MacDougal Duff Mystery

This MacDougal Duff Mystery launched the career of its Edgar Award-winning author. Feeling unmoored since the death of her father, twenty-year-old Bessie Gibbon has left upstate New York to live with an aunt and uncle, Lina and Charles Cathcart, in their four-story Manhattan home. Bessie has heard tales about her eccentric uncle: that he was a millionaire theater magnate and the black sheep of the family, that his marriage to Lina was more of an arrangement than a matter of love, and most important, that he was an inveterate player of parlor games-but nothing prepares Bessie for the luxury in which he lives, the odd assortment of servants, or the cronies who can turn a late-night Parcheesi tournament into a blood sport. And that's precisely what happens when one of them is shot to death after a particularly cutthroat game. Now there are whispers that it was Uncle Charles who pulled the trigger, and no one is all that surprised. Detective MacDougal Duff wants to know why. When Duff's investigation yields more secrets about the family than Bessie is comfortable with, she starts to fear for her safety. Especially when another of her uncle's acquaintances is murdered-stabbed with a carving knife. If this is another one of her uncle's games, Bessie can't help but wonder who might be the next to lose. Lay On, Mac Duff! is the 1st book in the MacDougal Duff Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Three old crones plan a deadly accident for their wealthy half-brother Alice Brennan is going to marry a millionaire. She has caught the eye of her boss, Innes Whitlock, but before they can tie the knot she must meet his sisters: three women who are so awful that no amount of money is worth enduring their company. One is blind, one is deaf, one is missing an arm, and they all want their brother dead.   The accidents begin as soon as Alice and Innes arrive at the sisters' creaky old Michigan country house. A lamp falls from the ceiling, narrowly missing Innes's head. When he goes for a drive, a detour sign disappears, sending him off the road and nearly killing him. Before the sisters can finish the job, Alice contacts her old history professor, MacDougal Duff, who makes his living solving murders. He is the only one who can save Alice's millionaire from his murderous family.

MacDougal Duff falls in with a strange family-and senses murder A sudden cloudburst forces MacDougal Duff to stop his car in front of the home of Mary Moriarty. The history professor turned detective is reclining in his seat, waiting out the torrential rainstorm, when Mary knocks on the car window holding a feverish child and jabbering about a dead woman. After years investigating murders, Mac Duff is not fazed by a dead body, but the sick child moves his heart. He speeds to the hospital, and while the doctor is seeing to the child, he asks Mary about the dead woman. Her name was Brownie, Mary says, and she was poisoned.   Unable to resist an interesting death, Mac Duff moves in with the family, pretending to be a distant relation. To his delight, he finds a home corrupted by secrets, whose residents do not hesitate to kill.