Death Down East

The summer that Alicia Richmond and her father rented the old Greene place started out just like any other season for the families who vacationed each year at Sidley's Cove. But the pleasant, normal routine of that little Maine fishing village soon changed. Alicia, without even trying, knocked the men for a loop, and all the younger women, married and unmarried, were up in arms about it. Mr. Richmond hired Fred Mack, who for years had been the Herrod's family retainer. And then Mark Crosby, the detective, came to stay with the Richmonds, ostensibly as a guest, but really to investigate a mysterious death which had occurred twenty-five years before.

Still, life ran smoothly enough until the evening of the first clam-bake. That night Alicia Richmond fell into the ocean. When they got her back on the beach, she was dead. Dr. Carver said it was an accident. But both Mark Crosby and Dr. Carver knew that some one had committed a carefully planned murder.

Death Down East (1940) is a mystery which has everything you could ask of a polished writer. It is a salty yarn, filled with suspense that will keep you on the edge of your chair till the last page is finished. And it reveals one of the most diabolically clever methods of committing murder that has ever been conceived.

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