The arsenic in her sugar bowl was wealthy widow Eliza Fairbanks' first clue that somebody wanted her dead. The nightly plagues of bats, birds, and rats unleashed in her bedroom were the second indication, an obvious attempt to scare the life out of the delicate dowager. So instead of calling the exterminator, Eliza calls the cops, who send Hilda Adams -- "Miss Pinkerton" to the folks at the bureau -- to go undercover and investigate.
Hilda Adams is a nurse, not a detective -- at least, not technically speaking. But then, nurses do have the opportunity to see things that the police can't, and to witness the inner workings of a household when the authorities aren't around. From the moment Adams arrives at the Fairbanks mansion, confronted by a swarm of shady and oddball relatives, many of whom seem desperate for their inheritance, it's clear that something unseemly is at work in the estate. But not even she is prepared for the web of intrigue that awaits her therein.
Reissued for the first time in over twenty years, and featuring one of Mary Roberts Rinehart's only series characters, The Haunted Lady is the thrilling follow-up to Miss Pinkerton, also available from American Mystery Classics. The books can be read in any order.
作者简介
玛丽-罗伯茨-雷恩哈特(1876-1958)是二十世纪上半叶美国为人熟知和畅销的悬疑作家。她出生在匹兹堡,父亲是一家缝纫机厂的老板,她在业余时间写小说,直到一次股市崩盘使她和丈夫陷入债务,迫使她靠写作来支付账单。她的头两部小说《环形楼梯》(1908年)和《下十层的人》(1909年)使她成为一个聪明的青年才俊,不久她就成为畅销书排行榜上的常客。在她的几十部小说中,有《莱蒂亚-卡伯里的奇妙冒险》(1911年)和《蝙蝠》(1932年),这是鲍勃-凯恩的蝙蝠侠的灵感源泉之一。今天,雷恩哈特经常被称为美国的阿加莎-克里斯蒂,尽管她在全盛时期比克里斯蒂要受欢迎得多。奥托-彭茨勒是纽约市神秘书店的经营者。他是神秘出版社和奥托-彭兹勒书店的创始人,并因其对推理领域的贡献获得了埃德加奖、埃勒里皇后奖和乌鸦奖。他的文集《黑蜥蜴大书》(The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps)是《纽约时报》的畅销书。
Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) was the most beloved and best-selling mystery writer in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Pittsburgh to the owner of a sewing machine factory, she wrote fiction in her spare time until a stock market crash sent her and her husband into debt, forcing her to lean on her writing to pay the bills. Her first two novels, The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Man in Lower Ten (1909), established her as a bright young talent, and it wasn’t long before she was a regular on bestseller lists.Among her dozens of novels were The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry (1911) and The Bat (1932), which was among the inspirations for Bob Kane’s Batman. Today, Rinehart is often called an American Agatha Christie, even though she was much more popular than Christie during her heyday.
Otto Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He is the founder of the Mysterious Press and Otto Penzler Books, and has received an Edgar Award, an Ellery Queen Award, and a Raven Award for his contribution to the mystery field. His anthology The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps was a New York Times Bestseller.
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