Main Line mysteries

"Of the stories in this collection, thirteen were written before 1961, when Catch-22 was published; of those, five have never before been published. After Catch-22, Heller forsook the short story form. Though five stories were published after 1961, one - "World Full of Great Cities" - was actually written in 1949, three of the other four are spin-offs of Catch-22, and one is a preview of Closing Time.". "Rounding out this collection of the complete published short writings of Joseph Heller are a short play and several nonfiction pieces, mostly related to Catch-22."--BOOK JACKET.

"Here's to Death." This would have been an appropriate toast on the stroke of midnight for the New Year's Eve party at the plush country house of John Halley in Westchester County. Within two hours he had been murdered twice! A heavy snowstorm isolated the house, roads were closed, and finally the power failed leaving the once gay guests shivering in cold rooms while further terrors walked the halls. Discovery of John Halley's stiff body in the lake interrupted the holiday plans of the redoubtable Captain Heimrich, of the New York State Police, who worked with unusual speed to separate the innocent from the guilty. He was not fast enough, however, to prevent an effective hatchet job on a guest who had seen too much. But as the electric company mended broken lines to restore lifegiving power and the first snowplow opened the road to the outside world, the villain was meshed in Captain Heimrich's net.

Those who sing the praises of that fine old American institution, the town meeting, are sometimes inclined to overlook the rather untidy passions barely concealed by the surface exchange of differences. In the case of Orville Phipps, town supervisor of Van Brunt, the give and take of town meeting proves absolutely fatal. Discussions of zoning, of the sale of liquor to minors, of the excess of the Van Brunt family's local influence, are interrupted by the burning up of the local fire house. In its ashes Orville's crispy remains are discovered the next morning. Not until considerable further violence, both overt and threatened, has taken place, does Captain Heimrich of the New York State Police, hero of many previous Lockridge thrillers, proceed to the solution of one of the knottiest cases of his long career.

An amnesiac Holocaust survivor steps into a mystery that only Miss Silver can solve. William Smith is not sure what his name is, but he doubts it’s William Smith, the name the Nazis gave him when he wandered out of one of their hospitals in 1942, to be herded, along with so many others, into one of their nightmarish camps. They did their best to kill this man without a name, but he survived because a man with no identity has nothing to fear. Now, the war over, he is back in England, ready to make a new life. But even a man with no past cannot escape history. William Smith is about to find himself enmeshed in a terrifying mystery, which only Maud Silver, the staunch, old-fashioned detective, can solve. He may yet learn his name, but it could cost him his life.

The house Constance Dale inherits is an enormous Victorian creation in Westchester County. When she arrives from the West Coast to try to dispose of it, it has been deserted for months. Or so she thinks. But little things soon prove her wrong: The grandfather clock ticks busily. Lights go on in a theoretically empty room. A cry sounds faintly in the night. And to increase her unease, a neighbor-who would be attractive if he weren't so suspicious (in both senses of the word) — keeps turning up at odd moments. One little out-of-place circumstance after another leads Constance to an unfamiliar part of the house and a room where a stolen child has been hidden. Then her struggle begins, a struggle to save herself and the child, a fight for life that sends her racing through the old house and into the unfamiliar countryside, and catapults her into greater danger than before. In this crisp, fast-paced story, the excitement of distinguishing friend from enemy and hunter from hunted keeps the reader absorbed until the nerve-tingling conclusion.

When Forbes Ingraham, a respected lawyer, turns up dead in his office, the main clue is w a gold key that allows access to the back door of the law firm of Schaeffer, Ingraham and Webb. The key had belonged to Schaeffer, also deceased, and had been given to him by his wife. But what was it doing in lngraham's office and, more importantly, who had used it? Enter Pam and Jerry North, friends and clients of the late Mr. Ingraham. With the secretaries all in a flutter and a tangled web of relationships, it is not easy to figure out what happened — especially since gangsters seem to be involved through a noted client of Mr. Ingraham. But leave it to Pam's ''woman's intuition'' to put together the puzzle pieces and make sense of the key clue.

