This book is rightly considered Hilda Lawrence’s best crime novel and features her serial characters Mark East a private detective and two old ladies Miss Beulah Pond and Miss Bessy Petty, who are amateur sleuths.  The author combines both the soft-boiled and hard-boiled styles of writing to create something that works and makes for an enjoyable and easy read.  This was first published in 1947 and went down well with the reading public.

When Ruth Miller takes up residence in Hope House, little did she know that this was where she would die.  For us as the reader we know certain things that the police and Mark East do not know, for instance we know that someone has spooked Ruth in the building, as she knows something about her, and we know that she must have been killed, and not committed suicide.   But we do not know who, or all the ins and outs. 

Hope House is for working women and as a masked party is held in the building, so it appears Ruth jumped to her death from one of the higher floors, but as others start to wonder if this is what really happened, so the original investigation is looked at again, and East starts an inquiry himself, as it looks like others could be in danger.  With fully formed characters, and a touch of lesbianism so this book really brings to life the people and the period it invokes.  The mystery is a good strong one, and there are other elements that make this a good story and shows how the mystery novel was evolving and developing in the US of the period, making it more akin to what we are used to today.  Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an eARC.

A good mystery. The author’s writing style is most unusual. Her characters are well defined and not until the very end of the book did I know who the killer was, and that only because the author told me. Most of the action, if action it is, takes place in a boarding house for young women. Once common in New York these are not so many toDay.  promenade around New York City, too. I was eager to know the outcome and could not stop reading.