Wednesday the 19th of September–time again for Shelf Control. Shelf Control is a weekly feature hosted by Lisa at Bookshelf Fantasies, and celebrates the books waiting to be read on your TBR piles/mountains. To participate, simply pick a book from your TBR pile and write a post about it–what its about, where you got it, what makes you want to read it, and such. Link back to Lisa’s page, and do also leave your links in the comments below as I’d love to check out your picks.
This week, my pick is a Golden Age mystery, a British Library Crime Classic, Murder of a Lady by Anthony Wynne. First published in 1931, this is the twelfth in a series featuring an amateur detective, Dr Eustace Hailey. Set in the Scottish Highlands (in fact, the book is subtitled ‘A Scottish Mystery’) in the forbidding, gloomy Castle Duchlan, this is also a locked room mystery. Mary Gregor, sister of the Castle’s laird is found stabbed to death in her bedroom one day, and the room is locked from within and the windows barred. While the family and servants try to present Mary as a kind and charitable woman, Inspector Dundas soon finds that this wasn’t really the case. Mary’s cruelty in fact continues to haunt the house even after she has gone. Further deaths occur, the atmosphere turns darker, and superstition among the locals throws up explanations of mysterious fish creatures, since a scale was found next to the body. But this is of course a murder mystery, and there is of course a logical answer, and Dr Hailey is luckily at the spot to provide it!
The author: Captain Robert McNair Wilson was an English surgeon, writer, journalist, and politician. He wrote under his own name as well as under two pseudonyms, Anthony Wynne being the one he used for writing detective fiction, both novels and short stories. His Dr Hailey series has twenty-eight books. In his own name too, he has written various works including biographies and portraits of various historical figures–quite a few of these on Napolean and Josephine.
Locked room mysteries, and that too Golden Age ones are always fun to read, and from the description, this one seems like it will also have some character study and a definitely creepy atmosphere with a cruel victim, and mysterious fish creatures (even if just superstition), so I am certainly looking forward to reading it.
Have you read this Golden Age mystery or any other/s by this author? Which one or ones and how did you like them? Looking forward to your thoughts!
All information about the book and the author is from Goodreads (here and here) and wikipedia (here).
Image source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4373819.Anthony_Wynne
Literary Potpourri 
This is one of the books I reviewed in my first year of blogging. I really enjoyed it.
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress.com/2015/11/21/impossible-crime-in-the-highlands-anthony-wynnes-murder-of-a-lady-1931/
Not read any more novels by him, (though I did read a short story), not because of I didn’t like his work enough, but because he is so difficult to track down in hard copies at a reasonable price. Copies tend to be very pricey and very hard to get a hold of.
Tomcat, the writer of the blog Beneath the Stains of Time and Curtis Evans the writer of the blog The Passing Tramp, have reviewed other titles by this author, so I would recommend giving their sites a look.
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Thanks for stopping by. I can imagine–some of these Golden Age (generally older) books are so difficult to come by, I’m glad at least some are being reprinted/republished so that one has a chance of reading them. But we also end up losing good ones that don’t get picked for republication. Thanks for the recommendations, I shall certainly have a look 🙂
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That sounds like my kind of book. I must put it on my TBR pile.
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fadedpage
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Sounds really great! And I do love books set in Scotland. Enjoy!
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Thanks 🙂 It does sound like fun and I’ve read since that it has an unusual solution as well which makes m look forward to it even more.
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