Helen Reilly

Liz Bowen, a career girl in advertising art, is about to marry widower Philip Montgomery. Liz lives on the edge of the Village; Montgomery has a house in Spuyten Duyvil on the northern tip of Manhattan. Both have extensive family connections in New York and Europe. And both have secrets in their past which now reach out to destroy their mutual faith, their happiness, and indeed may enmesh them in charges of murder. When the killer strikes the first time, circumstances point dangerously to Liz as well as to Montgomery for reasons which neither can understand at first, so deeply rooted are they in the past. Yet Inspector McKee's skepticism rejects the obvious, and fortunately he digs deeper and deeper. His police work and the mystifying actions of this group of New Yorkers make one of Mrs. Reilly's most fascinating novels of guilty secrets and murder.

"The Great White Whale," the monkey house at a private zoo, and Mr. Smith's tattered hat are only three of the many puzzling features in this brilliant and baffling case from the career of Inspector Christopher Mckee.

The wealthy Mistress of Arroways disinherited her daughter when missy rejected mama's choice of husband and eloped.  So, mama adopted the rejected swain,   and made  him the beneficiary of her will.  But when mama dies, her 'real' granddaughter comes to inherit Arroways  and the murders begin.  A lot of action mixed with a little romance and just the right amount of blood flow.  The author manages to sustain an aura of menace throughout the book.  Read as many Helen Reilly books as you can find!

The murderer wasn't shy. One victim was killed in a department store window. Another died before the startled eyes of a policeman on guard duty. The third breathed his last in a crowd coming out of a theater. Then the murderer tried the boldest move of all--with Inspector McKee as the intended victim.

From the jacket: The shadow of a ruthless killer creeps over a quiet countryside as fear and suspense mount steadily and explode in a crashing climax. Wouldn’t You Like to Know— Why lanterns are lit each evening on the graves of the four dead Vestry sisters? Why a woman wearing black net stockings and shoes with four-inch heels walks country lanes at night? How a used bus ticket reveals an ingenious blackmail plot? What is the reason for Wick’s strange relationship with the breathtakingly beautiful Rita? Why flowers are heaped on a grave where no one is buried? You will learn the answers as you read this ingenious story of death and terror. Where will the clues and events lead you? A human hand sticking out of a puddle after a rainstorm ... An oil painting of a lady in red ... A pistol found in a pond . . . Blood seeping out from under an attic doorway . . . Lanterns, lighted each day at dusk, on four marble headstones in a quiet country graveyard ... A bullet hidden in the finger of a pigskin glove . . . Rifle shots that shatter the quiet (and a window) of a peaceful farmhouse ... . A briefcase hidden among blackberry bushes . . . Oil dripping slowly from a tank that should have been empty . . . Exchange of carpets in an upstairs bedroom ... A powerful narcotic discarded for a quicker and more brutal method of committing MURDER . . . Filmy yellow silk knotted tightly about a shapely throat . . . murder and violence in a peaceful farming community.

Compartment K It had been planned, everybody thought, as a family weekend. The Canadian Rockies, a lodge--it was something to look forward to. Until an uninvited guest became part of the group. A man of mystery. A stranger. But there was no mystery about this: as the miles faded, a killer stalked the night and the stranger became a corpse. And he was, it turned out, not such a stranger after all...

The official verdict on Hanley Aiken's death was accident, but his family and friends called it suicide. Tess Aiken, his young widow, did not believe her husband had taken his life just because they had quarreled. So now she had come to North Dobney, far out on Cape Cod, to investigate, and promptly met antagonism from their friends among the artists, winter residents and natives. Soon this reaction took on a more formidable and nerve-shaking aspect, and Tess's hitherto uneasy suspicion became a conviction that Hanley Aiken had been murdered. The clues that finally fell into the hands of Inspector Christopher McKee were ephemeral —a St. Christopher medal where it shouldn't have been, a sudden change in the weather, a frightened child's nightmare at twilight, spilled coffee on a black iron stove, a water-logged face mask, which might have been used by a child at Halloween. The journey into crime of Tess and the Inspector led them through a maze centered on Mrs. Waine, a rich, much-married art patron, and her heirs, who were painters, writers, sculptors, and a poetess. Before long a second life was taken and McKee was confronted with one of his most baffling and, at the same time, fascinating cases.