Mavis Doriel Hay was a novelist who briefly illuminated the golden age of British crime fiction. Her three notable works are distinguished by intricate plotting and atmosphere. Beyond her fictional endeavors, Hay was also an accomplished expert on rural handicraft, authoring several influential books on the subject.
Aunt Mildred declared that no good could come of the Melbury family Christmas gatherings at their country residence Flaxmere. So when Sir Osmond Melbury, the family patriarch, is discovered - by a guest dressed as Santa Klaus - with a bullet in his head on Christmas Day, the festivities are plunged into chaos.
For Miss Cordell, principal of Persephone College, there are two great evils to be feared: unladylike behavior among her students, and bad publicity for the college. So her prim and cozy world is turned upside down when a secret society of undergraduates meets by the river on a gloomy January afternoon, only to find the drowned body of the college bursar floating in her canoe. The police assume that a student prank got out of hand, but the resourceful Persephone girls suspect foul play, and take the investigation into their own hands. Soon they uncover the tangled secrets that led to the bursar's death -and the clues that point to a fellow student. This classic mystery novel, with its evocative setting in an Oxford women's college, is now republished for the first time since the 1930s, with an introduction by the award-winning crime writer Stephen Booth.
A classic mystery novel set in and around the Northern Line of the London Underground. It is now republished for the first time since the 1930s.