Hogarth Crime

> Catherine Cartwright, an oldish millionairess married to a garage mechanic and saddled with lots of poor relatives, makes a fine victim. Naturally, there are quite a few suspects, even the sleuth being under suspicion. He is a young man who takes up crime detection as the only way to save his own neck, and who learned all he knows about sleuthing from mystery stories.

A country house murder mystery classic, as a party find themselves snowed-in on Christmas Eve with a murderer among them... The snow is thick, the phone line is down, and no one is getting in or out of Warbeck Hall. All is set for a lovely Christmas, with friends and family gathered round the fire, except as the bells chime midnight, a murder is committed. But who is responsible? The scorned young lover? The lord’s passed-over cousin? The social climbing politician’s wife? The Czech history professor? The obsequious butler? And perhaps the real question is: Can they survive long enough to find out?

First of all, Marcus Pottermack was not his real name. But Mr. "Pottermack" thought he had excellent reasons to adopt it and to murder James Lewson, bank-manager, blackmailer and among the most loathsome characters in all detective fiction. The tension mounts rapidly in this "inverted" detective story - one of the earliest full-length examples, and still one of the best. Characteristically, we are quickly acquainted with the perpetrator's identity: to figure out "whodunit" is not the task set readers of inverted mysteries. They face a challenge many consider far more interesting: to deduce precisely how the detective will fasten upon the culprit despite scanty or seemingly nonexistent evidence. In Mr. Pottermack's Oversight the obstacles are formidable, for the brilliant criminal has made his victim appear to have vanished into thin air while strolling in the country. Indeed, the ingenious Mr. Pottermack seems to have anticipated everything that might thwart his plan - except that his adversary would be Dr. John Thorndyke, England's renowned expert in medical jurisprudence, admired for nearly 80 years by mystery connoisseurs as the greatest of all scientific detectives. Whether or not you can match Dr. Thorndyke's penetrating insight - the clues are all placed fairly before the reader - you will be fascinated as you witness a virtuoso performance by a first-class scientific mind. And, equally absorbing, you will be drawn into the guilt-racked mind of a murderer as you watch ruthless determination attempting to fight off a growing sense of horror.

Original UK title Jumping Jenny At a costume party with the dubious theme of ‘famous murderers and their victims’, the know-it-all amateur criminologist Roger Sheringham is settled in for an evening of beer, small talk and analysing his companions. One guest in particular has caught his attention for her theatrics, and his theory that she might have several enemies among the partygoers proves true when she is found hanging from the ‘decorative’ gallows on the roof terrace. Noticing a key detail which could implicate a friend in the crime, Sheringham decides to meddle with the scene and unwittingly casts himself into jeopardy as the uncommonly thorough police investigation circles closer and closer to the truth.

> Around the breakfast table at Friars Cross sit Matthew Barry, squire of Wampish village and host, Miss Barry, his half-sister and housekeeper, his lepidopterist son Edward, and five of their guests. But this morning the usually hearty meal and cheerful conversation are somewhat subdued, for the sixth member of the party is upstairs - dead. >As you would expect in a classic whodunnit, no one in the household escapes the obligatory interview in the library and everyone at Friars Cross has a theory about the crime. That is, perhaps, with the exception of the Reverend Joseph Colchester, the narrator of the story, whose unwavering Christian spirit prevents him from contemplating evil. Who can possibly be the murderer? Colonel Lawrence is a blundering idiot; Phyllis Winter is of a frail and hysterical disposition; Mrs Fairfax and Judith Grant seem to have no motive; the Barrys all have alibis. So did the butler, who has unfortunately embraced socialism, do it? And can a private investigator make a correct deduction when he is in love with one of his suspects? >Romilly and Katherine John's superbly crafted novel repeatedly surprises the reader with the most unexpected twists and turns of plot, and at the same time perfectly evokes the delightful conventions of the Golden Age of detective fiction. Death by Request will keep even the best armchair sleuth guessing right up to the last pages. >Romilly John, poet, writer and seventh child of Augustus and Dorelia John, met Katherine, a distinguished translator, at Cambridge where he was reading engineering and she languages. They married in 1929 and Death by Request their only crime novel, was published four years later.