A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERY Rediscover Gladys Mitchell one of the 'Big Three' female crime fiction writers alongside Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.

Great Aunt Puddequet was reputed to be enormously wealthy. It was also a tradition in the family that she was extraordinarily mean. So when the malicious old bird summons her grand-nephews to perform in a games tournament in order to secure their inheritances, they gloomily oblige. Before long, the country house games are interrupted by murder. The police are baffled, but fortunately Mrs Bradley, an unusual psychoanalyst with a flair for sleuthing, has begun to take an keen interest in the Puddequet Olympics.

Opinionated, unconventional, unafraid... If you like Poirot and Miss Marple, youll love Mrs Bradley.

Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell or The Great Gladys as Philip Larkin called her was born in 1901, in Cowley in Oxfordshire. She graduated in history from University College London and in 1921 began her long career as a teacher. Her hobbies included architecture and writing poetry. She studied the works of Sigmund Freud and her interest in witchcraft was encouraged by her friend, the detective novelist Helen Simpson. Her first novel,Speedy Death, was published in 1929 and introduced readers to Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, the detective heroine of a further sixty six crime novels. She wrote at least one novel a year throughout her career and was an early member of the Detection Club, alongside Agatha Christie, G.K Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers.In 1961 she retired from teaching and, from her home in Dorset, continued to write, receiving the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger in 1976. Gladys Mitchell died in 1983.

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Foul play...family secrets...a classic murder mystery from one the queens of Golden Age crime fiction