Colonel Gethryn

The Rasp introduces the world to the amazing Anthony Gethryn, an ex-secret service agent, and occasional newspaper correspondent. He is assigned to cover the story of a cabinet minister, John Hoode, who was found murdered in the library of his country house, battered to death with a wood-rasp. Scotland yard has only one suspect Hoode's secretary Alan Deacon. But, Gethryn is convinced that Deacon did not do it. To prove that he'll have to investigate himself and find the real killer. But, everyone else who might have had a motive has a cast-iron alibi. Can he crack the case and bring the killer to justice?

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.

Gentleman detective Anthony Gethryn is in a race against time to save an innocent man from the hangman's noose. Colonel Anthony Gethryn is recalled from a holiday in Spain to solve a murder in the November fogs of London. He finds that his wife is sheltering Mrs. Bronson, whose husband is in prison awaiting execution for the murder of a gamekeeper six months before. A petition for reprieve has been rejected and Bronson will shortly hang for someone else's crime. Convinced by Mrs. Bronson of her husband's innocence, Gethryn embarks on a seemingly hopeless race against time to overthrow the guilty verdict and find the real murderer - and he has only five days before Bronson's date with the hangman's noose. The Noose saw the return of Philip MacDonald's gentleman detective Anthony Ruthven Gethryn, whose debut in The Rasp six years earlier had been a big success. Judged to be his best book yet, The Noose had the distinction of being chosen as the first book to be published in Collins' Crime Club in May 1930, helping to immortalize it as one of the seminal books of the crime genre. This Detective Story Club classic includes an introduction by H. R. F. Keating, which first appeared in the Crime Club's 1985 'Disappearing Detectives' series.