Tensions have been rising in the conservative community of North Wellwood, New York, ever since African American lawyer Thomas Peters moved to town with a plan to open a desegregated country club. Those in opposition are determined to see Mr. Peters’s plan fail at all costs—going so far as to harass liberal newcomers like Eric and Ann Martin, and commit vile acts against those who dare to support equality, like widow Faith Powers. Called in to investigate Mrs. Powers’s shocking murder, recently promoted Inspector Heimrich soon finds himself caught in the storm that has taken over North Wellwood. Now, if he wants to see justice served, he’ll have to make it out of a hate-fueled powder keg that’s ready to explode . . . [mysteriouspress.com]

A young woman’s violent murder shocks a quiet village, and Miss Silver comes to investigate. In Deeping, a village so tiny that its residents share a common phone line, gossip is the chief amusement. Scotland Yard inspector Frank Abbott has family there, and thinks it a charming spot for a vacation until the country quiet is broken by a cry of “Murder!” A young German woman, recently come to town, has been making vague threats about recovering something that was stolen from her. She disappears for a weekend, and a woman of her description is seen brutally murdered on a country road. But when Inspector Abbot goes to see the body, the corpse has gone. He takes the peculiar case to Miss Silver, the brilliant amateur detective, and she agrees to investigate the small town where gossip turned fatal. Miss Silver mystery #14

Pam and Jerry North investigate the murder of a tennis official, but the case becomes more complex when the chief suspect is also found murdered.

Stuart Fleming, former member of the Dyckman University football squad, is laid up with a broken leg at home when he puts in a call to the Manhattan police. He gives them a story of gamblers trying to get at the current Dyckman players for point-shaving purposes. Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro drives out to the house to question him, only to discover that someone handy with a gun has been there first. The ex-football star is deader than a punctured pigskin. That's when Captain Heimrich gets into the game and finds that football isn't the only sport involved. There's golf, for instance, and philandering — possibly involving a blonde named Enid, or dark-haired Catherine, or redheaded Mrs. Bryce — or maybe all three!

> Murder is Served marks the welcome return of Pam and Jerry North, that so phisticated duo of sleuths who made their first appearance in The New Yorker in 1930. When playboy restaurateur Tony Mott is murdered, the obvious suspect is his lovely widow, left bereaved and sump tuously wealthy. But for Mr. and Mrs. North, the solution to a mystery never presents itself on a silver platter. Besides, the late Mr. Mott had any number of acquaintances who knew how to dish out a crime. Without missing a beat, or a meal, the Norths solve the case in their usual way with a wit as dry as the perfect martini.

Murder mystery, in which a British poet, on an academic assignment in New York, is the protagonist.

ON SUCH a foggy afternoon it was easy for a child to disappear. They all went to look for him in the grounds surrounding the Victorian monstrosity of a house where the ill-mated Marta and Scott Bromwell lived with Lucretia, Scott's mother, and where the fog seemed to cover the strains of family relationships as completely as the bushes and trees. Before they found the straying child, Karen Mason, Lucretia's secretary, found instead the beautiful dark-haired Marta lying face down in a brook—where she had quite evidently been pushed down and held under. The story is told from the viewpoint of Karen, who—without quite knowing it-is in love with Scott. Present also are Stephen Nickel, a gentleman of faintly dubious associations, an odd-job man named Higgins and Rudolph Haas, an orchestra leader who was apparently Marta's boy friend. Naturally the redoubtable Captain Heimrich of the State Police comes on the scene, but there is to be a second death before he and Karen with an assist from the heavy fog bring the murderer to book in a tense and breathless finish.

It starts quite innocently on Fifth Avenue on a cheerful autumn day . . . and all because a young physicist, Evans Parten, happens to meet an attractive girl, Alison Kent, and invites her to lunch with him the following Saturday. He rings her doorbell on schedule, but the redhead who answers denies ever having seen or heard of Alison Kent. Evans concludes that he has been stood up. But while brooding in his car opposite the apartment house, who should come out but Alison, walking close to a dark-haired man who looks as if he may be holding a gun in his coat pocket. Losing their trail, Evans reports the matter to the police and, indeed, it develops that something is up and some very tough eggs are involved in it. A breathtaking Lockridge chase follows with the panic-stricken girl, Evans, two engaging Manhattan detectives—and the reader—careening down a deadly path from a warehouse on the upper East Side to a freighter docked downtown; while murder, with a Spanish accent, stalks through a night of shadows.

Dead as a Dinosaur is the way Dr. Orpheus Preson, known mammologist and author of the bestseller The Days Before Man, ended up. He had claimed that someone was trying to drive him crazy. The police and his family believed he was crazy — crazy enough to stage his own persecution, a persecution that ended in death. In his last days, Dr. Preson had sought out the help of Pam and Jerry North. But after his death, the Norths had to agree that the evidence supported the theory that it had been suicide rather than murder — until another body is found, killed by prehistoric methods. Who cared so much about a bunch of old dinosaur bones that they would go to such extremes? The Norths, determined to unearth the truth, try to make sense of the seeming insanity before it's too late!

