Author Description

‘A neatly constructed plot which is distinctly out of the ordinary’ The Times ‘An excellent mystery story… it is told extremely well’ Liverpool Post The fourth crime novel of the much-revered crime writer Vernon Loder, writing here as ‘Anthony Lang’ This 2024 Spitfire Publishers ebook and paperback edition represent the first republication of this classic of the ‘Golden Age of Crime’ in almost a century A man is discovered shot though the head in a London bedsit. A revolver lies nearby and personal papers burned in the grate. The dead man’s involvement in the sale of an African copper mine concession appears unrelated. Patricia Repton, the young City financier who brokered the deal, is suspicious; as is the widow of the mining engineer who discovered the valuable metal deposit. The engineer had recently met with a gruesome death in the African bush when his.577 large calibre hunting rifle misfired on a stampeding buffalo. Patricia joins forces with Scotland Yard’s Detective-Inspector Hoe to investigate, uncovering maleficence, multiple murder and fraud. About the Author Anthony Lang was one of no less than nine pseudonyms adopted by Anglo-Irish detective fiction author, Jack Vahey. Born John George Hazlette Vahey in Belfast in 1881 he worked first as an apprentice architect, then an accountant before finally turning to writing fiction full-time. He is perhaps best known by his ‘Vernon Loder’ pseudonym used on twenty-two of his novels, many published in the prestigious Collins Crime Club, the first The Mystery at Stowe in 1928, the last, Kill in the Ring, in 1938. Jack Vahey died in 1938. Praise for the Author ‘A brilliantly-written detective story’ The Daily Mail ‘Spins out his gruesome tale and does it well’ New York Times ‘The name of Vernon Loder must be widely known as a reliable and promising indication on the cover of a detective story’ Times Literary Supplement ‘Character drawing