This book was first published in 1940 and Mary Roberts Rinehart was an American author of murder mystery/suspense novels. I really enjoyed it but I think I would have enjoyed it even more if it hadn’t taken me so long to read it. Although it only has 288 pages it must have taken about a week for me to get through it, just because of the time of year I suppose. I don’t read quickly but I do prefer to be able to sit down and read 80 – 100 pages at a time, especially with murder mysteries.
Pat Abbott is a young woman who has landed a good job as a secretary at a large local mansion called the Cloisters. Her employer, Maud Wainwright, is a wealthy widow with one adult son, Tony.
Life hasn’t been a barrel of laughs for Pat as she is left on her own at a young age, with the deaths of both her parents, Maud becomes almost a friend to her, but what had at first seemed to be a wonderful job quickly turned into a worrying and terrifying position.
There’s plenty of murder and mystery in this book and it kept me guessing to the end, I can’t stop myself from thinking ahead but I hate it if I work it all out before I get there.
This is the second book by Rinehart which I’ve read, her books aren’t easy to find in the UK but I did read The Circular Staircase last year, I downloaded it from Project Gutenberg, from here. It did occur to me that in each of her books which I’ve read, part of the storyline was about someone gaining access to a house overnight, by nefarious means, I wonder if that is a feature of a lot of her stories, or just those two.
Quite a few of her books seem to be available free from Manybooks, have a look here, if you’re interested. Sadly they don’t seem to have this one available free. Thanks again to Peggy Ann for being a ‘right daftie’ and sending me a copy of the book!
By coincidence I was browsing in a second-hand bookshop just off the Lothian Road in Edinburgh on Saturday and I had a look to see if they had any by Rinehart, never expecting to find one, but they had a copy of The Circular Staircase. It was wrapped in plastic, which generally means that it’s going to cost a lot and sure enough it had a £10 price sticker on it. Quite a lot of money for a book which has the original price of 50 cents on the front cover! It makes my Kindle seem cheap at the price.