Murder In a Hurry brings Jerry and Pam North one of their most intriguing cases. Eccentric multi-millionaire J. K. Halder ran his Greenwich Village pet shop as a hobby more than a business; he considered dogs not only his best, but his only friends. Now he has been found murdered, grotesquely folded into one of the shop's cages and there are a number of suspects, all eager to get a share of the Halder fortune. Considering Mr. Halder's taste in companions, it seems fitting that a pooch plays an essential role in finding the murderer.

When a question of inheritance turns fatal, Miss Silver searches for the killer. Jenny has never been one to feel sorry for herself. The illegitimate child of a wealthy man and a stature less woman, she has been an orphan since before she can remember. It is a hard life made bearable only by the kindness of her guardian, an old woman named Miss Garstone, who has always treated Jenny as her own. Struck down by a motorist, “Garsty” dies, whispering to Jenny that her parents were actually married, and she is the rightful heir to the Alington fortune. Miss Garstone was not the only one who knew the secret, and as Jenny grieves, her wealthy cousins work to protect their fortune. When the quiet conflict turns deadly, governess-turned-detective Miss Silver is the only one who can unravel the perplexing family saga. Miss Silver Mystery #31

Murder is Suggested but no one knows for sure. When blondes suddenly emerge from empty closets and cats go into trances, a missing psychologist might have been murdered, or he might be the victim of a disappearing act with a tragic ending. The only certainty is that Professor Jameson Elwell is dead, shortly after Jerry North had published the man's latest book on hypnosis. With few clues to guide them, Mr. and Mrs. North concentrate on the available suspects: Roscoe Finch, the professor's future son-in-law; Faith and Hope Oldham, a psychology student and her mother; and Carl Hunter, a research assistant. Here's a spellbinding mystery featuring two of America's favorite sleuths.

Recovering from a gunshot wound, Captain Heimrich is on vacation at a plush seaside hotel in Key West when he gets involved in a new bloodletting. The tip of Florida provides a background vivid and warm with February sunlight, for the suspense that is gathered with telling Lockridge skill. Mary Wister, commercial artist; Bronson Wells, celebrated ex-Communist; Dr. MacDonald, 'country doctor' from New Haven; a high-voltage dish named Rachel Jones; and a Cuban band leader are among the participants. Captain Heimrich is on top form, making the character fit the crime-his first principle in sleuthing, and one which he is given to expounding as the spirit moves him.

Murder Comes First, putting an unexpected kink in the vacation plans of Pamela North's three maiden aunts, Thelma, Lucinda, and Pennina Whitsett. Paying a call on their childhood friend, Grace Logan, the sisters find her distraught and preoccupied. When Grace's first sip of tea causes her to fall dead upon the Oriental carpet, Lucinda sniffs the telltale odor of peach pits, and realizes that someone has poisoned dear Grace. Luckily for the aunts, amateur sleuths Mr. and Mrs. North are at the ready, helping the police sift through family squabbles to find the motive and murderer, in their zany, sophisticated way.

Dr. Andrew Gordon is an orderly man, and the women who work in his office can predict his movements as regularly as clockwork. So when Grace Spencer enters his office, she expects him to look up and smile, as he does every time she walks in. But this time he doesn’t raise his head. Dr. Gordon is dead. Though he was bludgeoned in his office, just a few feet from where his nurses were working, no one was seen entering or leaving. It’s an impossible murder, and it will take more than a doctor to stop this kind of sickness. Pamela North spots Lt. William Weigand on his way to the crime scene, and she can’t resist tagging along. The doctor’s death is no medical mystery, but this case will be solved thanks to one of the great marvels of the twentieth century: the collective minds of Mr. and Mrs. North.

When Dorian Hunt visits the offices of the magazine Esprit to deliver some of her drawings, she does not expect to be involved in a series of events involving death, kidnapping, fire, threats and a wild ride as an unwilling passenger in the trunk of a car driven by two sinister and (as it turns out) hopelessly misguided thugs. But because she has seen too much when the art editor falls or is pushed out of a window to his death, she is snatched by the thugs and taken to New Jersey. The thugs don't know it, but in private life Dorian is the wife of Lt. Bill Weigand of the New York City Police Department — and now Bill, accompanied by Pam and Jerry North, are the hunters who follow the trail with some difficulty — and a couple of near misses!

