UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND AUTHOR · FICTION · POLICE
E. C. R. Lorac
Also known as: Edith Caroline Rivett, Carol Carnac
Pen name - along with Carol Carnac - of Edith Caroline Rivett.
Most acclaimed
Accident by design
1950
It seems a cruel twist of fate that the heirs to a stately home and a long and distinguished family tradition are Gerald (who is weak), his wife Meriel (who is a common, vulgar shrew) and their adolescent son Alan (who is a deeply disturbed, budding psychopath). So when all three die in separate and very convenient accidents, it really was a blessing. Or was it murder?
Ask A Policeman
Lord Comstock is a barbarous newspaper tycoon with enemies in high places. His murder in the study of his country house poses a dilemma for the Home Secretary. In the hours before his death, Lord Comstock’s visitors included the government Chief Whip, an Archbishop, and the Assistant Commissioner for Scotland Yard. Suspicion falls upon them all and threatens the impartiality of any police investigation. Abandoning protocol, the Home Secretary invites four famous detectives to solve the case: Mrs Adela Bradley, Sir John Saumarez, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Mr Roger Sheringham. All are different, all are plausible, all are on their own – and none of them can ask a policeman... To produce this classic whodunit, the Detection Club adopted a completely new approach: Milward Kennedy proposed the title, John Rhode plotted the murder and provided the suspects, and four of their contemporaries were asked to lend their well-known detectives to the task of providing solutions to the crime. But there was to be another twist: the authors would swap detectives and use the characters in their sections of the book. Thus Gladys Mitchell and Helen Simpson swapped Mrs Bradley and Sir John Saumarez, and Dorothy Sayers and Anthony Berkeley swapped Lord Peter Wimsey and Roger Sheringham, enabling the authors to indulge in skilful and sly parodies of each other. The contributors are: John Rhode, Helen Simpson, Gladys Mitchell, Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Milward Kennedy.
The last escape
Most of us think of the Mossad as the Israeli equivalent to America's CIA. That is correct today (2017), but in the late 1930s, the Mossad was made up of nine men and one woman--Ruth Kluger. Their purpose was to spirit Europe's Jews into, as they called it, "Eretz Israel", the "Land of Israel". Since Great Britain had severely restricted legal Jewish immigration to Palestine (the "Aliyah Aleph"), the Mossad smuggled Jews into Palestine (the "Aliyah Beth"). Ruth tells her story from the time she was recruited into the Mossad through the end of World War II and the establishment of the State of Israel. The book is much more interesting than this synopsis, believe me. And Ruth Kluger-Aliav (she changed her name when she emigrated to Israel) is not to be confused with Ruth Kluger, a professor emerita of German studies at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Kluger (b. 1931) was deported from Vienna and spent time in concentration camps as a child; her book Still Alive tells of those experiences.