A collection of eight suspenseful tales from one of the century's finest crime authorsWith stories published when the author was in her seventies and eighties, this collection proves that after five decades writing crime fiction, Dorothy Salisbury Davis has lost none of her edge. In Christopher and Maggie, based on Davis's own experiences during the Great Depression, a traveling magician stumbles upon a murder victim. In other stories, a woman picks up the wrong hitchhiker, an ex-detective decides to make some money by getting rid of his wife—forever—and a man gets involved in a road accident from which he simply cannot drive away. The Manhattan gossip columnist and part-time sleuth Julie Hayes from A Death in The Life appears in two stories, The Puppet and Justina. Intelligent, chilling, and beautifully written, these stories are a reminder that in crime fiction, there is no substitute for the Grand Master's touch.

Grand Master of crime fiction Dorothy Salisbury Davis brings back the beguiling character Major General Ransom Jarvis in this third Mrs. Norris Mystery, a prequel, which immerses the redoubtable crime-solving Scottish housekeeper in a murder investigation in the nation's capitalWith a new president in the White House, Major General Ransom Jarvis suspects that his retirement from the US Army is imminent. But at Washington's annual invitation-only Beaux Arts Ball, the decorated soldier becomes an unwitting pawn in a far-reaching conspiracy. It begins when Ransom meets Virginia Allan, a beautiful blonde with secrets. And there is something decidedly shady about Frenchman Leo Montaigne.As Ransom starts to uncover damning intel about DC's most powerful movers and shakers, the town is suddenly rocked by murder. Now Ransom's son, Jimmie, a freshman congressman, and his housekeeper, Mrs. Norris, are risking their necks as they conduct their own fact-finding mission in a city rife with...

In Grand Master of crime fiction Dorothy Salisbury Davis's second Mrs. Norris novel, which the New York Times hailed as tensely perplexing, the crime-solving Scottish housekeeper helps crack the case of a serial lady-killerAs housekeeper to James Jarvis's recently deceased father, a retired major general of the US Army, Mrs. Norris has raised Jimmie since boyhood. Now the Wall Street lawyer faces a challenging case. The son of one of the firm's old blue-blood clients has been slapped with a paternity suit. But Teddy Adkins swears he never slept with the woman.Meanwhile, Mrs. Norris is miffed when her gentleman friend Jasper Tully, the widowed chief investigator for the Manhattan DA's office, cancels one dinner date after another because a real estate magnate has been found strangled in the bedroom of her Upper East Side apartment. Jewelry was stolen, but there are no signs of a break-in. Tully's investigation turns up a trail of strangulations that extends all the way to the...

In Grand Master of crime fiction Dorothy Salisbury Davis's second Julie Hayes mystery, the Manhattan fortune-teller is plunged into a mystery that hinges on a stolen Da Vinci masterworkIt starts innocently enough. Julie Hayes and her husband have just returned to Manhattan from a month in Paris. Julie looks forward to spending quality time with Jeff, whose career as a journalist takes him away from home for months on end. Now if they could just find the perfect work of art to hang over their mantel.Julie's quest takes her to a trendy SoHo gallery where she meets an itinerant artist named Ralph Abel. Julie instantly falls in love with one of his paintings, Scarlet Night,andis stunned to discover that itcan be hers—for a mere one hundred dollars. But then the artist disappears and it becomes apparent that somebody else wants the painting . . . and will do whatever it takes to possess it.Scarlet Night is the second novel in Dorothy Salisbury Davis's Julie Hayes mystery...