Description: Murder leads to scandal at a wealthy woman's mansion in this mystery from one of the bestselling authors of the 20th century.
Brief description: Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) was the most beloved and best-selling mystery writer in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Pittsburgh to the owner of a sewing machine factory, she wrote fiction in her spare time until a stock market crash sent her and her husband into debt, forcing her to lean on her writing to pay the bills. Her first two novels, The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Man in Lower Ten (1909), established her as a bright young talent, and it wasn't long before she was a regular on bestseller lists. Among her dozens of novels were The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry (1911) and The Bat (1932), which was among the inspirations for Bob Kane's Batman. Today, Rinehart is often called an American Agatha Christie, even though she was much more popular than Christie during her heyday.
Review Quotes: "Mrs. Rinehart's mastery of plot construction and development, of characterization and of mystification has never been better demonstrated than in this book."-- "New York Times"