UK-based publisher Dean Street Press is reissuing five more E.R. Punshon golden age mysteries in December, some of the rarest of the author's Bobby Owen series. Published between 1938 and 1941, the titles have been unavailable for seventy years, with some print copies going for some pretty hefty change. The titles include Comes a Stranger, Suspects - Nine, Murder Abroad, Four Strange Women, and Ten Star Clues.
Dean Street founder Rupert Heath sent along a copy of Comes a Stranger, a bibliomystery set in a legendary private library in the world of rare books. As the novel begins, Bobby Owen and his fiancée are drawn into a dispute over Kayne Library, including charges of maladministration and familial desires to sell off the collection for profit. But things take a more sinister turn when a body is found in the library and the local police force press Bobby into service to help solve the crime. Along the way, as Curtis Evans notes in his Foreword, "a slashed portrait, a tale of an old lover’s long-hidden poems, an American with the remarkable, Elmer Gantry-ish name of Bertram A. Virtue, and a box of forget-me-nots all play parts in one of E.R. Punshon’s most beguiling tales of mystery."
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