moving sermons extempore. They were, however, much surprised, when the rector was found dead the next morning the victim of an apparent accidental poisoning. Coming on the heels of the death of one of the leading young men of the village by a shooting, also ruled an accident, it seemed to all an unfortunate coincidence. To all, that is, except for Chief Inspector Pointer, who, by a much more fortunate coincidence, happened to be visiting the County Chief Constable for a spot of fishing. It falls to the Scotland Yard detective to unravel the web of secrets that form the...Mystery at the Rectory!
The Footsteps that Stopped
1930
> When the body of Mrs. Tangye was found sitting beside her tea-table with her service revolver, a souvenir of her days as an officer in the WAACS during the war, lying on the floor next to her and a bullet wound to the heart the initial assumption was that it was a case of an accident or suicide. There were no signs of a struggle or foul play. Mrs. Tangye had been a strong willed woman more than capable of defending herself. And the fact was, she had acted in the days leading up to her death in a manner consistent with someone straightening up her affairs. But Chief Inspector Pointer was not so sure that Mrs. Tangye had died by her own hand, whether intentionally or by accident. There were several aspects of the case that troubled him, not least of which were the footsteps in the garden heard through the pantry window by the maid, footsteps that stopped when a light was turned on.
Scarecrow
As 'Scarecrow' Schofield watches his mission to eliminate a Siberian turn into a bloodbath, he realises he has been tricked - and now become the prey rather than the predator. For a shadowy consortium of staggering power and wealth has included his name on a list of fifteen targets to be eliminated without fail by twelve noon that same day. Now every high-powered bounty hunter on the planet is on his trail, while he must simultaneously track down the perpetrators of a conspiracy about to reduce many of the major cities of the world to ashes. From Arctic Russia to the Afghan border, to France's Atlantic Coast, to a speed-of-light conflict over the Suez Canal, every form of ultra-tech weaponry comes into play in a spellbinding action drama unfolding within a mere twenty-four hours.