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A victim is bludgeoned to death with a woodworker’s rasp in this first case for the famed gentleman detective Anthony Gethryn – the latest in a new series of classic detective novels from the vaults of HarperCollins.Ex-Secret Service agent Anthony Gethryn is killing time working for a newspaper when he is sent to cover the murder of Cabinet minister John Hoode, bludgeoned to death in his country home with a wood-rasp. Gethryn is convinced that the prime suspect, Hoode’s secretary Alan Deacon, is innocent, but to prove it he must convince the police that not everyone else has a cast-iron alibi for the time of the murder.This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by crime fiction expert and writer Tony Medawar, who investigates the forgotten career of one of the Golden Age’s finest detective story writers.

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The first Golden Age detective novel to feature a serial killer with no rational motive – and surely impossible for Scotland Yard to solve?A long knife with a brilliant but perverted brain directing it is terrorising Holmdale – innocent people are being done to death under the very eyes of the law. After every murder a business-like letter arrives announcing that another ‘removal has been carried out’, and Inspector Pyke of Scotland Yard has nothing to go on but the evidence of the bodies themselves and the butcher’s own bravado. With clear thinking impossible in the face of such a breathless killing spree, the police make painfully slow progress: but how do you find a maniac who has no rational motive?Philip MacDonald had shown himself in The Noose and The Rasp to be a master of the detective novel. In Murder Gone Mad he raised the stakes with the first Golden Age crime novel to feature a motiveless serial killer prompted only by blood lust – inspired by the real-life case in 1929 of the Düsseldorf Monster – and this time without the familiar Anthony Gethryn on hand to reassure the reader.This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by L. C. Tyler, Chair of the Crime Writers Association and author of the award-winning ‘Elsie and Ethelred’ crime novels and the John Grey historical mysteries.

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A classic Golden Age crime novel, and the first time Philip MacDonald wrote a crime novel without a detective.‘Rynox’ is at that point where one injudicious move, one failure of judgement, one coincidental piece of bad luck will wreck it. So why would anyone send more than a million pounds in one-pound notes to Mr Salisbury of the Naval, Military and Cosmopolitan Assurance Corporation? Who would shoot F.X. Benedik, the senior partner of the firm, through the head in his study? And where is the choleric Mr Marsh, who had an appointment with F.X. on the night of his death? Rynox is on the edge of big things. But the edge of big things is a narrow edge. And narrow edges are slippery . . .Philip MacDonald’s Rynox is an engrossing murder mystery set in the business world, a crime novel without a detective in which murder and big business are inextricably combined. Beginning with the Epilogue and ending with the Prologue, it is a subtle and exciting book by one of the greatest masters of the mystery story.This Detective Club classic includes a rare introduction by author Philip MacDonald himself, never before published in the UK, and also ‘The Wood-for-the-Trees’, the only short story to feature his series detective, Anthony Gethryn.

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