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3.5 

Episode of the Wandering Knife

By Mary Roberts Rinehart
Episode of the Wandering Knife by Mary Roberts Rinehart digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

Three tales from a mystery master whose “literary distinction lies in the combination of love, humor and murder that she wove into her tales” (The New York Times).
 
The Episode of the Wandering Knife: What’s a mother to do? When her daughter-in-law is slashed to death, the first thing is to hide the hunting knife that’s sure to implicate her innocent son. But it doesn’t stay hidden for long. It’s just turned up in a second victim, only to vanish once again. Whatever the cunning motive is for the ghastly crimes, the game of hide-and-seek with a deadly weapon is just beginning.
 
The Man Who Hid His Breakfast: A woman’s been found strangled in her bed. The only other person in the house is her daughter, Emma. Given Emma’s motive for wanting to escape the clutches of her domineering mother, the case seems open and shut. Except Inspector Tom Brent insists Emma couldn’t possibly have done it. His career depends on proving it. And it all starts with a very peculiar breakfast.
 
The Secret: Hilda Adams, the Homicide Bureau’s undercover “Miss Pinkerton,” is enlisted to investigate the odd behavior of Tony Rowland. The woman has suddenly broken off her engagement to a man she loves, crashed a car, and now keeps her elderly mother locked in her room. Does the Rowland family have reason to fear the neurotic woman? Or is Tony herself the one who’s afraid? If so, of what?
 

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5 Reviews

3.5
“This is a small collection of 3 short mystery stories including : Episode of the Wandering Knife: After a party at Strathmore House which included the Mayor, the host’s daughter-in-law is found murdered as the investigation begins the murder weapon has a habit of appearing and disappearing. The Man Who Hid His Breakfast; Inspector Tom Brent’s last case is a doozy Mrs Ingalls is strangled by her daughter’s stocking in her bedroom. and The Secret: When Hilda is disappointed after being refused a war post overseas instead she accepts a post as a nurse for a lady whose life could be being threatened by her daughter after a series of accidents. Only the last one actually features sleuth Hilary Adams as mentioned on the cover. Mary Roberts Rinehart is considered to be the US equivalent to Agatha Christie and having read these I can understand how she acquired this reputation and why they were popular - they are an easy read and have interesting storylines which are certainly page turners. These were published in 1950 and the language is naturally dated in places and often is very much of a certain ‘class’ not what I would term everyday language for an ‘average’ person (and I include myself in this category). The stories certainly were not formulaic but were quite complex in plot terms and had unexpected twists and turns. I also found that police involvement was minimal in the same way that many Agatha Christie’s were a lot of detecting is done by the experienced amateur with police support.”
“I'm trying to get caught up on reviews, so this one will be rather short and use less florid words than I normally would for a Mary Roberts Rinehart book. I can promise though, that I could endlessly babble about the suspense that Rinehart is able to produce in these three short stories. I could wax eloquent on the way Rinehart is able to slowly build the tension until it snaps and explodes of the page, bathing the reader in fearful death. I could even, in minute detail, recreate the ingenious twists and turns that Rinehart throws out as red herrings to keep her reader on tenterhooks. I could do all those things, but I think I will let the idea of them speak for themselves. What I did want to mention, in a few sentences, is that I loved the return of Hilda Adams in the last story. Her fans know her better as, Miss Pinkerton, the ingenious nurse who always seems to find herself in the middle of familial murders. I don't know if she is the only reoccurring character that Rinehart created, but I do know that she is one of my favorite characters from any mystery writer. She is one of those amazing creations that despite her fears and self doubts, never fails to summon the intelligence and courage needed to figure out why people are dying under her nose. She may not like this part of her job, but when a certain police inspector asks for her help, our Miss Pinkerton is always willing to do what needs to be done. I was going to continue along the same vein for the primary investigators in the other stories, but I think I would rather leave you with one further sentence. If for whatever reason I have not managed to convince you that Mary Roberts Rinehart is a mystery writer that you need to read, please pick up one of her books and prove me right.”
“Never got into her writing, and I've tried a couple of different books.”

About Mary Roberts Rinehart

Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958) was one of the United States’s most popular early mystery authors. Born in Pittsburgh to a clerk at a sewing machine agency, Rinehart trained as a nurse and married a doctor after her graduation from nursing school. She wrote fiction in her spare time until a stock market crash sent her and her young husband into debt, forcing her to lean on her writing to pay the bills. Her first two novels, The Circular Staircase (1908) and The Man in Lower Ten (1909), established her as a bright young talent, and it wasn’t long before she was one of the nation’s most popular mystery novelists.

Among her dozens of novels are The Amazing Adventures of Letitia Carberry (1911), which began a six-book series, and The Bat (originally published in 1920 as a play), which was among the inspirations for Bob Kane’s Batman. Credited with inventing the phrase “The butler did it,” Rinehart is often called an American Agatha Christie, even though she began writing much earlier than Christie, and was much more popular during her heyday. 

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