Sailing to Havana, Mr. and Mrs. North find their vacation dogged by death Stepping out of her stateroom, Pamela North is rather disappointed to see a man with a sword. She had hoped this cruise would be a respite from murder, mayhem, and crime, and she finds pirates to be dreary. As it happens, she’s wrong on all counts. The man with the sword is no pirate, and this trip will not offer an escape from death. As the ship embarks on an eight-day voyage to Havana and Nassau, the Norths will find the sword-bearing gentleman is far from the strangest passenger onboard. The Carib Queen transports daiquiri-swilling dowagers, a bizarre private detective, and at least one jewel thief. And when one of their fellow passengers is found with a sword buried in his chest, Pamela and Jerry must find the killer—or risk spoiling their entire vacation.

It was one of the biggest evenings of John Hayward's life, for his girl had just promised to marry him. The evening was bigger than he thought, however, for on his return home he was met by New York City Police detectives and accused of murder; his victim, a woman called Nora Evans, a beautiful young woman he didn't even know. When the police unfold the fool-proof evidence against him, John is horrified by its conclusiveness and realizes he has been cleverly, carefully framed. Left with nothing save his own ingenuity and the help of his fiancee, Barbara Phillips, he must quickly provide an alibi and above all prove that he is not the man the police are looking for. As John and Barbara start the search for The Faceless Adversary, Frances and Richard Lockridge are off to another of their spellbinding mysteries.

On vacation in a tiny village, Miss Silver investigates a murder with a decades-old motive. The citizens of Melling are perfectly ordinary—exactly the sort one finds in just about every cozy English village—and to a certain person they might even appear boring. But to Miss Silver, people are always interesting. It has been some years since she gave up work as a governess to become a detective, and her interest in people has served her well. She comes to Melling on vacation—a long postponed visit to an old school chum—but Miss Silver’s business is murder, and her vacations never last long. Miss Silver mystery #16 The town’s prodigal son has returned, wealthy and without nostalgia for the village of his birth. He intends to sell his manor house and be done with Melling forever. But Melling has not finished with him.

When Captain Heimrich and Susan Faye walked into the scene, beautiful actress Peggy Belford was stretched across the floor, a bullet through her chest. Across the room, slumped in a chair is the corpse of Brian Collins, the master of the house. A gun lies on the floor beneath his limp hand. It looks like an open-and-shut case of murder/suicide, yet something about the scene looks phony to Heimrich. He begins an investigation that takes him to the set of the movie Peggy was making before her demise. Since most of these people do their best acting in real life, it's a tough case for Heimrich and Faye, and they had better solve it before another murder/suicide — theirs — is staged.

Two men murdered and an unpublished manuscript of local history destroyed.

Lois Williams watched old Mrs. Montfort sign her will and had no foreboding of the terror that was to follow. At most, she felt a small chill, which she absent-mindedly attributed to the damp coolness of Mrs. Montfort's pre-Revolutionary house. Yet later she is startled by an odd similarity between the voice of a young woman at the village inn and the remembered voice of the old woman. Explaining the event to Bob Oliver, editor of the Glenville Advertiser, Lois tries to call it coincidence. So does Bob—until he learns of a fatal mugging in Greenwich Village and has a talk with sad-faced Detective Nathan Shapiro of the Manhattan Police Force. Then they are caught in a mystery of elusive identities, disjointed telephone calls—and an unnamed terror that pursues them down a narrow, winding road and into a blinding storm. They are, in fact, involved in big-M murder, playing a defensive game against a ruthless killer.

The slaying of a notorious city playboy and the disappearance of a successful young cartoonist are the kick-off for this lively-as-always Lockridge tale of murder and mystery. When attractive Ann Dillard from Westchester, in New York for the day, finds herself stood up by her fiancé and receives a curiously vague note from him, she is puzzled and concerned. Can Clark's disappearance have anything to do with the murder of Sonny Underwood? Unable to leave the question unanswered, she sets out on a quest marked by strange incidents and threatened with danger. As the day progresses, confusion gathers momentum and peculiar individuals drift into Ann's search, including the bewildering Ferris and his sidekick, Yorke, whose perplexing changes of character occur regularly. By nightfall another murder has been committed and the action moves to the dark hills of Westchester County, where Captain Bill Weigand and a curious group assemble for the finale and Ann's clear-headed aunt proves herself handy with a gun.