Timothy Trant

A dapper detective tracks a high-society killer in Manhattan-from the Edgar Award–winning author who wrote the Peter Duluth Mysteries as Patrick Quentin. Patrick Quentin, best known for the Peter Duluth puzzle mysteries, also penned outstanding detective novels from the 1930s through the 1960s under other pseudonyms, including Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge. After tumbling from the Park Avenue set to penurious widowhood, the resilient Clara Van Heuten has started her own business offering counsel to aspiring writers. When it comes to advice, she's full of it. Maybe that's why she ends up with a knife in her back. Timothy Trant, once the pride of Princeton, now one of New York's finest, uses his IQ to figure out a killer's MO. This time all the lieutenant has to work with is a stack of unpublishable manuscripts and the hoity-toity guest list of Van Heuten's last get-together-until he discovers that the widow had reason to believe she was going to be murdered . . .

In this mystery from the Edgar Award–winning author of the Peter Duluth series, Lieutenant Trant investigates the murder of a shady and seductive scoundrel. George Hadley just wanted to be happy. Caught up in a world where money, propriety, and, above all, appearances hold sway, he's more than willing to leave his wealthy socialite wife and run off with his secretary if it means being free. That's when he meets the young, handsome Don Saxon. A lothario with a shadowy past, he soon worms his way into George's inner circle, enchanting his wife, seducing his niece-and threatening to reveal George's affair. So when his niece finds Don in his apartment shot dead, George should be relieved. But then, the intrepid Lieutenant Trant starts taking a closer look at George's life and his growing list of lies. Unless George can figure out who really killed Don, he's never going to be happy-or free-again . . .

Patrick Quentin, best known for the Peter Duluth puzzle mysteries, also penned outstanding detective novels from the 1930s through the 1960s under other pseudonyms, including Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge. Anthony Boucher wrote: "Quentin is particularly noted for the enviable polish and grace which make him one of the leading American fabricants of the murderous comedy of manners; but this surface smoothness conceals intricate and meticulous plot construction as faultless as that of Agatha Christie." Lee Loverling knew her roommate, Grace, had become somewhat of an enigma. After her father's suicide and her family's failed fortunes, Grace had changed into a willful woman whose romantic dalliances bordered on reckless-and whose moods had become almost sinister. But Lee could not have known just how far Grace had fallen until, after a night of fun in New York City, she's found dead in a river, apparently the victim of murder. All of Wentworth College is abuzz with the tragedy, and Lee is suddenly at the center of an investigation led by the intrepid Lieutenant Trant of the New York Homicide Squad that threatens to expose a great many people-both students and faculty-to the scandals Grace left in her wake. Working together, Lieutenant Trant and Lee must unravel the tangled web of Grace's life to uncover the truth behind the young woman's death.

Patrick Quentin, best known for the Peter Duluth puzzle mysteries, also penned outstanding detective novels from the 1930s through the 1960s under other pseudonyms, including Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge. Lewis Denham has always been the black sheep of the family. Adopted into the "proper" Denham household after his working-class parents died, Lew never quite fit in with the rest of the clan-or maybe he simply couldn't keep his nose elevated that high for that long without getting frostbite. Either way, when he announces his marriage to a British girl without checking how blue her blood is, the family is aghast. But things become truly appalling when Lew finds a dead man in his apartment-and it seems the lower-class victim had a connection with his upper-crust family. Now, feeling more outside the Denham ranks than ever, Lew will have to look past his family's elite façade and find out who they really are. And he's about to learn that none of them are too good to get a little blood on their hands . . .