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Christian Dittus
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English

THE PUZZLE OF THE HAPPY HOOLIGAN

Stuart Palmer

A Hildegarde Withers Mystery

Hildegarde Withers is just your average school teacher?with above-average skills in the art of deduction. The New Yorker often finds herself investigating crimes led only by her own meddlesome curiosity, though her friends on the NYPD don't mind when she solves their cases for them. After plans for a grand tour of Europe are interrupted by Germany's invasion of Poland, Miss Withers heads to sunny Los Angeles instead, where her vacation finds her working as a technical advisor on the set of a film adaptation of the Lizzie Borden story. The producer has plans for an epic retelling of the historical killer's patricidal spree?plans which are derailed when a screenwriter turns up dead. While the local authorities quickly deem his death accidental, Withers suspects otherwise and calls up a detective back home for advice. The two soon team up to catch a wily killer.

At once a pleasantly complex locked room mystery and a hilarious look at the foibles of Hollywood, The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan finds Palmer, a screenwriter himself, at his most perceptive. Reprinted for the first time in over thirty years, this riotously funny novel shows why Hildegarde Withers was among the most beloved detectives of the Golden Age American mystery novel.

Stuart Palmer (1905–1968) was an American author of mysteries. He published his first novel in 1931, but it was with his second novel that established his writing career: The Penguin Pool Murder introduced Hildegarde Withers, a schoolmarm who, on a field trip to the New York Aquarium, discovers a dead body in the pool. Withers was an immensely popular character, and went on to star in thirteen more novels, including Miss Withers Regrets (1947) and Nipped in the Bud (1951). A master of intricate plotting, Palmer found success writing for Hollywood, where several of his books, including The Penguin Pool Murder, were filmed by RKO Pictures Inc.

MORD LAUT DREHBUCH
Deutsch von Sepp Leeb
[PB: Heyne, 01/1989]
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Published 2023-05-11 by Mysterious Press

Comments

The Puzzle of the Happy Hooligan is a book that will keep you laughing and guessing from the first page to the last.