E. X. Giroux Books

E. X. Giroux is the pseudonym of Doris Shannon. Miss Sanderson investigates the murder of a doctor and his family in sleepy Maddersley-on-Mead.

The lonely island inn is the perfect setting for a celebrity murder party, with famous guests performing a make-believe murder scenario. — Too bad somebody changed the script, for now the "victim," world-famous chef Felix Caspari, is dead. And the remaining celebrities, pop star Reggie Knight, beautiful romance writer Dolores Carter White, and society matron Sybil Montrose, are rushing for the exit. They are just a little too late, however, for the only boat has been destroyed, the telephone line has been cut, and a howling storm has sealed their terrifying isolation. It remained for Miss Sanderson, a stand-in at the party for her employer, famed barrister Robert Forsythe, to investigate. From the sad and sordid confessions of guests and staff she learns that every person present has both motive and opportunity to kill the great chef. Meanwhile her chilling conviction grows that somewhere in the wings an uninvited guest is lurking.

E. X. Giroux is the pseudonym of Doris Shannon. — From Publishers Weekly — Launched by A Death for Adonis, Giroux's series of praised thrillers include alliteratively titled tales about a darling, a dancer and a doctor. The death of a dilettante is prefigured in the author's latest, starring favorite sleuths Robert Forsythe, a London lawyer, and his clever secretary Miss Sanderson, the motherly "Sandy." They agree to visit the stately home of rich Winslow Maxwell Penndragon, 75, whose determination to live for another three decades seems endangered. Winslow wants Forsythe and Sandy to flush out the person who has tried to kill him twice. The guests realize they're in a rum household; Winslow has summoned two sons and a daughter, their first meeting with the father who, decades earlier, had seduced and discarded their different mothers. Among other potential heirs are Winslow's widowed sister-in-law and her son, as well as servants with puzzling connections to the master. Before the detecting partners start to work, the next attempt to murder Winslow succeeds, and the strange, often deftly amusing story moves to a fantastic denouement.

The daughter of a sculptor who was convicted in 1944 of murdering his male model, reopens the case thirty years later to prove her father's innocence

Cast, crew, and the lovely Erika Von Farr have taken over a Norfolk family estate to film a remake of Wuthering Heights when murder strikes and dashing barrister Robert Forsythe commences to unravel the mystery

Should residents be allowed to have pets? That's the burning question agitating the trustees of the Jamie Coralund Home for the Aged. Barrister Robert Forsythe is called on to mediate, but he's no fool and declines the honor. Instead, he sends his formidable secretary, Miss Sanderson, to deal with this tempest in a provincial teapot. — It might have ended there but for two things: a dog is poisoned and an old lady is smothered.Miss Sanderson, ever sensitive to the ebb and flow of human passions, learns that the trustees - three middle-aged men and one timelessly beautiful woman - have known each other since childhood, the handpicked playmates of rich little Jamie Coralund. Jamie himself has been dead for thirty years. Or so everyone believes.Miss S. suspects that, dead or alive, Jamie is somehow involved in present events, and that the sins of the past are making a return appearance....